20. Conrad #2
CJ had written three separate theories in his notebook titled: Possible Reasons Nanny Winnie Has Vanished.
Billie had openly moved into apocalypse mode.
“What if she got eaten by a bear?”
“There are no bears here.”
“A cougar?”
I stood in the kitchen, staring at my unanswered texts while my stomach tied itself into increasingly creative knots.
The kids exchanged one of those silent sibling looks across the room.
I noticed immediately. “What?”
CJ closed his notebook slowly. “We think you should go check on her.”
“I already told you, I don’t know where she?—”
“Yes, you do,” Bianca interrupted.
I blinked. “No, I don’t.”
“You have her employment contract,” she said patiently. “Legally there has to be an address, right?”
Shit. Of course there was.
Billie hugged Bianca hard. “We can rescue her.”
“We are not rescuing anyone.”
CJ tilted his head at me carefully. “But you want to.”
Unfortunately, yes. Very much. I scrubbed a hand over my face.
An hour later, Lady Ferdinand arrived. She seemed deeply alarmed by the collective tension radiating from all four of us.
“Heavens to Betsy,” she said once she was inside. “You all look like you’re in mourning.”
“That’s because Nanny Winnie is missing,” Billie informed her.
“She’s not missing,” I corrected automatically.
Lady Ferdinand studied my face. “You don’t seem convinced of that.”
No. No, I wasn’t.
The kids swarmed her with increasingly ludicrous theories while I grabbed my keys.
CJ followed me toward the foyer. “If she’s secretly being held hostage by evil hunters, blink twice.”
“Why is that your first assumption?”
“Pattern recognition.”
I pointed toward the living room. “Homework.”
He sighed heavily but let me leave.
The drive to Winnie’s address took nearly fifty minutes. Fifty increasingly unsettling minutes. The farther I drove, the more isolated everything became. Streetlights disappeared, then neighborhoods. Even the roads narrowed, winding through thick woods that swallowed most of the remaining daylight.
Winnie lived all the way out here?
Alone?
I didn’t like that one bit.
Mist hovered low across parts of the road while my headlights cut through the darkness.
By the time I finally spotted the cottage tucked deep in the woods, my nerves were stretched painfully tight. But then I saw her car in the driveway. Relief hit so fast it almost made me dizzy.
Okay. Good. She was home.
Maybe she really was sick. Maybe her phone died. Maybe?—
Maybe I was about to embarrass myself catastrophically by showing up at my nanny’s remote forest cottage because I’d realized I was in love with her.
Cool.
Very normal behavior.
I parked and climbed out quickly.
The cottage itself looked strangely ethereal in the dark. Ivy climbed the porch railings and herbs hung drying near one of the windows. It looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Or the exact setting where a handsome idiot got murdered in act two.
I knocked firmly. Nothing happened. Then I heard movement inside. The door opened, and every instinct in my body recoiled.
The man at the door was tall enough that I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes.
He was so pale that the porch light looked sickly around him.
Dark hair fell nearly to his waist, though most of it had been pulled back loosely, revealing severe features and piercing gray eyes that fixed onto me with unsettling calm.
He wore black.
For one irrational second, my brain actually thought, Oh no. Winnie has a type.
The man leaned one shoulder against the doorway casually. “Yes?”
Something about him felt deeply wrong. Predatory. Like standing too close to a tiger enclosure and suddenly realizing the glass looked thinner than expected.
I cleared my throat. “Hi. Uh. I’m looking for Winnie.”
His eyes moved over me slowly. “And you are?”
“I’m…” I stalled.
What exactly was I? Employer? Pathetic. Friend? Dishonest. Potential emotional disaster? Too accurate. “I work with her,” I finished weakly.
The man smiled faintly.
That somehow made everything worse.
“What do you want?”
“I just… She didn’t come into work today. She hasn’t answered her phone. I wanted to make sure she was okay.”
His expression remained unreadable. “How considerate of you.”
I frowned slightly. “Who are you?”
The smile widened a fraction. No answer. Instead, he just watched me in this deeply unpleasant way that made my skin crawl.
Movement behind him caught my attention. Winnie appeared in the hallway, and my stomach dropped immediately.
She looked wrong. She wasn’t herself. Her hair was disheveled and tangled, her face pale even by Winnie standards. Her eyes seemed unfocused. And when she saw me standing there, wild panic flared in her eyes. “Conrad.”
Relief crashed through me instantly anyway.
“Thank God.” I stepped forward slightly. “Jesus, Winnie, are you okay? The kids have been worried sick. I’ve been calling all day.”
The man beside the doorway went very still.
Winnie glanced at him briefly before looking back at me. “I’m fine.”
She absolutely was not fine.
Every alarm bell in my body started screaming immediately.
The man’s attention settled on me again. Hungry. That was the only word for it. Hungry enough that my pulse actually kicked harder. He stepped closer, towering over me. “I believe Winifred said she’s fine.”
Something cold slid down my spine.
The man lifted one hand slightly toward me and?—
Was he licking his lips? What the actual hell?
My entire body tensed. “Winnie,” I said slowly without taking my eyes off him, “are you safe here?”
The question changed everything. The man’s jaw tightened, his gaze hardening into something cold and sharp. She rushed forward and stepped between us, grabbing my arm hard enough to shock me.
“Conrad,” she said quickly, “come with me.”
Then she started pulling me toward the driveway. Fast. Too fast. I had to jog to keep up with her pace.
“Winnie, what the hell is going on?”
“Please get in your car.”
I tried pulling my arm free and nearly stumbled because her grip did not budge even slightly.
Holy shit. She was strong. Much stronger than she should’ve been.
“Winnie. Please.”
Her jaw trembled slightly as she drew a shallow, ragged breath.
I looked back toward the porch. The man was gone. Just gone. There had been no footsteps or the sound of a closing door. Nothing. He’d vanished. A chill worked its way painfully up my spine. “Where the fuck did he go?”
“Conrad,” she said.
“Who the hell was that?”
She opened my car door so abruptly I nearly lost my balance, then she pushed me inside. Up close, she looked even worse. Distracted and dazed—almost feverish. Like someone heavily medicated or drunk. This wasn’t Winnie. Not the version I knew, anyway.
“Tell me what’s happening,” I demanded. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help? Should I call the police?”
Her face crumpled for a fleeting, painful second. God, she looked miserable.
“I can no longer work for you.”
The words landed like a physical blow. “What?”
“Please tell the children goodbye for me.”
Panic surged through me. “No. Absolutely not. Winnie, what are you talking about?”
“I have to go.”
“Why?”
I tried stepping back out of the car. She shoved me down again with terrifying ease. Actually shoved me. My brain barely processed it because she kept glancing back at the cottage with visible tension.
“Winnie, you’re scaring me.”
That finally made her look directly at me. And for one awful second, I saw it. Not fear of me. Fear for me.
“My circumstances have changed,” she said quietly. “I need to focus my energy elsewhere.”
“What circumstances?”
No answer.
“Was that guy threatening you?”
Still nothing.
“Winnie.”
She stepped back slowly. And I realized with horrifying clarity that she was dismissing me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Then she turned and walked to the cottage without another word.
Stunned, I watched the door close behind her. The woods around me felt suddenly enormous and wrong and deeply unfriendly.
I was genuinely afraid.
The drive home passed mostly in numb silence. By the time I pulled into the driveway, the porch light was still on. Lady Ferdinand waited at the door. The second she saw my face, she tilted her head in concern.
“Conrad,” she said carefully, “are you all right?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing coherent came out. “I’m… not sure.”
She touched my arm gently. “The children are worried.”
I barely remembered walking inside or Lady Ferdinand leaving. The kids practically collided with me in the foyer.
“Did you find her?”
“Is she alive?”
“Was it evil hunters?”
I shook my head helplessly as I walked into the living room and sank down on the couch. The children crowded around me. Bianca tucked against one side. CJ practically climbed the armrest to get to me. Billie directly jumped into my lap.
I suddenly felt completely lost. How had this happened so fast? How had Winnie become so essential so quickly? And now it was over. Just like that.
I swallowed hard. “She…” My throat tightened painfully. “Winnie quit.”
“No, she didn’t,” Billie said.
The certainty in her little face almost destroyed me. “She did.”
“She wouldn’t.”
CJ frowned deeply. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Bianca studied me carefully. “She was upset?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the worst part. I genuinely didn’t know.
Billie’s eyes filled with tears. “No!” She jumped off my lap and ran upstairs, sobbing.
I sat there in stunned silence with two confused children pressed against my sides and another sobbing upstairs. All I could think was how something was terribly wrong.
And somehow, I had already lost Winnie before I even understood what was happening.