Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I’ve got your oatmeal and more coffee, if you’d like,” Dottie said as they entered the lodge room.
Lovell ushered Daphne toward the long sofa closest to the fire, careful not to touch her again.
Lifting her down the last of the stairs had been a gamble, but he’d hated the tense lines of pain on her face and the tentative way she’d taken each step, bracing herself every inch she moved.
“That would be amazing, thank you,” Daphne said, slowly lowering herself onto a chair.
“You need a massage,” Amber said.
Daphne’s gaze touched on his before she turned her attention to Amber.
He probably shouldn’t have tried to rub away some of her soreness earlier.
The moment, the experience, had gotten away from him and moved into a territory he had no right venturing.
He wouldn’t be the dick who took advantage of the situation, but also, Daphne probably had men throwing themselves at her right and left.
She didn’t need to deal with one more. Not now, not ever.
“I do,” Daphne agreed. “A gentle one, though. I’ll talk to Callie about it when she gets here.”
Lovell sat on the small couch, two seats away from Daphne. “The lodge, the one owned by the Warwicks—”
“With the ski resort?” she asked.
He nodded. “I hear they have a good spa. Ava and Charley have mentioned it a few times.”
“Thanks,” she said, holding his eye. “I’ll look into it. It won’t solve all my problems, but a full body rubdown might work a few minor miracles.”
As she no doubt intended, his temperature skyrocketed. Thankfully, Amber said something he didn’t catch, pulling Daphne’s attention back to her, and Dottie reentered the room carrying a tray.
His phone dinged with a text as Dottie and Amber fussed over Daphne. A message from Callie.
“Chief Warwick and Ava will be here in fifteen minutes,” he said.
Daphne inclined her head. “Just enough time to eat. Thank you. Again,” she said to both Dottie and Amber.
“Holler when you’re done,” Amber replied. “We’ll come grab the tray. In the meantime, we’ll be in the kitchen figuring out dinner.”
Both women slipped from the room, leaving him and Daphne and the sound of her spoon occasionally clacking against her bowl as the fire crackled in the hearth.
“Other than the physical pain, how are you?” he asked. He knew a thing or two about trauma; most men who had the kind of career he’d had did.
He appreciated that she didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“No nightmares, but I think I was too exhausted. Although I understand that sometimes, that’s when it can be the worst. I guess I’ll see what tonight brings.”
“Talk to someone, if you need to. There’s a woman here in town. She’s a psychologist, but also used to work for the FBI. I hear she’s good.”
Daphne finished chewing her bite. “Between my childhood and my career, I’m not a stranger to therapy. If anything comes up, I won’t sweep it under the carpet.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “You told us about breaking out of the zip ties, but you sort of glossed over the rest of your escape. How’d you do it?” he asked. “Or do you want to wait until Ryan gets here?”
“I have a lot of interesting friends who have taught me a lot of interesting—and useful—things,” she said. She scooped the last of the oatmeal into her mouth. She probably needed more food, but at least she wasn’t tentative about eating like she had been the night before.
“Like?” he pressed.
“Like how to use people’s expectations against them. The importance of patience and planning.”
“And how to break out of zip ties.”
“And how to break out of zip ties,” she agreed. “I had a character in my third book do that. I thought it would be good for my writing if I experienced it firsthand, so I had a friend teach me.”
Again, so many layers. He picked the one that would give him better insight into her.
Assuming she answered. “You don’t talk about your writing much.
Callie mentioned it once, not sure she meant to, but she did.
How many people know that New York Times best-selling author DL Callahan is the same person as supermodel Daphne Sancerre who is the same person as Daphne Parks? ”
She wrapped her hands around the coffee mug and stared at the fire. A full minute passed before she answered.
“More people know that Daphne Parks and Daphne Sancerre are the same person. The change was made by the agency that represented me and was through the more standard process. It’s not hard to connect the two if you have basic internet skills. And by now, you can probably Google it.”
“But DL Callahan?”
She took a sip of her drink. “I was much savvier by then and had people who could bury things like that. And it wasn’t really a name change like Sancerre and Parks, but more the creation of an entirely fictional person.”
“If I Google the name, what will I find?”
“A generic bio about growing up in Pennsylvania, living in Paris, loving to travel. All of which is true. Nothing posted is a lie or misleading, it’s just very surface.”
“Why?” The real question he hoped she would answer.
“A lot of reasons, really. Thrillers are primarily, though not exclusively, the domain of men. I don’t need the money I make from the books, but I 100 percent believe artists should be paid for their work.
Having an ambiguous name lets people picture me however they want, which then allows them to judge my work on the work and not my gender.
Privacy is another reason. I had enough of the limelight when I was modeling.
I still have obligations related to that, along with a few spin-off companies I’m involved in.
I don’t need or want to be in the public eye any more than those engagements require.
” She paused and took another sip. “Then there’s the prejudice against this,” she said, gesturing to her face.
“Being Black or beautiful?” he asked. He imagined, as a writer, both could be a barrier.
She huffed a laugh. “Both,” she answered, not surprising him.
“But mostly the whole ‘a model can’t also possibly be smart enough to write a good book’ thing.
” She gazed at the fire, then slowly wagged her head.
“I should be willing to take that on, to challenge both those prejudices. But by the time I had the first draft of my first book done, I knew I didn’t want to.
I just wanted to write. I wanted to enjoy the process and give people stories that provided an escape.
Maybe it’s cowardly, but it is what it is. ”
“You have a right to live your life the way you want to. And besides, no one can accuse you of not paving the way for others.”
She tipped her head. “Not sure how much I had to do with it, but it’s true, you do see far more women of color modeling these days than back in my heyday.”
The door swung open as Ava and Ryan entered, along with a swirl of cold, ending their conversation.
“Lovell, Daphne,” Ryan said, as he and Ava stomped snow from their boots.
“Can I get either of you something to drink?” Lovell asked, rising. “Coffee?”
“I wouldn’t mind a cup,” Ryan answered.
“Two, please,” Ava said, hanging her coat on a hook by the door. “How are you today?” she asked, rushing to Daphne’s side. Lovell swiped up the tray from her lap and headed to the kitchen, Daphne’s response swallowed up as he pushed through the door.
When he returned with a carafe of coffee and three mugs, Ava and Ryan were seated by the fire. He set everything down on the coffee table, then poured fresh cups before topping off Daphne’s.
“You ready to start?” Ryan asked. Daphne nodded.
“You don’t need to walk through what happened at the rental yesterday—we have the audio and your statement from last night.
What I’d like to talk about now are the details of their conversation you heard and anything that might have come back to you now that you’ve had a chance to rest. I’ll also need more information about your escape.
It’s not relevant to capturing Weeks and Beeker, but it will be important for any prosecution. ”
For the next twenty minutes, Daphne walked through the hours from when she’d first woken up in the back of the car to when the Falcons found her.
From breaking her zip ties to setting up the dummy body with the comforter to using her nail file to pry the nails loose to the critical role the random wool blanket she’d grabbed played.
A handful of times, she hesitated, caught in a particular moment or memory, but she didn’t once falter.
And although her voice quieted during a few parts, she didn’t break down.
She had every right to process her experience in whatever way worked for her, but it didn’t surprise him that tears weren’t really her thing.
For good or for bad, she’d been through a lot in life—he knew from Callie how shitty their childhood had been—and this was another blip on the radar.
“Was your team able to make it to the house?” she asked when she finished relaying her experience.
Ryan made a face. “We did. We commandeered a plow after we talked last night, and a couple of cruisers followed.”
“Let me guess, they were gone?” she asked.
His chin dipped.
“Did you need a plow to get through?” Lovell asked.
“We could have made it with the SUVs, but we didn’t want to risk it,” Ryan answered.
“If they made it out without incident, they’re experienced at driving in snow,” he said.
“Daisy’s from Atlanta, right?” Daphne asked.
“A suburb, but yeah,” he answered.
“Not a lot of snow there,” she commented.
“Weeks and Beeks travel along the eastern seaboard, though,” Ava said, adopting Daphne’s nicknames for the two men.
“I’d be interested in how much time they spend in the snowier climes,” Daphne said. “It may be nothing, but driving in the snow, especially in a blizzard like we had last night, isn’t something someone only casually familiar with the snow would be able to handle.”
“You think if they’re from somewhere up north, it’s less likely they’re connected to Daisy?” he asked.
Daphne shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe.”
He considered that option. There was some truth to it, but there were also dozens of ways Weeks and Beeks might have learned how to drive in the snow and ice without having to live in it.
“Any updates on Daisy?” he asked Ava.
She rolled her lips. “She visited a private detective two weeks ago, then again seven days ago. We haven’t identified the topic of the conversation yet,” she added, shooting him a warning look. How she was identifying it was best left unsaid in front of Ryan.
“Think she paid someone to track you down?” Ryan asked.
“With Daisy, anything is possible. She has the money to do it,” Lovell answered.
“Why was she released early?” Daphne asked.
“Good behavior. And apparently, she found god, too,” Ava answered.
Lovell snorted. “The only god Daisy worships is her trust fund. And maybe her social standing. Such as it is.”
“That may be, but she convinced the prison chaplain otherwise,” Ava said.
“Has she been going to church since she got out?” Daphne asked.
“Yes,” Ava answered. “And volunteering at the food kitchen.”
“Very charitable of her,” Daphne said.
“And out of character,” he added.
Ava lifted a shoulder. “The facts are the facts. We can’t dispute those.”
Daphne tipped her head in thought, the light from the flames highlighting the deep red in her hair. “We can’t,” she agreed. “But facts don’t give us any insight into her motivation.”