I shook my head. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“Stupid, I know. But you have to understand. I thought I’d put all that to bed, but now it’s all come back to me in vivid color.”
Because of me.
“When you’ve been through something so terrible,” she went on, “something you think you might never get over, sometimes you’re willing to do just about anything to merely survive.”
“I do understand. And I promise you. You will take your life back, Zee, but St. Andrew’s isn’t the place to do it. Telling your story is. Owning it. Going public so we can take Father Jim and any other tyrants still out there down. So we can show the world who my father truly was.”
“And talking to the detective is the first step.”
“Yeah. It is.” I cupped her cheek and looked up as the black car weaved through traffic to stop in front of the Starbucks. “Here’s Wayne now. Let’s go.”
She stood, and I took her left hand. It was still clenched into a fist.
“Hey,” I said. “Relax.”
She released her hand. A small piece of white card stock was crumpled in her palm.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must. You’re holding it.”
She closed her eyes a moment, as if trying to recall something important. Then she opened them. “I think I found it in the rose garden. Behind St. Andrew’s.”
I took the crumpled card from her and straightened it. Then I widened my eyes. “You found this on church property?”
“I guess so. If the rose garden is church property.”
It was a business card—a business card that had clearly been in the rose garden for a while. It was weathered, had probably been rained on. But the printing was still intact.
Lacey Ward.
It was Lacey’s business card for her former law firm.
Either Lacey had been in that rose garden…
Or someone wanted us to think she had been.
35
Zee
Reid didn’t look happy.
Finally, my mind seemed to be returning to normal. I remembered now. I’d knelt down to pick up the piece of paper and then I became lightheaded. I’d stumbled and fallen.
“What is it?” I asked.
He didn’t meet my gaze. “Just an old business card.”
“Whose business card?”
“No one’s. Come on.” He led me to the car and then slid in beside me.
Reid stared at the card for another few seconds before placing it in his wallet.
He’d said it was “no one’s.” If that were the case, though, why didn’t he just toss it in the trash can at the Starbucks?
I let out a sigh.
My mind was back to normal, but I was on my way to meet with a police detective. A police detective to whom I had to tell my story.
“Reid?”
“Yeah?”
“Does this detective know what I’m going to say? I mean, have you told him about the stuff you’ve found out about your father?”
“We have. Roy has told his story, but because it came up during a session of guided hypnosis, the police are skeptical. Your story will corroborate his, and then they’ll be able to investigate Father Jim.”
“What about the others?”
“What others?”
I cleared my throat. “There were others. The person who brought me food. Others I saw in the hallways…”
“Can you describe these others?”
“Not really. Sometimes they were masked, other times they weren’t, but I didn’t get a good look at any of them. When you’re locked up and scared to death, or when you’re running for your life in the dark, you don’t really stop and take notice.”
He nodded. “I understand. Just tell the detective everything you remember, Zee. In fact, if you’ve held back anything up to this point, now is the time to let it out.”
I hadn’t held anything back. Not really. I just hadn’t gone into specific detail. That was difficult. The stuff my blurred nightmares were made of.
But I’d be strong. For Reid. For Riley and the others. I had to get the focus off of them. I felt strongly that none of them had killed Derek Wolfe.
Plus…at this point I’d do anything to protect Reid.
I’d fallen hard.
Too hard. It made no sense, and part of me was fighting it as if I were in a gladiator arena, but that didn’t make it any less true.
I’d never felt these emotions. Their purity and their strength. They made me brave.
For the first time, I would tell my story to someone who might be able to get justice for me and the countless others who hadn’t made it out of that hunting compound alive.
Reid’s phone buzzed. “Yeah?”
His face went pale as he listened to whoever was on the other side of his phone.
I ached to touch him, to give him some sort of comfort, as he was obviously distressed.
But I didn’t. I sat, staying still. Gathering all my courage for what I must do when we returned to the Wolfe building.
After nearly a half hour in stop-and-go traffic, Reid’s driver pulled in front of the building. Reid was still on the phone and hadn’t said anything other than a few “mmm hmms.”
The driver, Wayne, opened the door and Reid slid out. Normally he offered me a hand, but not this time.
He was distracted, and not in a good way.
I walked with him—his phone still glued to his ear. Finally, he said, “We’re here. We’ll talk in a minute.” Then he ended the call and slid the phone into his pocket.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said absently.
I didn’t believe him. Not for a minute.
We headed for the elevator…and my breath caught.
The elevator. Which one did I run out of? I couldn’t remember. Not quite. But it was one of the elevators facing the lobby, because I ran straight to the lobby, to the revolving doors. Someone gave me a blazer—I have no idea who—and offered to help me.
I took the blazer but I didn’t stay for the help. I ran.
I ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore.
Then blackness.
Nothing else.
Not until I woke up in a hospital ER, with stitching and bandaging over the wounds at the top of my breasts.
I held my own and walked into the elevator with Reid.
I wanted to help him. Wanted to get the focus off him. But how could I, when there was so much I still didn’t recall?
Whether I’d blocked it out or whether I’d fainted, as I must have done in the streets of Manhattan wearing nothing.
Had I been in the news?
No, or I would have read it or heard about it.
How could that happen? Why wouldn’t some paper or network pick up a story about a woman running through the streets of New York clad in only a blazer?
I shook my head.
I had as many questions for the detective as he had for me.
36
Reid
My body still felt like ice from the news I’d just gotten.
Our architects and elevator mechanics had finished their investigation into the building where I was now ascending with Zee.