Known (32 page)

He looked down and found her studying his face. “I’m not surprised.”

“You were frowning. Like you were thinking of regrets.” She lifted her head. “No regrets here.”

“None here. I was thinking about Brian.”

She relaxed, resting her chin on his chest, and smiled. “I can’t wait to meet him. Jamie talked nonstop about him.”

Relief flowed through him. “He’s a good kid.”

“Violet is, too. It’s just been rough for her since her grandmother died. I really relied on my mother-in-law to help me raise Violet once my husband passed. Sometimes . . .”

Chris waited, not liking the way her eyes had saddened. “Sometimes what?”

“I often worry that I blew it with Violet by concentrating on my career. Kids have only one childhood. Maybe Violet and I would be closer, and she wouldn’t have had the issues she did if I had been there more for her.”

“She adores you.”

“She’s my heart. But I feel that I let her down by always being gone. There was always school or tests or work to be done. I couldn’t have done it without help.”

“Did her grandmother love her? And give her attention?”

“Absolutely. They were quite the pair. Sometimes I was jealous of their relationship.”

“Then she had a terrific childhood. There’s nothing wrong in doing what you need for yourself. Kids are resilient.”

The room was thick with silence.

“Were you?”

“Resilient?”

“Yes.”

Deep inside his memories a small door slowly opened. He kept it closed at all times, not wanting to face the pain that rushed out when he peeked inside. He held his breath, waiting for the anxiety to sweep through him. Nothing happened.

He looked closer, feeling a layer of invisible armor, a detachment that allowed him to analyze and tell Gianna the truth.

“It ripped me to pieces. It was only because I had the other kids to talk to that I managed to put myself back together. The real Chris and I were the oldest. We took it upon ourselves to console the other children. But once they were gone, it was only Chris and me. Dozens of times we dragged each other back from a very dark abyss. Luckily, when one of us was down, the other was usually sane enough to talk him back up.”

“I think that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

“Don’t pity me.” He said it gently, but steel laced his words.

“I pity the child you once were.”

He laughed harshly. “I’m not certain I ever was a child.”

“Then I mourn that lost child.”

“I do, too.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, and he waited for her to say she needed to leave. Instead she stroked his chest, her eyelashes occasionally tickling him as she blinked. Tension slowly seeped out of him. A fork had appeared in his path and he stood at it, studying both directions. His feet were fastened to the ground; it wasn’t his decision. He already knew which path he wanted, but he wouldn’t take that first step until she said so.

“My life flipped upside down today,” Gianna said slowly. “I should be in a ball with the covers over my head.” She lifted her head and planted her chin in his chest to look at him. “I’m not.”

“Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

“Maybe.”

His phone started to vibrate, and he crawled out of bed to grab his jeans off the floor, sliding the phone out of his pocket. Michael. He grinned at the screen, briefly wishing he were the type of guy who didn’t mind sharing details of his sex life. “Hey.”

“Chris? Holy fuck, he shot Jamie!”

“What?” Chris stiffened.
Jamie?

“Violet’s gone,” Michael blurted. “Oh, my God. He took Violet!” Multiple voices shouted in the background.

Chris froze, his stomach dropping to his toes.

“What?” Vomit soured in the back of his throat.

“I don’t know if Jamie’s going to make it.” His brother’s voice cracked. “And Violet . . . they don’t know
anything
!”

Gianna.

Chris slowly turned back to the bed as Michael kept talking in his ear. Gianna met his gaze and sat up.

“What happened?”

Chris couldn’t speak.

Gianna couldn’t focus. Her mind skittered and bounced from one terrifying image to another. Inside, her thoughts wouldn’t stop spinning, but on the outside she couldn’t move. She sat frozen, staring at a blank wall in Michael’s home.

Violet.

She found a small crack in the wall paint and focused on it, pushing all other thoughts out of her mind. It lasted for two seconds before her mind rebelled and sprinted down a terror-filled path again.

Violet.

Jamie had been carjacked three blocks from her home. She’d crawled to the nearest house and barely managed to ring the doorbell before passing out on the doorstep. She’d gained consciousness in the emergency room and told the staff her name and that her car had been stolen with Violet inside.

Michael had been waiting in an empty house, wondering why Jamie hadn’t returned his phone calls.

A fellow reporter from the
Oregonian
had overheard Jamie’s name at the hospital and called him with the news just as the police arrived at his home.

Two hours had passed between the abduction and Michael’s notification by the police.

Somehow Chris had helped Gianna dress and practically carried her to his car to drive her to his brother’s home. She could still see the fury in his eyes. His face had lost all color as he’d stared at her, his phone pressed to his ear. She could faintly hear Michael yelling through the phone.

She’d known instantly that it was about Violet.

And Jamie. She glanced at Chris as he paced Michael’s dining room and spoke urgently into his cell phone.
He must be going crazy.
The latest reports on Jamie’s condition were optimistic. She’d lost a lot of blood, but a guardian angel been watching over her. The residence where she’d rung the doorbell should have been empty, but the owner had stayed home sick from work. EMTs had responded rapidly to the scene. They got her stabilized, to the ER, and quickly into surgery to repair the artery the bullet had nicked.

Every police department in the state had been notified of the make and model of Jamie’s missing car. Jamie’s and Violet’s cell phones had been turned off. Officers were knocking on doors where the abduction had happened, searching for someone who’d seen
something
.

Gianna sat motionless in a chair, petrified that if she moved, she’d shatter. She’d already cracked into a million pieces, and they were barely sticking together. One wrong move or word could cause her to permanently fall apart. And then who would help Violet?

Was her daughter scared? Was she hurt?

Hurt her and I will kill you.

“We’ll get her back,” Chris said, stopping in front of Gianna’s chair. “No one knows how to find things better than Michael and me.”

“There might be nothing you can do,” Gianna said, staring over his shoulder as the hollow-sounding words floated out of her mouth. The voice didn’t belong to her. “There might be nothing
anyone
can do.” The sentences were worthless air. “You were missing for years. No one could do anything.”

Who was speaking?

She clasped her hands over her mouth and looked at Chris’s stricken face. If she’d taken out a knife and stabbed him, she couldn’t have hurt him worse. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Violet . . .”

“I know.” He dropped to a knee and took both her hands. The chill of his skin bled into hers. “
I know what you’re feeling
. She’ll be okay. We’ll find her. I know how weak that sounds right now, but we’ll look under every damn rock. We won’t give up.” He stood and looked out the window. “Hawes and Becker are here.”

“They’re good people,” she forced out.

Chris didn’t say anything but strode to the door to let the detectives in. Gianna knew they’d already talked to Michael and examined the crime scene. If you could call it a crime scene. From what she’d overheard from Michael, it was simply a trail of Jamie’s blood from a spot on the street to the front door of a home.

Is it the same person who killed my father?

What could he want with Violet?

He’d made the girl drive five blocks to where he’d parked his car. He’d left it out of sight behind a big shed that hid the dumpsters behind a strip mall. His plan had worked exactly as he’d seen it play out in his head. The woman had stopped the car at a stop sign, and he’d jerked the driver’s door open before she’d realized what had happened. He’d crammed his gun against her neck, thrown her car into park, and unbuckled the seat belt in less than two seconds. Then he’d ripped her out of the car and flung her to the pavement. Fire had flared in her eyes, and she’d scrambled to her feet to come after him.

He hadn’t wanted to shoot her.

The noise only drew attention, but he’d had no choice. In one way it’d worked in his favor. Seeing her friend shot had made the girl immediately follow his orders to move. She’d slid into the driver’s seat as he’d walked around the front of the car, his eyes and weapon on her at all times. For a brief second he’d felt vulnerable in front of the car. If the girl had had her head on straight, she could have thrown the car into drive and plowed him over. Luckily she’d been terrified. He’d gotten in the passenger seat and told her to drive. She had.

He didn’t give her enough time to get brave. If she’d driven any farther, he knew she could have driven into a wall or fence or another car to stop him. Behind the building he tied her hands and ankles and placed her in the backseat of the new vehicle. She’d kicked at the door, trying to hook her foot on the handle and open it as they drove. He’d shook his head. That might have worked in an older car.

When she rolled onto her back and kicked at the window, he’d halted the vehicle and pointed his weapon at her. “Do you ever want to see your mother again?”

She’d stopped.

Feeling invisible in the different vehicle, he drove out of the city in silence, ticking off the points of his plan. His father had come down on him, demanding results, and he’d had to act drastically. Kidnapping wasn’t in his playbook, but now that he’d done it, it’d gone amazingly easily. Planning. That was the key: prepare for all problems. Confidence rocked through him, and he wished his associates back home could see him now. They’d never stopped harassing him after the first death. Vomit-Boy, they’d called him. No matter how well he’d performed after that first time, the name had stuck. Now he was a machine. Blood, guts, gore. He’d learned how to hide his emotions during the events. Shootings, stabbings, hangings. He could do it all. Even kidnapping.

He glanced at the girl in his backseat. Brown eyes burned as she glared at him. She looked exactly like her mother, he realized. The lingerie he’d stolen from Gianna’s closet popped into his mind. His chance to get her alone hadn’t presented itself yet.

He needed to create a situation for just the two of them.

Could the daughter be bait?

“The homeowner couldn’t figure out what’d happened,” Hawes told Chris and Gianna.

Chris felt the restrained energy behind the detective’s calm voice. Detective Nora Hawes wanted Violet back nearly as bad as he and Gianna did. Next to him, stress rolled off Gianna. Even though she sat utterly still, he felt her hang on every word from the detectives. He reached for her hand and she held it in a death grip.