Melissa did not realize how much time was slipping by. She could hear the fear in Mike’s voice as he cradled her against him. “Melissa, what’s the matter? Melissa, where is Riley?”
She tried to raise her hand, but felt it fall loosely by her side. She tried to speak, but no words formed on her lips. The rest of the outside world existed, but she couldn’t connect to it.
She heard her brother say, “Pick yourself up, Missy. We have to find Riley.”
The child. Charlie’s child. Her child now. They must find her. She felt her lips moving, but no sound escaped her throat. So, so tired.
“Oh my God!” She heard the desperation in her brother’s voice. She wanted to say, “Don’t worry about me. Find Riley.” But she couldn’t speak. She felt him pull her up to her feet, her weight falling against him. “What is wrong?” he asked. “After everything I thought was wrong with you, this is too much. Riley is gone. Don’t you get it?”
She finally found her words, which landed on her first instinct. “The police,” Melissa said, “you must call the police.”
Almost as if in the distance, she heard her brother’s voice recite their mother’s new address and the name of a missing girl, only three years old as of last month—Riley Miller.
Remotely she knew she was shivering. But that wasn’t what she was thinking about. She thought about her abrupt decision to delete and block TruthTeller earlier that morning. She envisioned that horrible woman at the park. Because you’re never wrong, are you? I know all about you. You’re a fraud. And a hypocrite.
And now Riley was gone. Was there a connection?
“Did you call the police, Mike?” Somehow, she didn’t know if it had been a minute or an hour since she first insisted on it. She grabbed frantically for the cell phone next to her on the bed and checked the time. After so many sleepless nights, how had she been down for so many hours?
“Yes, didn’t you hear me? They’re on their way,” he assured her.
Melissa felt the darkness coming at her. She began sliding back and away… No… no… no…. She forced herself to stand up. She spotted the stuffed Pookie bear Riley had been clutching earlier. Now, it was tossed carelessly to the floor, looking sadder and more threadbare than she remembered. She struggled to rush down the stairs to search the rest of the house. On the floor beside the front door she spotted a pile of cotton. Recognizing the pink and purple hearts as Riley’s blanket, she gasped loudly. As she started to reach down to pick it up, she stopped herself, realizing this house might now be a crime scene.
She stumbled out the door, her brother at her heels, asking her where she was going. Walking swiftly on the sidewalk outside of the cottage, her bare feet on the concrete and the evening wind beginning to chill her bare arms, she was wide awake now. What Mike had gone through… what she had suffered when she was abducted—no, no, she could not let that happen to Riley.
These memories from her past were making it clear they were not about to disappear. More clearly than in any of her earlier nightmares, Melissa heard her younger self crying in earnest as she squeezed her eyes shut. “Mommy… Mommy.” That’s when Carl Harmon had unzipped her jacket. “There, there,” he had said soothingly. “It’s all right.”
He had taken them to his creepy top-floor rental of the Lookout, a bleak and weather-beaten old waterfront mansion built high on a bluff over nine acres of land. She remembered Mike demanding to know who the man was and where they were. Harmon told them he was a friend of their mommy’s and that he had planned a game for all of them on her birthday. Melissa could still feel the way the man patted her skin while he spoke until Mike had tried to push his hands away. His efforts did not last for long. Harmon had yanked Melissa back from her brother and then asked Mike, “Do you know what it’s like to be dead?”
“It means to go to God,” Mike had answered.
That’s when Harmon told them that their mommy had gone to God that morning and their daddy had asked him to watch over them for a little while. Mike had cried, “If my mommy went to God, I want to go, too.”
Running his fingers through Mike’s hair, Harmon had rocked Missy on his lap, holding her against his chest. “You will,” he said. “Tonight. I promise.”
There was no denying it now. She remembered. She remembered all of it. And what was happening with Riley was like what happened back then. It was like last time. Last time, and would they find Riley the same way they’d found Mike and Melissa, abused by an equally depraved and soulless man? Carl Harmon had bound Mike’s head in plastic wrap and left him to die while he fled with Melissa to the attic, planning to throw her from the roof or drown her in the ocean.
She needed to tell Charlie. Please, God, how was she going to tell Charlie?
He picked up on the second ring. “Hey, you. I’m making great time from the airport. Be there in about an hour.”
She would never be able to remember the precise words she finally managed to speak between her tears, but the point was made: Riley was missing, and it was all Melissa’s fault.