Chapter Sixteen
Roxanne lay propped against pillows, still tied to the bed.
Her attempts to persuade Kara to release her had been ignored.
At one point Kara had stuck her fingers in her ears and sung “La-la-la, I can’t hear you” as if they were in elementary school.
It seemed as if the grown woman who had been her tiny-house neighbor had reverted to the bullying twelve-year-old who had tormented Roxanne alongside Ledger.
Right now, Kara sat in the room’s only chair, knitting a sock out of pink-and-orange striped yarn. The sight of her manipulating needles and yarn struck Roxanne as jarring, given their circumstances.
Roxanne had had time to take stock of her surroundings.
They weren’t in a house, she had concluded, but some kind of mobile home or even an RV, in a small bedroom with two boarded-up windows.
She avoided looking at those plywood-covered windows, which were too reminiscent of the ones in the room where Ledger had kept her and Alice captive all those years ago.
The room had a single bed and a single chair, a single light fixture in the ceiling. The air smelled stale, like old French fries and body odor. Matted gray carpeting covered the floors and the walls were painted flat white over some kind of wall board.
The pop of gravel beneath tires made Kara sit up straight. She gathered up her knitting and stowed it in a bag she shoved beneath the bed. “That should be Billy,” she said, and turned expectantly toward the door.
The trailer shook as someone opened the door and entered. Heavy footsteps moving toward them filled Roxanne with dread. The same feeling had sickened her as a child, waiting for Ledger’s next “visit.”
A key scraped in a lock, then the bedroom door opened.
This was the face that had looked into Roxanne’s car the day she was run off the road—graying blond hair cut short, full cheeks, bulbous nose, carefully tended mustache. A Billy Ledger who had been left out in the sun to soften and thicken.
He came to the bed and leaned over her. “Hello, Mary,” he said. His breath smelled of cigarettes. “It’s good to see you again.”
She said nothing. Kara hovered at the other side of the bed. “She was sick, but I think she’s feeling much better now,” she said.
“Go in the other room,” Ledger said and pointed with his thumb at the door.
Kara scurried away, shutting the door softly behind her. Roxanne tried to hide her fear. She remained still, though inwardly she shrank from him. She had two arms free. If he came for her, she would fight with everything she had.
He sat on the end of the bed and put one hand on her leg. “You’ve grown into a very pretty young woman,” he said. He squeezed her calf, and her stomach turned. “Isn’t it nice to have our little family all back together?”
She said nothing, but continued to stare, refusing to look away from him.
“You’ve been very naughty,” he said. “You deserve to be punished for making things so difficult for me.”
Roxanne clenched her teeth against the whimper that tried to escape. Ledger had liked to frighten her. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he had succeeded now. He stood and removed his belt. She needed to distract him. “What did you do with Sarah Michaelson?” she blurted.
He stilled, the belt half on. “Sarah is being taken care of,” he said. “That’s none of your concern.”
“Sarah isn’t part of our family,” she said. “Why did you take her?”
“I decide when to add to our family, not you,” he said.
“There isn’t room for her here,” she said. “You’re always talking about how the house is too small.” He had said those things before—about how he wanted a new house, where each girl could have her own room, instead of Alice and Mary sharing.
Ledger rebuckled the belt. “This place is only temporary,” he said. “We’ll be moving soon. Someplace where we can all be together.”
He left the room, switching off the overhead light as he passed it.
The locks thudded into place behind him.
Roxanne held her breath, listening, but his footsteps receded.
He said something to Alice and she answered, their words indistinguishable.
Then all was quiet. Roxanne closed her eyes and gave in to the tears sliding down her face.
She would cry a little bit, then she would sit up and start looking for a way out of here.
She hadn’t given up before and she wouldn’t now.
“Alice and Betty Josephs are the same person, I’m sure of it.” Dalton had tracked down Aaron at the apartment he shared with Willa.
Aaron, in jeans and tennis shoes and a T-shirt that advertised a local barbecue restaurant, had been in the middle of trying to assemble a bookcase when Dalton interrupted him.
Now, sitting in the living room, surrounded by packaging and parts, he looked annoyed but interested.
“What kind of proof do you have?” he asked.
Dalton shoved aside a pile of packing paper and set his laptop on the coffee table in front of Aaron’s chair. “This is the affidavit showing that on February 16, 2022, Brianna Davidson—that’s Alice’s real name—changed her name to Betty Josephs.”
“How do you know Alice’s real name?” Aaron asked.
“A reporter who covered Ledger’s trial told me. She obeyed the order not to publish the girls’ names, but she knew them.”
“And you’re sure this is the same person?” Aaron asked.
“Look at this. Same birth date. Same place of birth, same residence. And I found this, too.” He scrolled to a second page, this one showing a voter’s registry. “Both her names are listed here—cross-referenced to each other—with a note about the name change.”
Aaron leaned forward and studied the document. “How did you get this information?”
“It’s public record. Skip tracers and genealogists dig into this stuff all the time. You just have to know where to look.”
Aaron sat back. “Did you also figure out where Betty Josephs is now? She disappears about the time William Ledger is released from prison. And we don’t think she’s Debra Percy.”
“I don’t think it’s Debra now, either,” Dalton said.
“I don’t know where Betty is, but I know one thing she did.
” Dalton scrolled to a screen-capture of a third document.
“I had to beg a favor from a friend who works for the DMV for this one,” he said.
“It’s the registration for a travel trailer purchased by Betty Josephs four weeks ago. ”
“That’s three days before William Ledger’s release.”
“There’s also a registration for a truck. I think it might be the same one that ran Roxanne off the road.”
Aaron took out his phone. “We need to get a BOLO out on these vehicles.”
“If you find those vehicles, maybe you can find Ledger. And Roxanne,” Dalton said. He prayed she was still alive. Unharmed would be good, but whatever Ledger had done to her, she would get past that. She was strong, and she had him by her side to help.
Roxanne lay on her back in the bed and inched her way to the edge.
She reached down, feeling for the knitting bag Kara had shoved underneath there earlier.
The bed was relatively high off the ground, and at first Roxanne couldn’t touch the floor.
But by shoving her feet against the footboard, arching her back over the side and straining, she could sweep the floor with her fingers.
She brushed something soft, like fabric, and inched her fingers farther beneath the bed. With effort, she was able to coax the item out farther, so that she could grasp it.
Muscles protesting, she levered herself fully onto the mattress again and clutched the knitting bag to her chest. The room was still in full darkness, but as she groped through the bag she was able to identify items by feel.
She had hoped to find scissors but could locate none.
No tapestry needle or straight pins. She pulled out something small and round, on an elastic band.
As her fingers traced its shape, she pushed down on a button and a light came on.
She studied the headlamp. Did Kara have this for knitting in the dark?
She switched off the light and shoved it deep into her pocket, then continued her exploration of the bag.
Some papers—a pattern, maybe. A tube of lip balm.
Her fingers closed around the knitting itself.
She squeezed the partially-constructed sock in frustration, and one of the sock needles poked her.
She drew back, even as elation surged through her.
Hurriedly, she pulled all four needles from the yarn and shoved them into the pocket of her jeans.
There were four of the needles, made of a smooth, hardened wood, short, with sharp points on either end.
Then she threw the knitting bag under the bed, just as a key scraped in the lock on the door.
Kara entered first, with Ledger right behind her.
He flipped on the light. “Time to go,” he said.
He took a key ring from his pocket and fitted a key into the lock that secured the chains at her ankles.
“Alice, take her other arm,” he said as he grasped Roxanne’s left arm. “Don’t let her try anything.”
“I’m not going to try anything.” Roxanne tried to sound meek, and prayed Kara wouldn’t suddenly decide to retrieve her knitting or notice the knitting needles shoved into the pockets of Roxanne’s jeans.
Ledger and Kara heaved Roxanne upright. She wobbled momentarily, but straightened. “I’m okay,” she said. “I can walk on my own.”
“Then get moving.” Ledger dragged her with him toward the door.
“Where are we going?” Roxanne asked. “Is it a bigger place than this? Where did you get this trailer? Do you still have the truck I saw you with before?” She kept up the barrage of questions, determined to distract him.
“When did you become such a chatterbox?” he asked.
“She’s just being silly,” Kara said. “You know she was always that way.” She pinched Roxanne’s arm—hard. Another move familiar from their first captivity. Roxanne glared at her, but Kara only smiled.