“Other times?” he prompted gently when she did not continue.
“Mom used to get bad headaches. She said it was from the cleansers she had to use when working, and she’d come home and lock herself in her bedroom. Beth made us dinner. Or we’d just have cereal. Dad would be angry when he found out. They would scream at each other in the bedroom while we hid in our closet and pretended not to hear.”
“I think all families have good times and bad times.”
“I always try to remember the good ones. Bobby kept the bad.” She drew a shuddering breath and looked to the doors where the EMTs were bringing in a stretcher. “I guess I’m just wondering now which one of us was closer to the truth.”
* * *
Reed pushed aside the curtain and poked his head into Ellery’s room, where she lay dozing, propped up in the hospital bed. Her eyelids fluttered open at his approach. “Did you find Chloe?”
He shook his head and took her left hand, the one uninjured in her grappling with Bobby Frick. “Not yet. They have dogs and search teams combing the park. If she’s there, we’ll find her.”
“You think she’s dead.”
Reed said nothing for a long moment. “The blood in the van is type B-negative, the same as Chloe’s. Bobby Frick was type O.”
“There wasn’t much blood found. Certainly not enough to say she’s dead.” She pulled her hand from his and tried to sit up. The drugs made her unsteady and the pain made her wince. “I want to keep looking.”
“Ellery, you’re hurt and you’re exhausted. There are plenty of people searching for Chloe.”
“It’s not that bad.” She bit back a cry as her foot made contact with the floor. Reed stepped forward as she fell backward onto the bed. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Not,” he replied succinctly. “You need rest, not some foolhardy errand.”
“It’s not foolhardy,” Ellery ground out. “Chloe is alive.”
“Look, honey, I hope you’re right, but I think you need to face the brutal facts here. Bobby Frick was clearly suicidal. He’d abducted a girl and treated her like an animal while she was in his captivity. He told you he wanted to punish Teresa Lockhart, who by his account didn’t deserve Chloe, and then finally he said ‘she’s in a better place,’ isn’t that right?”
Ellery struggled to sit up using her one good arm. “He could have taken me with him.”
Reed gaped at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“On the dam. He had a lock grip on my arm and there was no way I could get free of him. See?” She rotated it slightly to show off the deep fingermark bruises on her forearm. “I was slipping off the column. If he’d just held on, he would have taken us both over the edge. Or he could’ve just shot me when he had the chance. But he didn’t.”
“Thank God for that. But he didn’t have the same obsession with you that he did for Chloe Lockhart.”
“She’s alive. I know it.”
She rushed to get up, but the twisted ankle wouldn’t support her weight. Reed caught her as she teetered and eased her back down to a sitting position on the bed. A choked sob escaped her at this defeat, and the small noise was like a bullet to his heart. Ellery already walked around with the ghosts of the sixteen girls who had died in Coben’s closet. Gently, he tugged her head until he cradled her against his shoulder. She smelled like river water. “They’re doing everything they can to find her,” he whispered to her. “You need to go home and rest.” His own face felt cracked and raw with sheer exhaustion.
Dumbly, she nodded and let him help her to her feet. She bit her lip hard as he put her injured arm in the sling provided by the doctors, but she did not make a sound. He collected the prescription painkillers and offered his elbow to her for support. She refused him, of course, limping toward the door on her own, and he managed a thin smile as he trailed behind her. Ellery rebounded like one of those boxing dummies at his gym; you hit her and she got right back up again.
He’d driven her car to the hospital and strategically parked it in the back lot away from the reporters and news vans waiting at the front. There was no way she could drive, so he climbed behind the wheel as Ellery winced her way into the passenger seat. He watched her struggle briefly for the seat belt before reaching over without a word and clicking it into place for her. “Thank you.” She took his hand and kissed his palm once before holding his hand to her face. “Reed, I…” She looked at him and he thought she might finally say the words. His heart beat faster. He leaned in closer.
A camera lens appeared in the window next to Ellery. Snap, snap, snap. Ellery jerked away. A man’s face peered in and he started shouting questions. “Agent Markham, Detective Hathaway … any leads on where Chloe Lockhart is now? Is Bobby Frick alive?”
Reed started the car and gunned the engine, narrowly missing the reporter’s feet as he peeled out of the parking space. He took the speed bump faster than was advisable, jostling Ellery, who gripped the console with her good arm. “Sorry about that.”
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “They never go away. They never will.”
“I’ll have you home soon.”
“They know where I live. Everyone knows.” She sounded dreamy, far away. The drugs were kicking in. “Do you think it will be like that for Chloe? Will they write her story and make a movie? Will they demand she comment every time some other girl goes missing?”
“I can’t imagine Teresa will let them.”
Ellery hunkered in deeper into the seat, half-asleep already. “She can’t stop them,” she mumbled. “Nobody can.”
Reed drove the rest of the way back to Boston in silence, the sky brightening into brilliant sunshine around him. No matter how dark the night, dawn always arrived. He had stayed awake to see it many times in the course of his career, sometimes because the night’s work was not finished, sometimes to remind himself he’d survived. Ellery roused as he hit the city limits, blinking like a mole rat. “Almost home,” he told her as she frowned at her surroundings.
“No, I want to go to the Lockharts’ house.”
“Why?”
“I think I know where Chloe is. Where Bobby put her.”
“She’s not at home,” Reed replied in what he hoped was a reasonable tone. Maybe she’d dreamed some crazy solution that had Chloe home safe and sound, but it was impossible. There had been police at the Lockharts’ house round-the-clock for days now.
“I didn’t say she was.”
“Ellery…”
“Are you going to take me there or should I call an Uber?” She grimaced as she took out her cell phone.
“Only if you explain to me what you’re thinking.”
She outlined an incredible scenario that might as well have come from a dream for the infinitesimal probability that it was real. Reed sighed when she was finished and signaled a turn for the Lockharts’ mansion. It was a dream worth believing in.
31
Improbably, Dorie Bennett opened the door of the Lockhart house. She looked Ellery over with a mixture of concern, compassion, and exasperation. “You look like death warmed over,” she said as Ellery dragged herself over the threshold. “What are you doing here?” She asked the question of Ellery but looked to Reed for the answer.