Chapter 24

I rush over to the window, searching the trees. Who ever did this worked cleanly. There are no footprints on the ground or signs of a vehicle. They’d picked the lock on the window, opened it quietly, and slinked in. Then perhaps they injected Susan to stop her from screaming.

Amelia walks right up to me, grabs my shirt, and pulls me close to her. “You have to find her. You have to! I don’t know what to do. I wish there were something I could do.” She shoves me, but it’s more like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. “Do you think she saw us… without us knowing? Then she left?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “I was distracted.”

She glares at me. Then, her gaze focuses on the bedside table. She walks to it quickly, brushing past me. The darkness in me pulses up and roars at me to grab her, pull her close, and kiss her again. Forget it. “What’s this? Sorry, kid, but I had to—”

I snatch the note from her, reading it quickly. The hand writing is messy and jagged. Sorry, kid, but I had to take the old lady. I don’t want to kill anybody except for you. You know why. You’re not better than me. You never were.

I stumble back and almost fall against the wall, gritting my teeth and shaking my head. Amelia gently takes the note from me. “Luka, from the photos? He wants to kill you?”

“There’s no way this was him,” I snarl. “No damn way. He’d be pushing ninety by now. Your mother’s not heavy, fine, but doing all this atninety? Maybe he’s working through somebody if he’s still alive.”

“I don’t understand,” Amelia says. “I thought Luka was a father figure to you?”

“He was. He taught me how to shoot and how to survive. We worked together, helping people in the early days. Then Luka started taking borderline jobs, jobs where there was no clear right or wrong. He’d vandalize an ex-wife’s house for the ex-husband, stuff like that. I begged him to stop. He told me he’d always been a bad, bad man. It was in his roots. Later, I learned he’d committed two murders in his twenties.”

I clench my fists, remembering the pain that slammed into me when I read the file. Amelia gently places her hand on my arm. “There’s a phone number on the back.” She shows me the note. “It must be him or whoever this is.”

“I tried to find him,” I say, “after we split, but he was always good at hiding. I hoped he rode off into the sunset and gave up this work. What if I was wrong? Maybe he’s some rich, bitter millionaire now, playing sick games.”

Amelia presses the note into my hand. I look down at the cell phone number.

“I don’t understand how he’d know about this place. The car didn’t have a tracker on.”

“What if they followed us?” Amelia asks. “Is it possible?”

“I would’ve spotted them,” I growl.

“But is itpossible?” she says. “You were distracted.”

I sigh and nod. She’s right. That’s part of what will make her such an amazing wife. She’ll call me out when I need it. “Maybe with a small drone. You could hang back and keep your distance. It would take two people: one to drive and one to pilot the drone. Keep the drone low. It would be difficult to fly, but yeah, it’s possible.”

I groan and pop my neck from side to side. “We should’ve gone straight to the bunker.”

“There’s a bunker?”

I look at her coldly. “Where do you think you’re going when the bullets start flying? I should’ve put you both there right away.”

“You need to call that number,” she says, that familiar pain in her eyes. “Mom can’t keep going through this over and over, this endless suffering. It’s not fair. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“She’ll be safe soon.”

“She was safe,” Amelia yells, “and then we decided to put ourselves first. I was out there sucking your dick when they were taking her!”

I step forward and gently touch her shoulders. When I pull her into a hug, she sinks into it, but only for a second, maybe less. Then she pushes her hands against me and leans away. “You have to call that number.”

I nod. We’re not going to talk about what happened on the porch. When I followed her into the house, I was going to tell her she’d gotten it wrong. I wasn’t pissed. I was obsessed. I was starving for her to want the same future as I do, but there’s no use telling her that now. If her mom dies, she won’t ever be able to look at me again, let alone spend a life with me.

Dammit, we’re back at step one.

* * *

The phone only rings a couple of times. Then Luka picks up, his voice hoarse, crackly, as it would probably be these days if he were alive. Strangely, I feel Imaginary Luka watching me, the man before the switch, the man who never existed to begin with. The man who gave me so much happiness as a kid, before I learned who he was, who he wanted to become.

“Hello, kid,” he says.

I clench my fists, leaning over the table. Amelia has her hand on my arm. I didn’t know it would be so hard to hear his voice, even if it is a fake. Like Amelia said, it’spossible. We’re clearly dealing with an effective operator.

“We need to know that Susan is okay,” I growl.

“I’m hurt, kid. I thought you’d want to talk some.”

I almost slam my hand against the table. Imaginary Luka is in my mind, hands wrapped around me, whispering.“It’s not your fault, kid. It’s not your fault…”

“Your man did good work. He managed to follow me. That’s difficult to do, and he got his captive without making any noise. There’s nothing else to discuss except how we get her back.”

“My man did good work,” Luka says, laughing in that throaty way of his. It sounds like it’s gotten as bad as it could have in this timeframe. “You don’t think I’ve still got it. You think I’m a weak old man? You think you’re better than me?”

“Luka, you’d be eighty-nine now.” I just called himJack. I’m making an ass of myself. “Who ever you are.”