Chapter Three
The snow was coming down pretty hard as Anya left the mall through the employee exit, stepping carefully onto the recently salted steps leading into the parking lot.
“See you tomorrow, Mel,” she said to the security guard, who would be locking up after she left.
“Take it easy driving home, Anya. I heard the roads around the lake are getting slick.”
“I will. I’m sure the plows will come around as soon as the wind dies down. Luckily, I don’t have to come in tomorrow morning,” she replied.
She trudged through the snow toward her truck, unlocking and starting up the engine before she stepped out from inside with a scraper in hand.
After waiting until her vehicle was started, Mel called out, “Need any help?”
“No, I’m fine,” Anya answered loudly. “You stay right there so you don’t get caked with wet snow. Luckily, the windows aren’t iced up yet. I just need to knock off some of the snow.”
“As long as you’re okay, I’m locking up then. Goodnight, Anya,” he answered, waving before pulling closed the heavy steel door.
The snow seemed to be coming down harder, she noticed, sighing as she stepped back into the truck. After backing out from her parking space and shifting gears, she drove toward the lot’s exit and onto the side street that would take her straight to the access road leading to the family cabin.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t have any problems with frozen water pipes because of the wind. That was the problem with living in a place that wasn’t meant to be used other than seasonally. But the place had been paid off years ago, and luckily her mother hadn’t tried to borrow against the cabin along with the house after her grandmother went into a retirement home.
When Mom had died relatively young after a sudden heart attack, Anya had picked up where Mom had left off, attempting to continue piecing together the past. But first, she’d had to sell the family home and come up with funds to cover all the debts that Mom had incurred. Anya had no idea how much trouble Mom had been in financially until she’d returned home to visit her in the hospital and eventually had to deal with funeral expenses.
But what she’d discovered after coming home to Crystal Rock had made Anya feel guilty about the fact that she’d finally moved on with her life since Mom never had. Instead of returning to Madison, where she’d been able to get her business degree because of a scholarship she’d received, she’d left a well-paying accounting job to return to Crystal Rock for good.
It had taken months to straighten out Mom’s affairs and clean out the house and put it on the market. Luckily, Anya had enough money put away in her savings to take care of most of Mom’s debts. At least she still had connections here in Crystal Rock, so she’d been able to get a decent job right away. Not only was she working as the accountant and manager at Sanders’ Floral, but she was also in charge of monitoring the entire mall’s upkeep and expenses.
All Mom’s hard work wasn’t going to be for nothing, even though no one had appeared to take her seriously when she’d insisted that her youngest daughter had been kidnapped. Shanna had been rebellious, and somewhat of a troublemaker as she was growing up. But Anya blamed it on the fact that Dad had spoiled her rotten. When he’d been killed while driving drunk, Shanna had blamed Mom because Mom and Dad hadn’t been getting along for a very long time.
But the truth was, Dad had lost his job a few years earlier, and instead of making an honest effort at finding another, he’d sat at home, feeling sorry for himself while Mom had picked up a second job. The worst thing about it was, he’d had offers, but since he wouldn’t be making the money he’d been making as a county assessor, he’d decided that all the other jobs were beneath him.
When Anya got home from school, she’d do laundry, make dinner, and mainly clean up after Dad, who made no effort whatsoever to help out. Shanna was too young to really understand. Anya hadn’t wanted Shanna to be as disappointed in Dad as she was, so she and Mom tried to make life less complicated when Shanna was home. Although Anya never knew when Dad was ready to fly off the handle because of his drinking, so Shanna spent a lot of time being sent to visit her friends.
She’d dealt with one horrendous thing after another back then. Anya had been painfully in love with Eric O’Neill when he and his family had left town. She’d been terribly heartbroken that summer between her sophomore and junior year in high school and probably hadn’t been as patient with Shanna as she should have.
Six months later, Dad had been killed. Shanna had been nearly fourteen.
And six months after that, Shanna had disappeared.
The roads were becoming treacherous, Anya realized, slip-sliding on the curve that was located right before the turn-off into the cabin’s driveway.
She coasted downward along the driveway, being careful not to press too hard on the brake. Luckily, the garage wasn’t at the end of the drive but rather to the left, so she was able to gain control of her old beat-up truck before parking and stepping outside to open the carriage door.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t have trouble leaving tomorrow since she’d heard that the forecast had changed, and now they were calling for several more inches of snow.
Anya glanced around the property. She was going to have to break down and invest in a few exterior lights other than solar. She was doing everything that she could to stay on a strict budget and it was getting tough.
But if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the investigator she’d finally hired to check out a few of the people she’d been unable to question on her own. For a while, she’d followed up on the long list of suspects Mom had left on her computer. But she couldn’t drive around and spend her time investigating while working full-time to pay off the rest of Mom’s debt, otherwise she would have had to file bankruptcy and would have lost the cabin, the only place where she could still hang onto the magic of her childhood.
Maybe she should try to have a talk with law enforcement again soon. No, she decided. It would be better to compile more information. Even though they’d blown Mom off, which had only been for Mom’s own benefit since she was obviously becoming obsessive about everything related to the investigation while ignoring her own health, Anya was beginning to think that maybe she shouldn’t have gone along with the suggestions made to her by the local police chief. Mom had finally given up asking for help, thinking that the cops might not take the evidence that she’d gathered through the years seriously. But there’d apparently been another attempt at reestablishing the trafficking ring in Crystal Rock during the past ten years, according to what Anya had read in the local paper last year.
Despite Anya’s doubts, Mom had always been certain that Shanna had been taken by the traffickers. Once Anya had listened to the recording on Mom’s phone, she had no doubt that Mom had been right.
After pulling the truck into the garage and then swinging the carriage door closed from inside, she hoisted her large bag over her shoulder, bracing herself for the walk to the house from the garage. Grabbing the lightweight shovel she kept near the side door, she unlocked it, stepping outside and closing the door behind her. She quickly pushed the shovel forward along the narrow brick path that led to the back door of the cabin, jogging along the shoveled path as she scooped away the snow.
Unlocking the back door that led into the enclosed porch, she propped the shovel against the inner wall before heading inside the cabin through the kitchen door.
“Brr. I hope the pipes didn’t freeze,” she muttered aloud, rushing into the kitchen and opening the cabinet doors to check beneath the sink.
Nodding approvingly, she checked the outside and inside temperatures on the small weather station she had mounted to the window above the sink.
She’d inserted a new electric fireplace insert into the opening of the fireplace in the dining room last evening. For the first time since October, Anya had felt warm when she’d gotten out of bed.
Once she’d paid to install a new electrical box with circuit breakers to handle additional baseboard heating, she’d begun making inexpensive improvements to the cabin. It would have cost too much to rewire, and there was no way she could afford to pull out walls and add insulation and drywall. So, the electric fireplace was providing just enough heat to make her feel comfortable again since the baseboard heating hadn’t seemed to keep her warm enough.
Mom’s former boss, Mike Callahan, who’d always been known as Cal, had been more than happy to send an electrician from Callahan Construction to give her some advice about how she could survive winter in the cabin. She suspected that they’d given her a very deep discount on construction materials and services. The electrician had run six new heavy-duty lines into the kitchen, dining room and bathroom, where she had installed a stacking washer-dryer earlier this summer.
Now she was living in only three rooms and had closed off the large living room with vaulted ceilings along with the numerous bedrooms upstairs. The bathroom and kitchen along with the roomy dining room, which she’d converted into a family room—where she slept on a sleeper sofa—was all the space she needed until spring. It would have been nice to be able to still work out of her office in the den, but there were too many drafty exterior windows. All Mom’s graphs and charts were still set up there if she needed to take a quick look at anything. Most everything that Anya did when it came to research was online, so she’d transferred many of mom’s files onto storage devices for security.
The place was beginning to feel like home, despite having to currently live out of only three rooms. She’d spent time this summer decluttering the rest of the place of unnecessary items with no sentimental value and had even moved a few things over from the other house before it had sold.
Including Shanna’s belongings, which Anya had left boxed up. Packing her room had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do in her life.
Which reminded her. Anya had packed up Shanna’s stuff before she sat down to take a look at the collection of materials and information that Mom had been obsessing on since Shanna had disappeared. Anya had been overwhelmed by all the work she’d had to do to clean out the house, so she’d been in kind of a hurry. As she recalled, there had been some journals and possibly a diary she’d discovered wedged beneath the loose window seat in Shanna’s room, when she’d removed the old cushion to wash it and clean the windows.
She had a sneaking suspicion that Mom had never found the diary and journals, although Shanna’s room was like a shrine to her missing daughter. Time had stood still. Even after ten years, it had been extremely difficult for Anya to go inside and pack up the room when she’d had no choice but to sell the house.
But still, Mom had removed anything that came close to being a clue about her whereabouts from Shanna’s room, Anya had noticed, so the diary and journals wouldn’t have remained hidden if Mom had found them. They’d be spread throughout the family room downstairs, since Mom had used it as her dedicated investigative space and had pictures and notes plastered all over the walls, as well as a chalkboard and a bunch of printouts pinned onto a gigantic corkboard.
When Shanna had first gone missing, it had seemed like every friend and neighbor that they’d ever had were there to assist. But as time went by, there were fewer people who were ready to believe that Shanna had been kidnapped, especially after the local police had supposedly claimed that they’d done all that they could.
Mom had tried to get help from the police in several adjoining communities, but no one appeared to be taking her seriously, even though Anya knew otherwise.
But Mom had become so obsessed, that everyone had seemed to steer clear of her. Anya had watched her levelheaded mother sink further into depression, and as much as she’d tried to help, nothing she did to assist was enough for Mom anymore. When Anya had suggested the possibility of talking to a professional about her mood swings, Mom had flown off the handle. Anya had worried that what was happening to Mom might cause her to have some kind of breakdown. And Anya had become even more concerned after Mom had insisted that Anya should take the scholarship offer.
It’s not that her mom had really been mad at her, Anya had realized later. The chief of police, Sam Danielson, had pulled her aside one day to have a talk with her. His wife, Penny, was one of Mom’s closest friends, and they’d not only been worried about Mom, but Anya as well, he’d explained, so they’d reminded Mom that she had another daughter. Penny Danielson owned Sanders’ Floral, where Anya had been working part-time since she’d turned sixteen.
“We haven’t really closed your sister’s case,” he’d reassured her. “We just haven’t wanted to get your hopes up. My wife has been especially worried about the toll it’s been taking on your mom. Penny wanted me to let you know that she’ll be sure to keep an eye on her if you decide to take that business scholarship offer in Madison.”
“Thank you, Chief,” she’d answered with relief. “I’m not sure how I’m going to manage financially, even with the scholarship.”
“You’re going to Madison, right?” His look had been thoughtful. “That’s my alma mater and Penny has some connections with the local florists down there. Maybe we can come up with a couple of job opportunities for you. You’ve still got a few months, so we’d be glad to help.”
“It might be less expensive if I live off campus, I’ve heard, but I think I have to get permission to do that during my freshman year.”
Sam nodded.
“Thank you again, Chief,” she said. “I feel a lot more reassured.”
“Just take care of your mom for now, okay?” he’d replied.
Snapping her mind back to the present, she realized that she really needed some rest. Having Eric O’Neill show up tonight had thrown an emotional wrench into her carefully compartmentalized life.
“Why did he have to come back?” she muttered. She’d been so proud of herself, thinking that she’d finally been able to forget. And then there was the fact that sure, he’d been really good looking when he’d been sixteen. But now…
She shivered, remembering that intensity in his eyes as they’d met hers. It wasn’t just because there were unresolved feelings between them. She knew from instinct that he’d dealt with some horrific situations when he’d been stationed overseas. As a teen, he’d been carefree. That was what she’d loved about him—he’d had a calming effect on her. No matter how bad things had been at home, when she was with Eric, he’d made it easy to forget. But there was definitely an alertness and maturity that he conveyed that wasn’t at all about growing up. He was someone who gave orders.
Probably someone in charge, Anya decided. She was willing to bet that he’d surpassed an airman in rank. He was just too damned sure of himself.
She blinked. How in the world did she think she knew so much about him after only being with him for a total of fifteen minutes during the past ten years?
Anya tried not to wonder about how many women there’d been since he’d left her. It scared her to realize just how much it had affected her, running into him again tonight.
Because the last thing she needed were any distractions right now. She was determined to discover what had happened to her sister, no matter how horrific the answers might be.
Sighing, she switched on the television. She’d take a long hot bath and get a good night sleep so she could wake up early and hopefully get a few things done tomorrow before going into work.
Another hour later, after she’d pulled out her sofa bed and was tucked under the covers with the television still on, her cell phone suddenly rang.
Frowning, she reached for the phone, glancing at the caller ID. No one usually called her this late.
Her eyes went wide, because strangely, Eric O’Neill was the one who was calling .