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The contented dog beside her, the dancing flames in front of her—neither were infusing her with the courage she needed to share the story with Eric.
She couldn't seem to form words.
She'd told the story many times—to police officers, detectives, lawyers. But she couldn't seem to tell her husband.
It wasn't hard to figure out why. It was quite simple, in fact. She didn't want him to know. She never wanted Eric to understand the horrors she'd been through, what had happened to her. How could she explain it to this gentle man? The truth about what happened to her in Miami would kill him.
The rest of it—how could he ever forgive her?
Those months played out in her memory until she thought of something she could share.
"Carlos seemed to think he and I were destined to be together. He had this bizarre idea that if he was just nice to me and bought me stuff, I'd forget he'd kidnapped me and my sister, forget what he'd done to us." She allowed the images those words brought to come and go before she continued. "He got to where he trusted me."
She glanced at Eric. He was still watching her, gaze intent, like he was trying to pick up every nuance of her words. She was trying just as hard to hide the truth. Not that Eric didn't know. Maybe on some level, he knew the facts. But he could never understand. And she didn't want him to.
"How'd you manage to convince him you were trustworthy?" Eric asked.
She attempted a smile. "I could have won an Academy Award for my performance."
His face only registered pain. She hated to think what he was imagining, and she wasn't about to give him more details.
She had to save her sister. She'd have done anything to save her sister.
She needed to keep his focus there. "I convinced him, over time, he could trust me. He got to where he let me go places by myself. Shopping, the doctor."
"Were you sick?"
She shouldn't have said that. "Nothing serious. The point is, he let me leave. So, I devised a plan. I didn't get to see Danielle very often, but when I did, I grilled her about her schedule. Once the girls had been..." She didn't know how to explain what they'd done to Danielle and the others, how they'd gotten the girls to comply. She wouldn't explain it. "They had the girls working a street corner, and Danielle told me where it was, exactly when they were there. One day when Carlos let me leave, I slipped into a McDonald's, changed clothes in the bathroom, tried to make myself look like a man—at least from far away. Then I hot-wired a car. I—"
"Wait. How'd you learn to do that?"
She shrugged. "Internet. Carlos let me use his computer sometimes."
He shook his head. "Is it harder or easier than picking a lock?"
She nearly smiled, but it faded fast. "Survival skills."
"Right."
"I planned to just drive up like a John, get Danielle in the car with me, and drive away. But when I got to the corner, Danielle wasn't there. The other girls were, and one of them approached the car. Misty. She said Carlos had picked up Danielle a few minutes before."
"Carlos picked her up himself?"
"Yeah. Which meant something was very wrong."
That moment, her plan had crumbled to dust. She'd looked in the rearview mirror, seen one of Carlos's goons approaching the car. That's when she knew, Carlos had never really trusted her. His man must have been watching the whole time—when she'd gone in the McDonald's to change, when she'd hot-wired the car. He'd called Carlos, and Carlos had taken Danielle.
"I should have gone back right then." Kelsey met Eric's eyes through a haze of tears. "But Misty knew what I'd been up to and begged me, begged me to save her. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't very well leave the girl, not now that everybody knew what I'd been planning. They'd have punished her just for talking to me." She reached toward Eric, desperate for someone to tell her she'd made the right choice. "You understand, right, that I couldn't leave her? She wasn't my sister, but she was somebody's sister, somebody's daughter. She mattered, too."
Eric sat beside her on the couch. "Of course. You couldn't leave her, not when you had the chance to save her."
"I thought I'd take Misty, we'd go to the police, and they'd find Danielle. They'd raid the place. They'd save her." She swiped the tears, angry they could still fall after all that time. "I floored it. Started beeping my horn. I had Misty call the police on the phone Carlos had given me. The goons got in their car and followed, but then, the police were there, and they took off."
She continued the story, recalling the details as she glossed over them for Eric. They'd been taken to the police, treated like criminals, prostitutes. Kelsey had begged them to listen, and finally, Detective Bowman did. Kelsey gave her directions to the house where Danielle had been staying. Kelsey even rode with Detective Bowman when the police raided it.
The house had been empty.
The following day, Kelsey received a text message on the cell she'd gotten from Carlos. It was a video, full living color. Her sister cowering on the floor. The only other thing in the screen was a hand and a gun. Two gunshots, and Danielle was dead.
The message that accompanied it read, you're next.
Eric wrapped her in his arms. "I can't imagine."
"I tried." She thought of all the things she'd done to try to save her sister, all the horrible, unspeakable things she'd done. "It was my fault. She'd still be alive if not for me."
"You did all you could," Eric said. "You didn't kill her. That monster killed her."
She might as well have. Her plan had seemed flawless. Instead of saving Danielle, she'd made her a target. And she'd infuriated Carlos, who would never have killed her if he'd thought it through. Danielle was valuable only as income, but valuable nonetheless. They'd invested a lot to get Danielle.
But she knew how Carlos's mind worked. Carlos had believed Kelsey was starting to care for him. Embarrassment and shame had led to that impulsive decision—kill Danielle to hurt Kelsey.
It had worked.
Kelsey backed out of Eric's arms.
"I showed the video to Bowman, and she vowed to put them all in prison." She explained that weeks had passed while Bowman and her team put together a case. Misty and Kelsey were protected, hidden in a safe house until after the trial. Eventually almost all the men involved were arrested and charged. With the evidence Kelsey provided, most were convicted.
But not Carlos.
Eric's voice interrupted her story. "Why not?"
"There was no evidence pointing to him. He'd been careful to make sure others were always in front. They hoped that one of his men would turn on him for a reduced sentence, but none of them did."
"But you knew," Eric said. "Why didn't they trust your word?"
"What did I know? That Carlos was in charge, because the men were deferential toward him. But I never saw Carlos do anything illegal. I never saw him with the girls. I never heard him giving orders, nothing that was obviously illegal. All I knew Carlos had done was hold me against my will."
Eric's eyebrows lifted. "And that wasn't enough?"
"The D.A. thought a jury might think I was just a jilted lover trying to get revenge."
Eric pulled Kelsey close again and rubbed her back.
She pressed into his soft sweatshirt and allowed him to comfort her. Was she really here, with her husband, telling this story? How many times had she dreamed of this, just this? It felt right, and it felt wrong. Because she wasn't the woman he'd married. She could never be that woman again.
And when he found out about Daniel, he'd never forgive her.
She had to keep reminding herself of that. She pressed her hand against his chest, and he let her go.
"When the trial was over, we were free to go. Misty hadn't testified, because her testimony hadn't been necessary. And she was just a child."
"How old?"
"Fourteen."
Eric swore under his breath. Paused to collect himself. "You testified?"
"I did. It was all hush-hush. Closed courtroom. They tried to protect us."
"And they never found your sister's killer." He said the words as if he knew.
"We never found out who pulled the trigger. The body and the gun had been dumped in the bay."
"That I knew." Eric squeezed her hand. "Then what happened?"
"The case wasn't big enough for federal witness protection. Florida's witness protection wasn't the same. It wasn't nearly as good."
Kelsey'd had to disappear. She couldn't risk getting any of her family involved. She faked her death. She knew Carlos wouldn't believe she'd died, especially when she tried to make it look like Carlos had murdered her. Misty had been happy to make the anonymous call. Kelsey's parents had believed, had grieved and moved on with their lives.
But Eric had never believed. Which meant he'd been waiting for her for a decade.
More tears fell, but she wasn't crying for herself. She was crying for her husband, crying because she knew as much as she'd already hurt him, she was going to have to hurt him again.