Leaving Eva (The Eva Series Book 1) (6 page)

It was starting to rain.

She ran and ran until she couldn’t run anymore. Her legs gave out. Her heart was beating out of her chest, and she was cold, so cold. She fell to the ground and could feel the cold wetness soaking through her body, but she didn’t care. Her Mommy didn’t love her, didn’t want her anymore. What would she do without her Mommy? Who would take care of her, feed her, kiss her, and hug her? Who would put her to bed?

She laid on the ground, and she felt so cold, so tired.

She was afraid. It was black outside, and there were no lights. Only trees and road. She told herself her Mommy would come back. She lay there for what felt like hours. She could barely feel her feet or her fingers, and she was sleepy.

Mommy didn’t come back. She was never coming back.

She didn’t see the headlights pull up, or the woman get out.

She didn’t care. Her Mommy was gone.

EVA LAY
ON THE GROUND
feeling the water soak through her dress.

Her dress was dirty and disgusting. At least it didn’t smell like pee anymore.

“Mommmeeeee,” she croaked her voice hoarse from screaming and crying, “Mommmmeeeee.”

She didn’t see the headlights coming toward her, or hear the car door open.

“Hello? Hello?” A woman’s voice was calling out. Eva could barely hear her in the rain.

“Oh my God!” The woman said as she got closer and saw the girl. She couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. She was tiny! The woman looked around for someone, anyone. She couldn’t believe that this child was out in this weather alone. There wasn’t a house for miles, and they were at least six or seven miles from the next town. It wasn’t more than forty degrees outside and this child had no coat. She couldn’t understand it.

She walked closer to the girl, her high heels clicking on the wet ground.

“Hello? Little girl?”

The little girl looked up at her. All she could see were huge brown eyes staring up at her from her soaked, bedraggled hair. She was small and afraid, like a scared little rabbit.

“Please come with me, I’ll help you. It’s freezing out here!” She reached for her, her big diamond on her fingers glittering in the headlights of her car. She had a giant umbrella, and Eva could hear the pitter-patter of the rain as it bounced off it.

Eva started to get up. She grabbed Betsy and held her tight even though she was soaking wet. She looked at the woman. The woman looked nice. She had kind blue eyes, and a nice pretty smile like Gamma had. Eva didn’t think that the woman would hurt her. Maybe she could help her find Mommy.

She let the nice woman help her get into her car. Her car was so big, and it was warm. Eva hadn’t been warm all night. She shivered with cold, her lips were numb, and her hands and feet felt like pins and needles.

“What are you doing out in the cold? Where are your Mommy and Daddy?” the nice woman asked her. She had buckled Eva into the back seat and had the heat on full blast. Eva started to feel warmer, the pins and needles were fading away.

“Do you know Mommy?” Eva asked the nice woman.

“I don’t know. What is her name?” the woman asked her.

Eva thought hard. “Mommy, her name is Mommy.”

“I know, but what is her first name?” the woman smiled.

Eva was getting upset, “Mommy! I said her name is Mommy!”

The woman asked her another question, “Do grownups call her anything else? Sometimes grownups will call someone by a different name.”

“Lizbet,” said Eva proudly. She was getting all of the answers right.

“Elizabeth?” The lady asked.

“Lizbet!” Eva repeated. She didn’t know what the lady said when she asked her if she knew her last name. “My name’s Eva Lizbet,” she said. That must be her last name.

The lady was getting frustrated.

“Do you know where you live?” she asked.

“We drove far. I don’t know,” Eva said sadly. She didn’t know where she lived. Mommy moved them a lot. She liked their last apartment. It was nice. But they hadn’t been there long, and then Mommy took them to be with the Mean Man.

They drove for a little while in silence. Eva wondered where they were going. Was the nice woman taking her to Mommy?

“Where we going?” Eva asked shyly.

“We need to get you some food and some warm clothes. It’s late though. I don’t have a daughter, so we are going to stop at my friend’s house. She has a daughter whose clothes should fit you and we will call the police from there. My cell phone battery is dead. ” The nice lady said.

“Are we going to see Mommy then?” Eva missed Mommy. She wanted to see her so badly.

“We are going to try and find your Mommy,” the nice woman said.

Eva was happy now. She closed her eyes and dozed off. She woke up with a start. The car stopped.

She didn’t know where they were, but wherever they were, they were far away from Mommy. She needed Mommy!
Mommy!
Eva was getting upset. The nice lady wasn’t taking her to Mommy, after all. Suddenly, the door opened.

Eva jumped out of the car and ran as fast as she could run. She heard the lady calling after her, but she kept on running until she no longer could hear her voice.

She
needed
to find her Mommy.

AMY HAD
LEFT EVA AND ELLIE
, and walked to her room, lost in guilty thoughts that consumed her. She felt uneasy, but decided that it was simply due to the impending stress of leaving her daughter and granddaughter behind.

She went to her spacious bedroom and checked her packed bags once more to make sure that she had everything they needed for their trip. They had never been away for two months before, but James insisted that it was the right thing to do.

They had discussed it the night before while they were packing as Amy made a last ditch effort to dissuade him.

“What about the company, James? You’ve never been away for so long,” she asked innocently. The company was his baby, and she knew that he would never risk its well-being.

“The company will be fine, Peanut. You know that I’ve been grooming John for some time to be able to manage things for me. He wouldn’t be Vice President if I didn’t feel that he could handle it. Besides, this will be a good test for him.” James tweaked Amy’s nose. He knew just what his precious wife was doing, and he wasn’t about to let her. “Elizabeth will be fine on her own. Don’t worry so much, my darling.”

Amy sat down petulantly on the bed, her blonde bob bouncing as she did so. “I just don’t feel right about this. I don’t feel right about leaving Eva alone with Ellie.”

James was losing his patience. He loved Amy, but this was the type of attitude that crippled Ellie, and they were both guilty. He needed to put a stop to it, for all of their sakes. “Amy, enough! Elizabeth is Eva’s mother. You need to… we need to, let her be a mother, an adult. We are going to go to Europe to enjoy the things that we have worked hard to earn. End of discussion.” Amy recognized James’ tone well, and realized that there was no point arguing with him. His mind was made up.

Amy tried to convince herself that she would be all right with it, and she was. But the uneasiness returned after her argument with Ellie. Amy could hear the sound of the moving truck backing up into the turnaround, and she stood at her bedroom window for three hours and watched them pack up Ellie’s things. She forced herself to let Ellie manage the movers, instead of stepping in as she always did where Ellie was concerned. She hoped that Ellie would come to her room to say good-bye, but when they were packed up, Ellie got into her sleek black Lexus that James bought for her, and drove off.

Amy cried for the rest of the day until James returned. He held her close and whispered over and over that everything was going to be all right. He loved Amy, and he hated seeing her so upset. He was able to coax a little food into her, and then put her to bed that evening. He sat next to her on the soft mattress, gently stroking her soft silky hair in his strong fingers.

“It’s going to be okay, Peanut. Eva and Ellie will be fine. You’ll see, darling,” he said in a low quiet voice.

She looked at her handsome husband with big brown eyes, the same eyes he had passed on to Elizabeth and Eva. “I hope so. I have a knot in my stomach that just won’t go away. I hope you’re right.” Then she drifted off to sleep.

The next morning they said goodbye to the help and gave each of them bonus money for their extended vacations. While they were still responsible for the house, James had booked them each a vacation of their own to go on. He appreciated their loyalty, and their hard work, and he treated them well. In turn, they cared for the house and family as though they were their own.

Lou, their driver, wanted to take them, but James insisted on driving himself. He liked to do as much on his own as he could. The drive to the private airport took a little over an hour taking the back dirt roads, and James wanted to enjoy the sunshine with the top down on the shiny silver Aston Martin convertible. James closed Amy’s door for her and gave her a rare bright smile. He sprinted over to the driver’s side, excited like a little boy on Christmas morning.

Amy and James chatted pleasantly for the first half hour of the trip. Amy seemed in much better spirits, her blue eyes clearer, and her beautiful smile readily on hand. She seemed to have taken James’ words to heart, and she was looking forward to going away. They were so caught up in their growing excitement that they didn’t see the disabled car nearly blocking the entire road in front of them.

“Jaaaaaaaaaamessss!” Amy shrieked pointing to the road in front of them. James pumped the brakes, careful not to slam on them for fear of flipping the car over. They came to a stop right before hitting the other car, a brown run-down wreck of a Ford that didn’t look like it was even road worthy any longer.

James’ heart was nearly pounding out of his chest. He looked at Amy, making sure she was all right. He put the car in park and got out. He thought it odd that the driver’s side door was wide open. He looked into the driver’s seat and saw a man slumped over. He motioned to Amy to stay in the car and walked over to the Ford cautiously.

“Hello?” he said tentatively at first, then louder. “Hello?”

The man in the car didn’t move. James got closer to the car.
This car doesn’t make sense out here. Who would even stop like that?
James heard a small, almost imperceptible squeak. He turned around and looked at Amy. To his horror, he saw a tall man pulling her out of the car with a knife to her throat.

James quickly tried to turn his attention back to the driver’s seat. Suddenly James felt pain, deep, sharp, slicing pain ripping into his stomach. He looked down and saw a large handle sticking out of his gut. The driver who had been passed out was standing up, close to him, blood on his hands. James was confused. He saw a large stain in his neatly pressed Polo shirt starting to expand and grow. For a moment, he wondered what it was.
Where is that stain coming from?
Then he realized that it was his own blood. He touched it, and it was red, sticky. He was lost in his fascination, and then he realized,
Amy!

He looked up and saw the other large man holding Amy close to his massive body. He was standing a few feet away, but James felt as if it were a mile, the distance growing between them. The man who had stabbed James was gone now, but the knife still remained. James needed to get to Amy. She was crying for him. He couldn’t hear her, but he could see her face. The only thing he could hear was the sound of his own blood pumping through his body—thump, thump, thump. The sound of the thumping was slowing, and James realized that he was falling to the ground. He could see Amy struggling, screaming, her delicate silk top torn as she struggled with the bigger man trying, in vain, to get to James. James could see how rough the man was with her and how he clawed at her and held her close to his body, and James screamed in agony, but then he could see nothing.

Suddenly James felt his cheeks stinging and he opened his eyes quickly.

The man in the driver’s seat was standing above him with his face an inch from his, and James could smell the tobacco and beer on his breath. “Jonas Miles said to say ‘hello’. He wanted you to know that he will take good care of your little girl from now on. This is payback.”

James closed his eyes. He couldn’t hear Amy screaming anymore. He couldn’t hear his blood pumping. He didn’t even feel the pain anymore. He felt nothing.

There was nothing.

JOHN PALMER
THOUGHT
it was strange that James hadn’t checked in on him yet. He had been the Vice President for six months, but James kept a pretty tight leash on him. Even though John knew that James trusted him, he didn’t anticipate such freedom just because he was going out of the country. It had been three days since he heard anything from him, which was out of the ordinary.

John had been working for James since he was eighteen years old. He was the classic story of a man who “worked his way up.” He owed everything to James, who had seen his potential and taken a chance on him early and often. There was much that John didn’t know yet, and he was feeling increasingly unsettled without any word from his mentor.

On the fourth day, he sent him yet another email and texted him once more. Then he left James another voicemail, and then another until James’ voicemails were full.

John called the airport to see if his plane had ever taken off, and the response was that they never arrived at the airport. John drove like a bat out of hell calling every law enforcement authority he could think of in order to report James and Amy missing. He tried calling Elizabeth with the number that James had given him, but she wasn’t picking up her phone either. John was worried. He called his wife, Tricia, who told him to slow down. She was pregnant with their third child, and he kicked himself for calling to worry her.

The police met him at the Harper House where the help were frantic. They had left days ago for their trip, and thought they were well on their way.
Where is Elizabeth? Where is Eva?

John and the police drove the road between the Harper House and the airport and saw nothing. John made them drive it two more times. It was as though they had vanished.

They drove to Ellie’s apartment and found it empty. There were no signs of her or Eva there.

There was nothing that could be done, and John felt helpless. He was in charge of the company until James could be found, and he thought he was going to vomit. He was ready to be Vice President with James at the helm for many long years, but this… this was too much. John was only thirty-years-old, and not ready for so much responsibility. He prayed that he wouldn’t run it into the ground.

Tricia was devastated and worried for the Harper family, and her sweet husband. “Where are Amy, and Ellie, and Eva? What could have happened to them?” Amy had been so kind to them, and she adored Eva, though she could have done without Ellie. Tricia was a smart girl with motherhood coursing through her veins, and when she saw Ellie with Eva, she cringed. She wondered if she was being too judgmental, but Ellie had an emptiness that Tricia couldn’t understand. Eva was so sweet and such a beautiful child, and it was unfathomable how Ellie could be so cold to her own child.

“I don’t know, honey,” John said, feeling lost. “It’s as though they have disappeared without a trace. They have vanished into thin air.”

“What will happen to the company? What will happen to Ellie and Eva?” Tricia cried when John returned home after their search, her blue eyes full of concern. She knew that John was tired, but she couldn’t imagine what would happen now.

John was tired. His face was already showing wear from the worry of the past few days.

“I don’t know. I guess that the company will be left for me to run. It’s private, so I can manage it until… until, James returns.” John’s confidence in James’ return was wavering.

“What happens if…” Tricia’s voice trailed off. She wasn’t able to verbalize her fears, even to John, her best friend.

John didn’t answer right away. “If they don’t return… If they don’t… then eventually we would have to have them declared deceased. James was a smart man and took measures to ensure that his company and his family were taken care of if… if something ever happened to him. Strangely, he even accounted for this type of situation. He left me in charge of everything. Everything.” John spoke slowly, as if in disbelief. He felt too young, too inexperienced to deal with this type of situation.

Tricia looked at her husband with sympathy and love. John was a good man, cute, boyish. She looked at his beautiful hazel eyes and sandy hair and thought for the thousandth time how lucky she was that she had found him.

“I’ve got someone already searching for Ellie and Eva. We will find them.” John said trying to sound confident.

Tricia rubbed her belly and thought of sweet little Eva, and her other two children. She thought that Ellie wasn’t the most responsible person, and about how helpless Eva would be in her care.

John walked slowly into the bathroom and looked in the mirror at his tired face.
What happens if we don’t find any of them? What happens to James’ fortune? I’m not ready to be the executor of his estate as he asked me to be. It’s just too much.

John was sick with worry. But above all, he missed his mentor and his friend.