had brown hair, not blond,” Debbi corrected quickly. “And she’s too young to have a seven-year-old.”
“She was seventeen when she disappeared eight years ago.”
“She was declared legally dead.”
“Doesn’t mean she is dead.”
“Vanessa wouldn’t shoot her husband and leave him for another guy.”
“That is true. What kind of woman would do a thing like that?” Eric gripped the remote, finally winning the battle to change channels as the reporter intoned about the importance of viewers reporting any sign of the vehicle, the children or their mother—and speculations about the man she may have run away to join. “And what kind of guy would get involved with such a crazy person?”
* * *
Sammy was asleep when Vanessa placed his car seat in the concrete manger of the life-size nativity scene in front of her sister’s house. She felt a pang of doubt. Was she right to leave the baby with her sister? It was going to be difficult enough to run with the girls. Sammy needed frequent feedings and diaper changes. The girls, at least, could stay quiet when they needed to.
He’d be safer with Alyssa. Wouldn’t he? Vanessa looked at the concrete sculptures of Mary and Joseph, poised protectively over the manger. Mary’s expression of love and concern seemed to say she’d look over the child.
Vanessa knew she didn’t dare linger, no matter how much she wished she could see her sister. If Alyssa saw her, she’d have to take the time to explain, and that would endanger them all. Virgil’s men might catch up to her at any time, and Sammy would only be safe if the men who were after her didn’t know where she’d left him.
Swallowing back the emotion that tightened her throat and blurred her vision, she ran to the Sequoia, parked almost out of sight down the street. She’d spotted Alyssa going into the house as she pulled up, and suspected, based on the open door to the workshop, her sister would be coming out again soon.
Sure enough, once she was inside the vehicle, she and the girls watched through the windows as Alyssa stepped outside the front door, headed toward the baby.
Sammy would be safe. Safer, at least, than he would be on the run with her, and that was all that mattered.
Vanessa put the car in gear and drove off into the setting sun. It was dark, and the girls were asleep by the time she turned off the highway to the gravel road that led to the cabin.
She hadn’t been there in over eight years, but she’d reviewed the route in her head a hundred thousand times, promising herself that if she ever got a chance to escape, she’d flee to the cabin, the one place she’d never told Jeff about.
Forgotten landmarks leaped into sight like old friends eager to welcome her home as the headlights pierced the night in front of her.
A lump welled up in her throat, but Vanessa swallowed it down. No, she couldn’t get emotional, not yet, no matter how many times she’d comforted herself with the hope she might someday see this place again. There was still far too much she had to do.
The Sequoia rolled to a stop in the parking spot in front of the garage. The fishing cabin was just as she remembered it, if a little spooky in the darkness. It was her cabin, or would be someday if her grandfather was still alive. Grandpa had always promised he’d will it to her and her sister.
With a backward glance to be certain the girls were still sleeping peacefully, Vanessa quietly opened the door and hurried to the rock border of the flower bed near the porch. Would the key still be there? Anything could have happened to it in the years since she’d last tucked it away in its hiding spot.
The dim light from the key-chain flashlight barely illuminated the stones, so Vanessa dropped to her knees, feeling each rock in turn, counting them off until she found the correct one. It didn’t want to budge, the soil having settled thick around it over the years.
Fighting back panic, Vanessa tugged hard on the rock with both hands, the flashlight beam playing crazily across the cabin until she had the stone rolled onto its side. She regained control of the keychain, aiming the meager light into the dirt.
She saw only bare ground.
“No. It has to be here.” She glanced back down the row of rocks, wondering if perhaps she’d chosen the wrong one, but this stone, with its knobby, handgrip-shaped protrusion, was the one. The only one.
She swept her fingers across the dirt, digging lightly, gently.
Something scraped her hand and she stopped, running her index finger along the stiff, buried something, flicking it upward with her fingernail.
The key!
She wiped it clean on her jeans as she rose and bounded up the shallow porch steps to the door. Thankfully, the knob looked familiar, not some new, shiny thing to replace the one that matched the key in her hand. Shaking slightly, it took her a moment to align it with the lock, to slide it inside, wrestle with the knob, hear the click and, finally, with a practiced shove of her hip, pop the door open wide.
Vanessa swiped her hand along the inside of the door frame, found the light switch and flipped it on. Even before her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, she saw the man standing across the room at the base of the stairs, facing her from behind the barrel of a gun.
Eric blinked at the sudden light and tried to get a decent look at the intruder. He wasn’t about to hurt anyone—he was pretty sure the old hunting shotgun wasn’t even loaded—but Debbi had told him to take it downstairs with him when she’d run to his room in fear after seeing headlights outside. Their cabin was deep on private property. No one else ought to be there, certainly not in the middle of the night.
Still half-asleep, his mind muddled by dreams tainted with the memories unearthed by that evening’s news story, he couldn’t help wondering if he was actually awake.
The face staring back at him from the doorway was the same one from his dreams, the same one from the newscast, familiar but completely impossible.
“Eric?”
He nodded, swallowed, couldn’t say the name that rose to his lips.
Vanessa was dead. Legally dead.
“Can you put the gun down?” The woman spoke with Vanessa’s voice, which for all the years that had passed was still the same, maybe a little tired, even frantic.
He lowered the hunting shotgun but didn’t let go. More awake now—quite shocked awake—he realized a number of things all at once.
This was the woman from the picture on the news, the woman who’d killed her husband just before dinnertime in a quiet Chicago suburb. She was dangerous. Her children were in danger. The reporter had called her Madison Nelson.
Should he let on that he knew who she was?
And why did she remind him so much of Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead? What was she doing here, in the cabin where he and Vanessa had spent so many happy times as children and teens?
Before
