“Oh, we didn’t list her missing. Girl went off a her own accord.”
“Will you tell me about that, ma’am? Last address we have for Deanna is this trailer.”
“Yeah, she moved in with us a’right. Deanna had gotten mixed up with drugs when she was only twelve, thirteen. Did better for a while, even made it to college. But she got mixed up with all that again in Cincinnati, dropped out of school, moved back in with us. We told her, you mess up, you’re out. I might be poor and fat, Detective. Might not be that educated neither. Stan has dirt under his fingernails. I know what people see when they look at us. But we live an honest life. And we don’t tolerate no drugs in our home.”
Huh. Well, he could respect that. “Did Deanna ever mention a professor that she may have been involved with? There’s a police report that shows she made some trouble at his home. His wife believes they were having an affair.”
Ida Breene shrugged. “Who knows? Probably. Deanna made real bad choices, especially when she was on the drugs.”
Zach cleared his throat. “Right, so she dropped out, moved back here and got clean for a while?”
“For a while. Then she started using again, bringing losers around, would leave for days at a time then come back here to eat and sleep. I ain’t running no motel, Detective. Finally, she disappeared for good. A person can only take being let down so many times. We wiped our hands clean.”
Unease settled in Zach’s stomach. “Are you sure she disappeared of her own accord? What if something bad happened to her?”
“Might have,” Deanna’s mother said. “But it was bound to. Just a matter of time. Whatever happened to Deanna, there was nothing we could do about it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The brook splashed and bubbled next to Josie as she meandered the narrow path that ran through the woods behind the cabin she and Zach were staying in. It’d been a day and a half since they’d arrived and for the most part, they’d avoided each other, only sharing meals.
Josie needed the space, the time, and she’d known Zach had work to do. Although she’d asserted it wasn’t a possibility, what Jimmy had suggested niggled at her mind. She still didn’t see how it could be true, but she knew she owed it to the women who’d been subsequently abducted, and those who might still be in danger, to carefully consider even the smallest chance. Because if the man who abducted and raped her nine years before was the one killing girls now, the police had gone in the wrong direction when they’d found the body of Marshall Landish, and they were going in the wrong direction now.
So, Josie spent the daylight hours slowly and cautiously going over her time spent in bondage. It was necessary, she knew that, though her mind resisted, urged her to turn away as she’d done so often over the years. But . . . in some ways, it felt safer in that remote, unfamiliar location to probe those memories. She didn’t have any distractions, only the birds and the trees and the flowing water, and it allowed her to clear her mind and go through each terrible recollection she pulled forward, questioning things she’d never questioned before.
And as she did, she also finally began to grieve. Not for her child—she had grieved—suffered—for his loss, and still did. Perhaps she always would, and some part of her was okay with that. But even after the sharpest agony of the loss of her baby had faded, Josie had never grieved the loss of her own life, her own view of the world, the future she’d envisioned for herself, so many things she had never explored. She’d learned to function again, she’d moved past the worst of the trauma, every day she put one foot in front of the other and lived the new life she’d been given, but she’d never let her mind go back over the time she’d spent imprisoned, used and abused. She’d never sat with the pain of it, the loneliness, the debilitating horror, and the fear. But she did then. She didn’t push the memories away as she had been doing for so long. She sat alone with every one and let each in turn be her companion.
She closed her eyes and walked back into that room where she’d spent ten agonizing months. She saw herself as she’d first been—desperate and terrorized. She relived the rapes, the hunger, the dwindling hope, the realization that she’d conceived. She recalled her conversations with Marshall, the things he’d done, his responses. She collected the bits and pieces she thought might be important, the things she’d stuffed down so far she hadn’t even known if they were accessible anymore.
And she felt Zach’s presence as she did the work, not infringing on her privacy, but never far away. If she called for him, he’d be there in a moment, she knew. My guardian. The knowledge of his presence close by gave her the courage to explore her own grief. He gave her the courage to break down the memories, to observe them not as a victim, but as a survivor.
But it hurt. Oh God, how it hurt.
She felt the hopelessness, the terror, the complete and utter aloneness of the time she’d spent chained to the wall and left to suffer alone. She remembered the days leading up to Cal
eb’s birth, and the days following. She allowed the long-suppressed emotions to well up inside her, to burst and to dissipate as she gasped and sobbed at the power of the emotional bomb that she’d detonated. And yet, when the dust cleared, there was a quiet peace, the fragments of her soul still left intact, washed clean by a torrent of tears. Her scars could not be erased, but maybe, maybe, she could grow around them. Move forward despite them.
Josie sat at the edge of the stream and took off her shoes, dipping her feet in the water, feeling it glide over her skin like wet silk. Tears continued to roll down her cheeks as she sat in the cleansing aftermath of having released a portion of her pent-up anguish, her soft cries mixing with the sound of the flowing water. The pain of her memories engulfed her, not a tsunami anymore, but the gentle lapping of waves, and she let it hurt, bringing her legs up and wrapping her arms around them, placing her head on her knees as she wept. It was a familiar position, one she’d spent many hours in once, a hand shackled behind her back.
She sensed Zach’s approach before she heard him and was unsurprised at the soft crunch of sand behind her. He sat down next to her on the shore and quietly took her in his arms. Josie turned to him, accepting his comfort, his solidity, the tender care with which he held her. After exploring her traumatic memories, to be touched in tenderness by a man was exactly what her heart needed, and she couldn’t have known until he arrived. They sat on the riverbank that way for a long time, Josie’s tears drying as Zach continued to stroke her hair and whisper words of comfort, his arms wrapped tightly around her as though he’d never let go.
**********
The savory scent of pasta sauce filled the air, the quiet strains of country music drifting from the radio on the kitchen counter. Zach hadn’t seen a handheld radio in a long time and rarely listened to country music, but when in Rome . . . And he couldn’t deny that the emotional crooning of the man with the twang in his voice seemed not only to fit the setting of the rustic cabin in the Tennessee mountains, but of Josie’s quiet, introspective mood.
He thought back to earlier that day when he’d held her on the riverbank as she’d cried, and his heart constricted. Still, as much as Josie’s display of utter sadness had pulled at his heartstrings, there had been a clarity in her eyes when she’d leaned back and allowed him to wipe away her tears. And there was a new intimacy between them that neither one was addressing. He felt it, though, the delicate nature of their changing relationship, the attraction between them that neither seemed to know how to handle, his own resistance to his attraction to her.
Forget the fact that he could lose his job for getting involved with her, Zach knew that the humming electricity that vibrated inside of him in response to her was anything but simple when it came to desiring a woman who’d been through what Josie had experienced.
It was tricky as hell. He wanted her. And what it meant was that he was completely fucked.
“Smells delicious.”
Zach turned as Josie entered the kitchen behind him. “I hope you’re hungry. I think I made enough to feed an army.” He waved his hand over the stovetop where a bubbling pot of spaghetti cooked along with the sauce. A loaf of garlic bread was in the oven and Zach had mixed up a Caesar salad. Whomever had stocked the cabin with food had thankfully done it with easy-to-make meals. Zach could claim a few talents, but cooking was not one of them.
Josie smiled, a small one, but real, he thought. Her eyes were slightly red-rimmed from her earlier tears, but despite that, she looked bright and fresh, straight from the shower in a pair of leggings and a long sweatshirt, her hair loose around her face. Jesus, she was beautiful. “Actually,” she said, coming up behind him. “I’m starving.”
“Good,” he said, his voice husky as she leaned around him, peeking at what was on the stove.