Authors: Carla Cassidy
“Okay.” Kelsey leaned over and gave Mariah a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mom.” She grabbed her overnight bag from the backseat and then got out of the car.
Mariah watched as her daughter ran toward Katie’s house, and an unexpected sense of impending danger crashed through Mariah. She wanted to jump out of the car and grab her daughter and keep her by her side until they left town. But she knew Kelsey would be safe at Katie’s house. The Arrowoods were big on supervision and this was probably one of the safest places for Kelsey to be at the moment.
She pulled out of the driveway and headed into
town, a cold chunk inside her stomach. She thought of those times when she’d sensed somebody watching her, the night she’d seen the figure hiding among the trees.
Arctic air whipped through her as she thought about the night she’d believed that somebody had been in the house, coming up the stairs. Now that she knew that her rapist still walked these streets, those isolated incidents were all the more chilling.
He was after her. She felt it in her soul. She’d thought she was going crazy, but she wasn’t. He was after her and she knew that if he managed to get her again, this time she wouldn’t survive.
He was out of control. Crazy, heart-pounding, head-crashing out of control. As he sat in the café and sipped his coffee and listened to the latest gossip making the rounds, he realized just how lucky he’d been not to get caught.
He hadn’t meant to attack her. He hadn’t even realized he’d stuck a garbage bag into his back pocket when he’d left his house until it was over her head. And then the haze of rage was upon him and he couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d wanted.
It was only the sound of somebody yelling that had brought him back into his own head. He’d wanted to pick her up and carry her to the others. So many pieces and still he wasn’t whole.
He’d had to drop her and run. He’d thought for sure that she was dead, and he’d never known such fear as when he’d heard that she’d survived the attack. But this evening his fear was gone. The good old grapevine of Plains Point was as accurate as a personal report from the sheriff.
Janice Solomon had survived, but she’d been unable to identify her attacker. He was safe. He was fucking invincible.
And he was ready to end it the way it had begun—with Mariah.
C
lay wasn’t at the office and one of the deputies told Mariah he had gone home for the day. She got his address from the deputy, who knew she was a friend of Clay’s; then she headed there.
She knew she might be causing problems with his wife by showing up at his house, but she didn’t care. The questions she had to ask Clay were too important to allow the petty jealousies of Sherri to stop her. In truth Mariah preferred to talk to him in the privacy of his home.
It wasn’t difficult to find the neat little ranch house where he and Sherri lived. She pulled into the driveway next to Clay’s official car but remained seated, hands tightly clutching the steering wheel.
Mariah thought back to the night in the gazebo with Clay. She had gained enough maturity through the years to realize that she would have felt the same euphoric joy if any boy in town had been there with her.
She’d been so hungry for something, for anybody to love her. She’d been starved for affection but not
in love with Clay. Her feelings for Clay had never been real, unlike her feelings for Jack.
All she wanted from Clay now was some information. She wasn’t about to make a big statement or confession about what had happened to her so long ago.
It was possible that the person who had attacked her years before had never attacked another woman until Janice. It was possible that it wasn’t some crazed rapist/killer, but rather somebody who hated Mariah enough to hurt her and a woman he knew that Mariah loved. And that made her think of Doug Kent, the man who had hated her father.
There was a part of her that hoped it was personal, that prayed that throughout the years no other woman had been touched by this evil. That would certainly go a long way in alleviating her guilt, the guilt that if she’d only spoken up when it had happened to her, then perhaps this wouldn’t have happened to Janice.
As a vision of Janice’s face exploded into her mind, she tightened her grip on the steering wheel, her fingers aching beneath the pressure.
She would take a thousand licks of the willow switch if she could undo what had happened to Janice. It wasn’t just the physical damage that was horrifying. Mariah knew the emotions her friend had felt in those moments before she’d lost consciousness.
Fear like that should be more than a four-letter word. There was no word in the English language that could describe the gut twisting, the utter horror of what you thought about when being raped, when believing you were going to die.
She jerked off her seat belt and got out of the car, desperately shoving that particular thought out of her mind. She couldn’t go there or she’d go insane.
She knocked on the front door and Sherri answered. “Hi, Sherri. Look, I don’t want any trouble from you, but I need to speak with Clay.”
Sherri opened the door to let her inside. “He’s in there.” She pointed through the living room, where three kids were watching a video and a little one bounced in a playpen. “We were just cleaning up the dinner dishes.”
Mariah walked in the room to see Clay standing at the sink, his arms buried up to the elbows in soapy water. “Mariah!” He grabbed a towel and dried his hands. “What are you doing here?” He cast a quick glance at his wife, who was standing just behind her.
“I’m sorry to bother you here at home and I don’t want to cause any problems, but I needed to talk to you and it can’t wait until morning.”
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Sherri said from behind her. “You want a cup of coffee or something?” There was a faint hint of apology in her gaze as she looked at Mariah.
Mariah sat at the large oak table and shook her head. “No, thanks, I’m fine.”
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” Sherri said, and the amazing thing was that Mariah believed her. There was a genuine compassion radiating from Sherri’s eyes. “I’m sorry about a lot of things,” she added just beneath her breath.
“No hard feelings,” Mariah replied. She had more important things to think about than Sherri being hateful to her.
“If you’re here to ask about what I’ve found out
about the man who attacked your friend, I’m afraid you’ve wasted a trip here,” Clay said as he sat at the opposite end of the table. He looked tired, lines of stress etched deep into his face.
“I’m sorry to hear that, but that’s not why I’m here.” She was surprised to realize that Sherri had gone, leaving the two of them alone at the table. “How long have you been sheriff, Clay?”
“Ten years. Why?”
Mariah drew a deep breath for strength. This was what she’d spent the last sixteen years dreading. This was her worst fear come true. “Have there been reports of rapes in that time?”
Clay’s frown deepened. “Your friend wasn’t raped. Why are you asking about that?”
“Please, Clay. It’s important.” Her nerves thrummed inside her. “Have there been any reported rapes in the last ten years?”
“None,” he answered without hesitation.
Relief would have buckled her knees had she not been sitting. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “I’m positive. I only remember one rape in all my time living here. It was a couple of years after I graduated and I can’t even remember her name, but she and her family moved away soon after that. What’s going on, Mariah?”
Tell him
.
The inner voice screamed in her head, but a vision of Kelsey filled her mind. Kelsey, who believed that her father was a soldier, a man who had loved Mariah, who would have loved Kelsey.
“I was just wondering, you know, about small-town crime.” Her answer sounded stupid even to her own ears.
Clay leaned back in the chair, his shirt sporting a spot of what appeared to be spaghetti sauce. “Now, if you’d asked me about runaways, I would tell you we have more than our share here in Plains Point.” Sherri came back into the room and sat next to her husband.
“What do you mean?” Mariah asked.
Once again Clay frowned and he stared at her for a long moment as if assessing whether he should tell her whatever was on his mind.
“Tell her,” Sherri said softly, and reached out to take her husband’s hand in hers. “Tell her what you’re thinking.”
Clay smiled at his wife, then looked back at Mariah, his expression stone-cold somber. “When the eyewitness told me about the attack on your friend, there was something that bothered me, I mean, something other than the obvious.”
“What?” Once again tension twisted Mariah’s insides.
“The kid said that he thought the perp was about to pick her up in his arms when he shouted.” Clay disengaged his hand from his wife’s and got up from the table. He went over to get a cup of coffee, then sat back down again. He twisted the cup between his hands, around and around, nearly spilling the contents before he finally stopped.
“I kept thinking, why would the attacker want to pick her up? Why not just leave her there? Then I got to thinking about all the supposed runaways there have been while I’ve been sheriff. I spent most of today going through my records and making a list.”
The tension that had momentarily fled from Mariah
came back with a vengeance, constricting her insides so tight she could scarcely breathe.
“A list?”
He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced as if he found the brew too bitter to bear. “Over the last ten years there have been seventeen young women who have disappeared from Plains Point.”
Mariah couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her. “Seventeen? That sounds like a lot for such a small town.”
“I hadn’t really put it together until this afternoon.” Clay suddenly looked haggard. “I still don’t know if it means anything or not.”
“You never followed up to find these women?”
“Of course I did,” Clay replied tersely. “At the time of each disappearance I did everything I could, given my budget and the tools and manpower at my disposal. Seven of the women were over eighteen and as adults had every right to take off. There were no signs of foul play, nothing to indicate any kind of a crime had taken place.”
“And now what do you think?” Mariah asked, her heartbeat thrumming an irregular rhythm of incredible dread. She didn’t want to know, yet she needed him to tell her, to confirm the horrible possibility boiling around in her head.
“I just keep thinking about him trying to pick up Janice as if to carry her off, and that makes me wonder if other women were picked up and taken someplace where they would never be found.” Clay’s eyes were dark and more than a little bit haunted. “Is it possible that a monster has been loose on the streets right under my nose?”
“If that is true, then what are you going to do?”
Once again Sherri took Clay’s hand in hers, as if to give her husband the strength he needed to get through whatever lay ahead. “He’s already called a friend of his, a detective on the Kansas City police force.”
Clay nodded. “He’s coming in first thing in the morning. He’s going to go over all the old files, talk to your friend and help me decide if I need to call in the FBI. I hope you will keep this information to yourself for the time being. I don’t want the whole town in a panic over all this.”
“You don’t have to worry about me talking,” she said. The dread that had begun as a small knot in her stomach had now snowballed into a large brick. The horror of Clay’s speculation made it impossible for her to remain silent any longer.
She knew what she had to do. She knew she could never live with herself if she didn’t tell. “I need to tell you something, Clay, but I’d like to ask you and Sherri to keep it to yourselves long enough for me to tell my family first.” She drew a deep breath as she realized it was possible she was about to destroy everything she’d built with the person she loved most in her life.
“I’d like to report a crime,” she began. “Sixteen years ago I was raped.”
J
ack paced his living room floor, nervous tension eating his insides like a vicious cancer. As if worrying about Mariah all day hadn’t been enough, Rebecca had finally made contact. Thirty minutes ago she’d called him and insisted she needed to speak to him. She’d given him no chance to protest, saying only that she’d be at his house in an hour.
Two days ago he’d thought he was one of the happiest men on earth. Just goes to show how elusive happiness can be, he thought as he plopped onto the sofa and leaned over to scratch Rover behind the ears.
Even though Mariah had continued to insist that she would soon be leaving Plains Point, he’d hoped that wasn’t going to happen.
He’d seen the way those blue eyes of hers sparkled when she talked about the renovations on the house. When she spoke of the town, there was real affection in her voice. He’d begun to hope that they might have a future together, here in Plains Point.
But there had also been something in her eyes when he’d taken her to get her car, a distance that
had frightened him. And when she’d told him that she thought it best that she and Kelsey be alone that night, he’d gotten the distinct impression that she was intentionally pulling away from him, beginning the process of saying good-bye.
God, but he didn’t want her to say good-bye.
And now Rebecca was about to arrive and happiness had never seemed such a distant dream. “Maybe it’s just supposed to be you and me, Rover,” he said to the faithful companion at his feet. Rover wagged his stub of a tail and looked up at him with adoring eyes. Maybe he was meant to live alone with a dog who was smarter than a lot of people he knew.
Even though Rover could warm his feet on a cold wintry night and would happily share a steak dinner, it certainly wasn’t enough.
There had been other women between the time he and Rebecca had parted and Mariah, but none of them had stirred him as she had.
It was more than physical. His feelings for her were a complex mix of protectiveness, lust and respect. He loved her. He loved her with a force that humbled him, with a depth that was all-encompassing.
He leaned back and rubbed his temple, where a headache was trying to take hold. His dread at having to face his ex-wife again was equally all-encompassing. He had nothing to offer her, except what little compassion was left in his soul for her.
It was difficult to focus on Rebecca when he was so worried about Mariah. He didn’t want her to leave. He hoped he could convince her to stay and build a life with him here.
What he didn’t want was for Mariah to run from here because of an isolated incident of violence. Jack
had lived in Plains Point for most of his life and never had anything like this happened before. The attack on Janice had been a shocking anomaly in a town that saw little crime.
Spending time with Mariah had shown him what it would be like to be with a strong woman, a woman who had no inner demons, who made good choices for herself and her daughter.
God help him from women with inner demons.
Rover growled low in his throat and Jack sat up as he heard the sound of a car door slam. A moment later a knock fell on the door. His feet felt leaden as he walked to the door and opened it to see Rebecca.
“Hello, Jack.” A nervous smile lifted her lips as she fidgeted with the chain strap on her purse. “May I come in?”
“Please.” He opened the door wider to allow her entry. The first thing he noticed was that she was wearing her hair different. It was short and curly rather than how he remembered it.
“You want something to drink?” It felt so awkward. He didn’t know what to say, how to feel.
“No thanks, I won’t be staying.”
“At least have a seat,” he said, and gestured toward the sofa. Rover eyed her suspiciously and moved to stand next to Jack’s legs. “It’s all right, buddy,” he said.
Rebecca sat on the edge of the sofa, as if poised to run. “It’s taken me a couple of days to get up enough nerve to do this,” she said.
Jack sank into the chair opposite the sofa. “Rebecca, you can’t keep doing this.” A deep weariness laced his words.
“I’m not here for money, Jack. And I’m not going
to leave here and sneak back later and rob you. I’ve been in treatment.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he said gently.
She nodded and offered him a tight smile. “I know, but this time it was the right time and the right place. I checked myself into a ninety-day program. I finished the ninety days two weeks ago and I’m now living in a clean and sober apartment complex.”
It was then he really looked at her and realized her eyes were clear, her skin was luminous and she’d put on weight. She looked good. “So, why are you here?”
“Closure.” She smiled and in that full, open gesture he saw a glimmer of the woman he’d fallen in love with years before. “And forgiveness.” She leaned forward. “Jack, part of my recovery is recognizing the havoc I created in other people’s lives. I needed to come here and tell you that I’m sorry for so many things. I’m sorry for lying to you, for stealing from you and for destroying what we might have had once upon a time.”
A knot of tension that had sat in his chest loosened. “Rebecca, I’m not the one you need to forgive you,” he said.
She smiled again and nodded. “Yes, I’m working on forgiving myself, but it was important to me that I come here and see you, to tell you I’m sorry and to say a final good-bye.”
He didn’t love her anymore, had lost that loving feeling years ago, but a bittersweet pang touched his heart at her words. “What are your plans?” he asked.
“Right now I’m working part-time as a cashier in a grocery store. It’s a good job without too much
stress and I’m just taking it one day at a time.” She stood, as if her mission had been accomplished and now she just wanted to get on with her life.
“I’m glad for you,” he said, also rising from his chair.
He walked with her to the front door, where she paused and reached up and placed her palm on the side of his face. “You’re a nice man, Jack, and you would have been a wonderful husband. The problems were all mine and they had nothing to do with you.”
She dropped her hand to her side, the imprint of it still warming his face. “You won’t be hearing from me again. I think it’s important to put the past behind us and move on. That’s what I’m doing, but I wanted to thank you for trying to help me. I wanted to tell you that there was nothing you could do to help me.”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek and then she was gone. This time he was relatively certain she was gone forever. There had been a shining strength in her eyes that he’d never seen before, a welcomed peace that made him believe he would never see her again.
He closed the front door, then went into his bedroom and changed into a pair of running shorts, suddenly feeling the need to be outside in the evening air.
Minutes later he and Rover hit the sidewalk. “Only strong, well-adjusted women from now on,” he told his furry companion. “If you see me even looking at a woman who has issues, you bite my ass, you hear me?” Rover barked with enthusiastic agreement.
Jack felt ten years younger as he ran. He hadn’t
realized the weight of Rebecca that had hung around his neck for so long. Now that it was gone, he felt like a new man. A new man in love.
Thoughts of Mariah chased him all the way back home. After a long hot shower he pulled on a pair of sweats, grabbed a beer from the fridge and returned to the sofa to think about how he could turn the girl of his teenage fantasy into the woman who would be his happily ever after.