Misery Loves Company (4 page)

“YEAH. THIS IS GREAT.
Just great,” Maecoat moaned as they got out of Chris’s squad car. “These crab cakes are no good cold.”

“You didn’t have to come. You
shouldn’t
have come.
I
 shouldn’t be here at all.”

“And my crab cakes are cold. Bad idea all the way around.”

“His truck’s gone,” Chris said.

“And that’s the only reason I’m trailing you on this thing. I’d hate to take a big-shot Marine down with a stun gun, but I’d do it just because he thought about opening his mouth.”

Chris walked up the front porch steps, hoping that the door wasn’t unlocked. Then he could say he tried, it was
locked, and his hands were tied. He wasn’t sure what time the Lt. Colonel had left, but he probably wasn’t in top-notch condition. Chris reached for the door, slowly turned the knob.

It opened. Chris sucked in a breath and glanced at Maecoat.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Maecoat said.

They walked in, Maecoat stuffing a crab cake into his mouth. “Wow,” he said, food bulging from his cheek. “Tidy, huh?”

“Jason used to talk about how much her military-like neatness drove him crazy. And he was no slob. But she put his organizational skills to shame.” Chris walked through the house, noticing this time how everything
 
—drawer, cabinet, basket
 
—was labeled. Everything had its place. There was nothing random anywhere in the house.

He walked to a small table near the kitchen, his eyes roaming over the five picture frames of Jason and Jules. Jason had nicknamed her Jules when they first met. Her given name was Juliet, but Jason had insisted he was no Romeo. In his vows at the wedding, though, he’d surprised everyone by proclaiming, “My love for you might just put Romeo to shame.” Jules burst into tears because Jason was not a man who openly expressed his emotions much.

Jules
fit her better anyway, Chris always thought. She was athletic and pretty in a natural sort of way. Long, wavy brown hair and a grin that set the room ablaze. She was shy, though, and Chris was more used to seeing her laugh at Jason’s jokes than tell her own.

A few weeks before Jason and Jules were married, while he and Chris were sitting in their car eating lunch, Jason had said, “Promise me something.”

“What?”

“If something ever happens to me, take care of her for me.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you. That’s why God gave you me. I’m like your guardian angel, except with more muscles. And I’m a good shot.”

“Downey?”

Chris blinked. “Yeah?”

“You blanked out for a second,” Maecoat said.

“Sorry.” Chris realized he was staring at the wedding photo. He picked up the frame and noticed the date engraved on the frame. “Maecoat, come here.”

“What?”

“Look at this date.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“That was Tuesday. Tuesday would’ve been their anniversary.”

Maecoat nodded, setting down the Styrofoam box that contained his food. “That’s not good. But she could’ve just gone away, right? Just some time to think?”

“Maybe.” Chris set the photo down. “Except
maybe
isn’t good enough here. It can’t be a coincidence she went missing on the day of her anniversary.”

“You’re probably right,” Maecoat said. “But it is also most likely a sign that she took off to get away.”

“Without telling her dad? The one person who consistently
checks up on her? She wouldn’t do that. I know Jules. She’s too caring of a person.”

“Maybe she’s finally gotten fed up with the old guy.”

Chris turned, scanning the room. “We need to find her calendar.”

“That won’t be hard. Everything is labeled.”

“You get on that. I’m going to check her computer.”

“Whoa . . . wait a minute. Chris, we can’t . . . I mean, taking a peek is one thing. Getting into her computer? You could get in real trouble. You know that. We’re just nosing around a little bit here. Right?”

“You go find that calendar. I’ll take the fall for this.”

Maecoat sighed and wandered off. Chris sat down at the perfectly neat desk that housed a desktop computer and flat-screen monitor, his hands shaking slightly. He was breaking every protocol and procedure there was, and he took it seriously. But he had to do this for Jason. He’d already failed once and now Jules was missing.

He pulled the chair close and leaned forward, moving the mouse. Like he thought, the computer had been in sleep mode. To him, this meant she had intended to come back. If she knew she’d be gone for a while, it would have been turned off. Especially with all of the eco-friendly, energy-saving devices he’d noticed around the house.

“Found it!” Maecoat called from the kitchen. “In a drawer labeled ‘Calendars.’”

“She’s making this easy on us,” Chris said. The computer
awakened to her Facebook page. Her last post read,
Hoping the rain moves out today!

Maecoat walked in. “Nothing unusual on her calendar for Tuesday, yesterday, or today. But Tuesday’s date is lightly circled in pencil. Nothing written.”

“Did the sun come out Tuesday?”

Maecoat stared at him. “You’re seriously asking me that?”

“Yes.”

“I was busy admiring the grass.”

“Humor me.”

Maecoat sighed. “I think it did. I was working that accident on the highway and it seemed like it got a little warm. I took off my gloves.”

“So maybe she did walk to the store.”

“There are a lot of maybes here.”

Chris stared at the computer. He was crossing the line here. Big-time. His hand retreated from the mouse and he stood. He had to trust the system. At least partly.

But he also had to eliminate some of the maybes.

JULES OPENED HER EYES.
She’d been with Jason again. They’d sat on a park bench and she told him that she’d been angry with him. Why couldn’t he save her from all this grief? Why couldn’t he help her move on? She knew it was “till death do us part,” but Jason never believed in death. He said the soul goes on. He believed in a heaven that she never could fully wrap her mind around.

She’d feared death ever since she was a child. It was just as sure as her birth, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Death seemed to be the most unnatural thing a human could experience. What was this life for if not loving and living and
changing and breathing? What was the point of it all if death took it away?

Her wrists were sore. Why? She briefly closed her eyes again, trying to summon Jason back. She had also had a nightmare, but it was far away now, its sounds swallowed by other memories and thoughts. She remembered nothing but emotion: terror followed by a strange, overwhelming comfort.

Then she noticed them again. The curtains. When did she put up curtains? The light, bright and spraying around their edges, hurt her eyes. It was like she had a hangover. Since when did morning light hurt her eyes?

She turned to look at the bedside clock, which was not there. Her gaze caught something red written on the white ceiling. Her vision was still blurry and a throbbing headache required extra effort to focus.

DON’T TELL ME IT’S TERRIFYING. TERRIFY ME.

Jules gasped, scrambling back toward the headboard, reading and rereading the large red letters. Those were her words . . . the words she’d written on her blog. She glanced around the room, her mind barely able to translate what she was seeing. There was nothing familiar. This was not her bedroom. She looked down at herself. She was in soft, cotton, button-up pajamas. She didn’t own a pair of pajamas like this. She always slept in a T-shirt and shorts.

Her limbs starting to tremble, she stared at the ceiling
again, trying to reason out what was going on. But her mind was so foggy. It felt like every thought had to be pushed through a wall of mud.

Then she heard footsteps at a door she’d hardly noticed. The grain was clearly visible in the wood. It looked sturdy, heavy, thick. Below the door, where more light seeped through, a shadow appeared and the footsteps stopped. She wanted to run to the window, try to escape, but she wasn’t sure what she was escaping from. Maybe there had been an accident. Maybe . . . maybe this was all a bad dream. She rubbed her wrists, noticing again that they were sore. Red marks wound around both of them.

“Jason,” she whispered. “Jason, I need you.”

The knob turned slowly, and then the door opened. A man stood at the threshold for a moment, observing her. The fact that he looked familiar comforted her a little. But she couldn’t place him. Balled at the top of the bed, squeezing her knees to her chest, she watched him carefully. He held a tray with a bowl and a glass of water.

“You’re awake,” he said, so low and deep, like wisdom had just found its voice. He stepped toward her. “I brought you some food. You really must eat. Your stomach is going to feel ill if you don’t.”

“Am I sick?”

“Not yet. Thus, the food.” He set the tray down at the end of the bed. The smell of a cream soup streamed toward her.

She looked at him. His eyes, hazel and heavily hooded, were round and perceptive, stunning against the filtering
light. His features seemed chiseled from the finest, smoothest stone. He had deep creases on either side of his mouth yet didn’t seem prone to smiling.

“Do I know you?”

“Not really,” he said mildly, opening a packet of crackers for her. “You probably believe you do, but you don’t. You simply do not.”

“Do you know me?”

Those wise eyes studied something in front of her that she couldn’t see. “I shouldn’t know as much as I do,” he finally said, then focused on opening another packet of crackers.

She glanced up at the ceiling, at those horrible words scribbled in dark red.

“Your words,” he said.

“I wrote them on my blog this morning.” A deep, heavy pain crushed her chest.

“Not this morning. Tuesday morning. Stay calm.” His voice purred the command, his words echoing against all her thoughts.

“I don’t understand what is happening.” Tears dropped down her cheeks and she wiped each eye with the back of her hand.

“You lack a lot of understanding,” he said, pushing the tray closer to her. “That is why you are here. There is an ignorance about you that doesn’t become you.”

And then, with one blink, Jules knew him. She gasped and covered her mouth. “You’re . . .”

He stood abruptly, causing the food tray to tip. Soup
sloshed out the side of the bowl. He seemed bothered by it and stared at it for a long moment. Then looked up at the ceiling as though he was noticing the words for the first time.

“Yes, I am.” His tone sounded like the grumbling of a distant thunderstorm. “And I intend to.” He lowered his gaze to her. “Don’t try to escape. You will die out there,” he said, nodding toward the window she couldn’t see out. “There is nobody nearby. You will stay here, with me, until we are finished. You have a lot to learn.” He stepped toward the door. “Don’t scream. I don’t like screaming. Nobody is around to hear you but me, and I can’t state clearly enough how much revulsion I have for that sound.”

He walked out and shut the door behind him. Then there was a slight rattle, like he was locking it.

Jules stared at the soup. She wasn’t hungry. Her stomach hurt and was quickly becoming nauseated.

Had she finally lost her mind? Many thought she already had. But as far as she knew, she had a firm grasp on reality. So what was this?

That man at the end of the bed . . . It wasn’t. It
couldn’t
be. She had to have gone crazy. She was in a mental ward, maybe, and her mind was just not able to process it all, so she was escaping to another place.

Jules got up slowly, stumbling through swirling dizziness. She steadied herself with the help of the end of the bed. She was barefoot and the cold floor stung the bottoms of her toes. She noticed, as she looked down, a pair of leather slippers resting on the floor at the corner of the bed.

They felt like pure pleasure when she slipped them on. The air had a chilling bite to it. With quiet footsteps, she walked to the window and carefully pushed the curtains aside. Light glared into the room and she shaded her eyes.

Outside, the sun sparkled against a dusting of snow. Tall, majestic trees enchanted the birds, who chirped cheerfully, their beaks pointed toward the sky. The clean, crisp smell of pine found its way to her, and it almost felt like she was standing right in the forest. A rabbit hopped into view, its ears board straight, its eyes wide and alert. What was this, some kind of twisted fairy tale?

She blinked . . . and remembered suddenly that this was not their first encounter. She’d seen him at the grocery store. She’d reached for a package of pasta but dropped it. When she stood back up after stooping to retrieve it, there he was.

“You’re . . .” She wanted to whisper and shout it at the same time. “You’re Patrick Reagan!”

His face lit in a gracious smile. “I am. And you are?”

She’d gushed about what a big fan she was, what an honor it was to meet him in person.

The memory flashed in and out of her mind, and then she was back at the window, cold and helpless.

Slivers of images winked and glinted inside her thoughts, like pieces of metal buried in sand on a sunny day.

She and Patrick walked on the beach, drinking coffee, the foam of the ocean washing toward their feet.

Then they were on a bench, talking. He wore a fedora and sunglasses. She could see her reflection in them.

But like detached passages from a novel, the scenes were useless in trying to figure out how she ended up being held against her will in a remote cabin.

Jules glanced down at her wrists again, still red and bruised. This was no fairy tale. But why had Patrick Reagan come to usher her into a nightmare?