36. thirty-four
thirty-four
. . .
ASPEN
One of Crew’s brothers cleared his throat, and I reluctantly peeled away from him, reminding myself we had things to accomplish and sex was sadly missing from the list.
“Hate to break up the love fest?—”
“No you don’t,” Crew cut Lane off.
“—but can we do a quick interview before I leave?” Lane asked me, ignoring Crew’s interruption.
“About what?”
“That day on the street when you received this,” he said, holding up the email in question. “Do you remember who was around? What were you doing?”
I glanced at Crew, and he dipped his chin slightly, encouraging me.
“Actually…have you ever heard of a cognitive interview?”
“Sure,” Lane said. “You want to do one?”
“Yeah, but not about that day on the street. We can talk that out, but I remember that. I want to try to access my missing hours between the abduction and fire.”
Lane blinked in surprise, but nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
Trey moved from the couch to one of the armchairs, apparently not ready to leave quite yet. Crew settled into the spot he’d vacated first, then let me curl up into his side. If I was about to relive a piece of my trauma, I needed him holding me together. Lane pulled out his phone and set it to record, going through his pre-interview spiel, detailing why we were here.
“Tell me what happened that day on the street,” he started, handing over my notebook to help jog my memory.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I transported myself back, then popped them open and scanned the pages of my notes, looking for the right one. When I found it, I tapped my finger to the passage and read aloud.
“The man holding his young daughter’s hand. The woman in a smart suit, phone pressed to her ear as she ate up the sidewalk. The two women, clearly mother and daughter, exiting the diner with take-out containers in their hands. The man standing on the corner a block ahead, hat pulled low over his face, shoulders hunched as he waited for a car to pass so he could cross the street.” I looked up to find all three men hanging on my every word. “I followed that last guy.”
Lane sighed. “Of course you did. Any luck?”
I shook my head. “Nah. He’d disappeared by the time I got to the corner of the next block.”
“Which direction?”
“Uhh…left?”
Trey snorted, and Crew socked him in the arm.
“Sorry, I realize that’s not helpful. But I don’t exactly have the lay of the land to be more specific.”
“You were on Cassia, right?” Crew asked. “In front of the pizza parlor.”
“Right.”
“Which direction did the man head from there?” I pointed to the left, and Lane stated that for the record. “How many blocks ahead did he go? ”
“He was already ahead of me by a block, so he went another one.”
“The parlor is in the middle of the block between Ash and Juniper. Two blocks to the west would put you at Walnut. Another left turn would have him heading south.”
“It’s all a crapshoot, though,” Trey argued. “That’s all residential that way. He could’ve disappeared into a home and we’d never know better.”
“We canvassed after the dumpster fire that night and nothing popped.”
“And it wouldn’t,” Trey piped in. “This guy isn’t going to come to the door with his wrists held together and say, ‘hey, yeah, it was me. Take me away.’”
As annoying as he was, Trey had a point.
“We’ll circle back to this,” Lane said. “Now let’s focus on the night you were abducted and the events after.”
My heartrate kicked up, and Crew wrapped his arms tighter around me.
“It’s okay, little phoenix,” he murmured. “Nothing can hurt you.”
I nodded, swallowing around the lump that had lodged in my throat.
“You already told me about your abduction, so I won’t make you replay that,” Lane started, and I shot him a grateful smile. “Close your eyes for me and relax. Like Crew said, nothing can hurt you. You’re safe here.”
My eyelids fluttered closed, though my hand found Crew’s and squeezed tightly.
“Do you remember waking up prior to the fire?”
Instead of trying to force it, I let my memories come to me, gliding forward like waves on a shore, rolling gently to the forefront of my brain before receding when they weren’t what I was looking for .
An image appeared, blurry at first but sharpening by the second.
“I did,” I gasped, eyes still shut. “I was in some sort of vehicle. A van, if I had to guess. The walls were grey and stripped down to the metal, as was the floor.”
“That’s great, Aspen. Then what happened?”
“We came to a stop a bit later,” I said, the images coming quicker now, almost too fast for me to make sense of them, my pulse ticking up with them. “My captor opened the back doors—it had to have been a van.”
“Could you see anything that would help identify them?”
I shook my head. “It was dark, and they were all dressed in black and…backlit?”
Why were they backlit ? Lane repeated the question as though he’d plucked it right from my brain.
“I think…there was some sort of house behind them? But I can’t see anything else. Not like a spotlight. More like the glow of a lamp or something.”
“Could be a cabin in the woods,” Trey mused. “There are all sorts of hunting shacks on the outskirts of the county.”
“That would make a lot of sense,” Lane agreed. “Somewhere quiet and out of the way to keep her until they figured out what to do with her.”
Crew’s hand smoothed up and down my arm. “You’re doing amazing, baby.”
My eyes remained closed. “Before they got me out of the van,” I told Lane, “they tased me and knocked me out again.”
“You had to have woken up again.”
I squeezed my lids tighter together, trying to hold onto the crystal clear images, but my memory had once again gone hazy. “I’m sorry,” I said, popping my eyes open. “There’s nothing until I literally woke up on fire.”
Crew inhaled sharply, his grip on me tightening. “You didn’t tell me that. ”
“It’s why the burns are localized and weren’t worse. I came to, realized what was happening, and rolled across the floor to put them out.” Tears streamed down my face. Fuck, I thought I’d gotten past this, but reliving even a fraction of the time I’d spent captive was…a lot. “I’m just glad it worked.”
“And then I came for you,” Crew said, pressing a kiss to my hair. “I’ll always come for you.”
Lane was quiet, though he stopped the recording and tapped around on the phone screen, then held it out to me. Trey merely watched us all with a contemplative expression.
“Flip through those three photos and let me know if this man looks familiar to you. Could he be the guy from the street—or the one who took you?”
I squinted at the screen. The man in the photos was dressed similarly to the man I’d seen on the street, though there was no hood up to shield his face from the security cameras. And honestly, in a small, blue collar town such as this, that wasn’t abnormal. These were hardworking, dusty boots and Carhartt kind of men, not prissy, suits and thousand dollar loafers city boys. The man also wore a ball cap with some company logo I couldn’t read in the dim and grainy picture.
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “They aren’t the best photos. I mean, maybe? The height appears to be about right. I didn’t get a look at the guy’s face on the street or when I was taken, though.”
“What are those from?” Crew asked.
“Stills from depot footage,” Lane said, and Crew nodded like that meant something to him. For me, he clarified. “It’s where all the county vehicles gas up and have maintenance done. Fire, ambulance, police cruisers, the road crews, etcetera. This guy owns a landscaping company and has for years. The diesel fuel Crew and his guys noticed at the incident sites got me thinking, so I ran some things down. He’s the right age to have been around when Vicky and Roger were killed, he’s big enough to handle hauling bodies around, and he’d have access to all kinds of places like the Lees’ home and Mack’s shop thanks to his job—especially since he’d just bought it.”
Crew practically shoved me away in his haste to get up. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s the best lead we’ve got,” Lane said as he stood, though I could tell he wasn’t happy about it.
I was missing something here.
“You’re fucking insane,” Trey muttered. “There’s no goddamn way.”
Crew vigorously nodded. “Agreed.”
“I want to think you’re both right, but I have a job to do.”
“Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?” I asked, rising to my feet. Crew and Lane shared an unreadable look but didn’t speak, so I turned to the third brother. “Trey?”
He ignored me in favor of shooting Lane a pleading glance. “You really think it’s him?”
Lane shrugged slightly. “I have to explore every possibility.”
Trey finally moved, getting off the couch and stalking toward the door, disappearing without a word.
“Crew?” I pleaded. “Who is this man?”
“This man…his name is Ward Saunders. His daughter, Wyatt, is Trey’s best friend, and his wife has worked at the school for probably three decades. She started as a teacher, but has been the principal for the last twenty or so years.”