CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT MAKAYLA
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
M AKAYLA
Makayla holds Liam in her lap, sitting beside Jack on the room’s foldout couch. The weight of Liam’s head on her forearm has made her hand numb, but she makes no effort to move him. Her gaze drifts out the window, settling on the tall patch of trees beyond the parking lot. She envisions the woman she knew as Jemma—and most likely Cori—suspended in the branches of a tree just like these, her head hanging flaccid from her broken neck. Makayla closes her eyes.
An image of Liam soaring toward the ground, strapped to his kidnapper’s chest, overtakes her mind. On their way to the hospital, Agent Pratt informed them that a baby carrier had been found lying in the front seat of the truck where Liam was discovered by the upstate authorities. It must’ve been how the man was able to keep hold of Liam after jumping out of the plane. She thinks of Liam’s head bobbing when they hit the ground. Even if it was a smooth landing, it still had to have been quite a jolt.
An involuntary shudder runs down her spine. The whole sequence of events feels unfathomable.
The few times she spoke with Cori over the phone, Cori sounded like she had an accent from upstate New York, where she said she had grown up. But it would’ve been easy enough to fake.
Being from Seattle, Makayla wasn’t an expert at East Coast accents, but Jemma sounded like she was from Brooklyn or maybe Long Island. Now that she thinks about it, there was something familiar about Jemma’s voice. The Brooklyn accent—and the trauma of Liam’s abduction—kept her from noticing it at the time.
Makayla glances at her phone on the couch beside her. Despite her suspicions, she tried calling Cori on their way to the hospital, hoping Cori would answer so Makayla could ask her to come over—and prove her suspicions wrong. But Cori’s phone went straight to voicemail. And since the last message Makayla received from Cori on the flight, before Liam’s kidnappers jumped out of the plane, she hasn’t sent her any more messages. She pictures Jemma sending the text, sitting a few rows behind her, smiling at Makayla’s naivete while her baby was hidden in the woman’s pet carrier. She’s tempted to send Cori a text to see if she replies. But she knows she won’t. Because there was never any Cori—only a scam to get rich by stealing Liam. And now she’s dead.
A wave of guilt washes over her. She turns to Jack.
“This is all my fault.”
Jack puts his hand on her knee. “No.”
“I told Cori everything she needed to know about our trip. I gave her my flight number without realizing it, told her where I was sitting. I never even questioned that I didn’t remember meeting her.”
Jack squeezes her leg. “It’s not your fault. How could you have known?”
She puts her hand on Jack’s, allowing her guilt to be replaced with relief. Liam is alive . It all makes sense now that she knows he was sedated, the reason for him not making any noise throughout the flight.
Makayla turns to her husband as the questions she buried earlier resurface in her mind.
“I’m sorry about Sabrina.”
Jack swallows. “Yeah, me too.”
“But I still don’t understand why she came to our condo. I could see Lionel coming over, but I thought you and Sabrina had a falling out years ago over her giving one of your accounts to someone else. Am I missing something between you and her?”
Jack doesn’t answer immediately. Makayla studies him, steeling herself for what he seems so hesitant to tell her.