Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Box Set

by Willow Rose

  Tara sat up. She was so pale in the dim light from above them. She was the skinniest one of the three, and she had been losing weight since they got there. They all had, but it seemed to be going faster with her. Carina was worried about Tara and how much longer she would last. That was why she had decided that today was going to be the big day.

  “Really?” she asked.

  Carina nodded. “We’ve talked about this long enough now. It’s time we do something before we go insane.”

  “But I thought you said the plan wasn’t perfect yet,” Ava said.

  “It isn’t, but I have a feeling it never will be,” Carina said. “We lose a portion of our strength every day, and I fear that if we wait too long, we might not be able to pull it off.”

  “I agree,” Tara said.

  Carina could see her collarbone above her ripped prom dress. It was sticking out more and more each day that passed. Her cheeks had fallen in, and her eyes were big as they landed on Ava.

  “Did you hear that, Ava? It’s time.”

  Ava nodded. She was way more robust when they were captured than both Carina and Tara, and she seemed to be holding up a lot better than either of them. Still, her eyes were matte with exhaustion, and she was winded from the lack of oxygen.

  “It probably won’t be long till he gets here, so I want you to go through the plan with me once again, and then keep yourselves ready.”

  Both girls nodded excitedly. Carina went over the details again before they all leaned their backs against the wall and stared at the door in front of them, waiting for it to open and that nasty man to show his masked face again.

  Chapter 23

  THEN:

  It was a nice day. The sun was shining from a bright blue sky, and it was finally warming up a bit as spring showed its picturesque face. Winters were long and dark, Iris Pierce believed, and this one had been extraordinary long, even though it had been the best in her life. Having a baby had been the greatest achievement. Most parents probably thought so, but they had waited a long time for this baby. They had tried for five whole years before they had finally succeeded in conceiving. It had almost destroyed both her and Gary, not to mention their marriage. Not being able to get pregnant had been by far the biggest shame in Iris’s life. Who was she if she wasn’t able to give Gary what he so desired? Not a woman, not a wife. Not in her eyes.

  Iris wrapped Oliver in a blanket and walked outside to put him inside his carriage. The sun shone brightly in his face, and she made sure to turn the carriage around, so he wasn’t in the direct sun, then pull down the mosquito net. She looked at her son in the carriage and felt her heart melt as their eyes met. He looked so much like his dad already, and that often made her laugh. He was like this miniature version of Gary, a wrinkled and prune-like version of him. But he was also so incredibly gorgeous that her heart could hardly contain it. And neither could Gary. She saw it in his eyes when he came home from work and picked up the boy. She saw the deep pride in them. But she also saw something else lately that had startled her a little. She had seen fear, a deep worrisome fear growing inside of him, and she wondered if it had to do with his job and what he saw there. She sensed his job was getting to him somehow. She wondered if he feared something might happen to him, so he wouldn’t be able to see Oliver grow up. To be honest, Iris often feared that too. Especially lately. More than once, she had caught herself waiting anxiously by the door as the clock struck six and she expected him home, unable to shake the worry until he was finally inside, hugging her and Oliver.

  “Now, there. It’s time for you to go to sleep,” she said, smiling from ear to ear at her boy. She couldn’t help herself. Everything about him made her so warm and peaceful inside. Her love for him was nothing like she had ever felt for anyone before, not even Gary, whom she loved dearly. This was different; this was deeper and so intoxicating, almost like a drug. She needed to be close to him; she craved his presence in her life and to feel his skin against hers. There was nothing in the world that made her feel like this, nothing.

  Iris was going to take him for a walk downtown and maybe buy an ice cream for herself at the park, now that the weather was so nice. She liked to take a walk with the carriage at least once a day, and Oliver slept so well inside of it while she got some much-needed exercise and fresh air. Being cooped up inside with the baby was wonderful, but she was also slightly scared of losing touch with the world around her. She needed to get out.

  Iris grabbed the carriage and was about to begin her walk when she realized she didn’t have her diaper bag with her. She left the carriage for a second and rushed inside to look for it. She walked into the kitchen and found it on the counter, where she had packed it with clean diapers for the ride, just in case. It was funny, she thought to herself with a chuckle, how her small and elegant purse had been exchanged for this big ugly bag filled with essentials for the baby and not her anymore. It was just like her own life. It had been mostly filled with taking care of her own needs, and now she barely even cared if she got something to eat or showered, as long as the baby was happy.

  Iris threw a glance at the mirror in the hallway and chuckled again at her appearance. As long as she didn’t meet anyone she knew, she was fine, she thought to herself, then hurried outside, grabbed the carriage by the handle, and placed the bag underneath it.

  “All right, Oliver,” she said. “Let’s go for that walk; shall we?”

  She hadn’t expected the baby to answer because why would he when he was only three weeks old? Yet there was still something that caught her off guard, and she lifted the mosquito net to look inside the carriage, to check on her son, or maybe just catch another glimpse of him like she so often did when he was sleeping.

  But the carriage was empty.

  Chapter 24

  We set up a “war room” at CBPD by Matt’s desk the very next day. As we had been reading through case files and going through a ton of details in the case, Chief Annie approached us.

  “I heard you were in the building, Eva Rae,” she said and walked closer. She pulled me into a hug. Chief Annie was a heavyset woman with a hug that felt like it would crush you. She also had the kindest deep-set brown eyes that lingered on me, and a smile to make me feel welcome.

  “Good to hear that you finally decided to come onboard. I told Matt to ask you as soon as those girls disappeared. I wanted you.”

  I flushed, feeling flattered. “Thanks.”

  “Good to see you, Eva Rae,” Annie said and squeezed my hand. “You look great.”

  That made me smile. I had a yard filled with crime-scene techs that had worked all night with lights out there and dogs, not to mention the divers in the canal that were keeping me awake. I had fought with the kids all morning to get them out of the house on time, and still, Alex and Christine had missed the bus. Then, after dropping them off in my PJs, I had been stuck in traffic driving down Minutemen Causeway, and as I came back to my house to get dressed, I had discovered water all over the bathroom floor and realized my toilet had a leak. I had called the plumber and told my mom to make sure she was there when he got there. She had been in the middle of reading the paper and drinking her coffee, then politely told me she was going to visit her friends today and play golf in Winter Park, so I probably shouldn’t count on that. This meant I had to wait till the plumber got there to let him in before I could leave with his humungous bill in hand, and it wasn’t until I arrived at the police station that I realized—because Matt politely told me so—that I had a huge coffee stain on my shirt, right on my chest where everyone would see it. I also had only brushed my hair in the car and hadn’t even put on make-up, simply because I forgot to, so to tell me I looked great had to be a very polite compliment.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You too, Annie. But you always look great.”

  “We should do lunch one of these days. Maybe I could get you to come on board as a permanent solution,” she said, then looked at her phone in her hand. “Whoops. Gotta be somewhere, like fi
ve minutes ago, I’m afraid. We’re having our monthly Coffee with the Mayor event tonight at city hall next door, and we need to find out who will be guarding it.”

  She looked deeply into my eyes.

  “Find my girls; will you?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Annie left, and I turned to look at Matt and the whiteboard by the end of the wall. We had hung up photos of all four girls. Carina Martin, Ava Morales, Tara Owens, and Molly Carson. The sight of their high school photos staring back at me made my heart drop. I sat down and rolled my chair toward them. Underneath their picture, Matt had written PROM. I stared at the word.

  “They all went to the prom that night,” I mumbled. “Could he have been at the dance? I know we talked about this before and that you interviewed all the teachers and chaperones present, but why were they all at the same dance right before three of them disappeared? Could it be that they were all four supposed to disappear that night?”

  “And then he came for Molly later?” Matt asked.

  “Maybe she knew something or saw something that he wanted to stop her from telling.”

  “But why not kill her then? Why not bury her somewhere or throw her in the river where the gators would eat her?” he asked.

  “You make a good point. The part about her being placed the way she was, in my backyard, makes it feel so personal. Like he wanted me to find her there. Like there was a reason for choosing my yard and not someone else’s.”

  “Because you knew Molly?” he asked.

  I bit my lip and stared at Molly’s photo. Her gorgeous brown eyes stared back at me, and I felt a pinch in my stomach when realizing I was never going to see them again, and neither was her mom.

  “Yes, maybe, but maybe it was something else. There’s something that seems kind of disturbing to me,” I said and got up from the chair, then studied the picture of Molly that Matt had taken at the hospital, where she was lying with bandages across her eyes. We hadn’t been able to interview her yet but kept the photo to remind us why we needed to stop this guy before he hurt any of the other girls if he hadn’t already done so.

  “What do you mean?” Matt asked.

  “It didn’t really occur to me earlier, but now I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s the eyes,” I said.

  “What about them?”

  “I…It’s just. There was a case once that I worked on. It was early in my career. We tracked down this guy who poked out the eyes of his victims before he raped them, so he would be the last person they remembered seeing, and so they wouldn’t be able to recognize him in a line-up. He left them in the street, blinded and assaulted, helpless, unable to find their way back home. Often, they would run into the street and get hit by cars.”

  “So, could it be him again?” Matt asked.

  “It could if I hadn’t shot him in ’09 as we raided his house.”

  “Okay,” Matt said, “so he’s dead, but maybe it could be someone copying him?”

  I nodded. “That is definitely a possibility. But why would he target me in that way?”

  “Because you got rid of his hero, the one he idolized, and he wants you to know that he is taking over.”

  I turned to look at Matt. “Look who’s the profiler now.”

  “I took psychology in college,” he said, smiling. It felt good to see him do that since we had both been so gloomy since we found Molly. There hadn’t been anything to smile about so far.

  “You might be onto something,” I said. “This guy wants my attention; that’s for sure. And he’s got it.”

  Chapter 25

  Jane Martin looked at the clock on her stove. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. The realization made her bend over in agony and pain. This was the time she would usually go pick up Carina at the high school. She would drive up into the pick-up line and wait for her to come to the car, blushing in embarrassment since all the other kids her age would get into their own cars and drive off. But Carina hadn’t been able to pass her license test yet since she had flunked twice, and so she was pretty much the only kid her age who was still being picked up by her mother, much to her embarrassment. It had also been a nuisance to Jane since she had started working as a campaign manager for a local politician and she had enough on her plate these days.

  But not anymore.

  Not since Carina went off to the prom and never returned home. Jane hadn’t left her house since that night when her daughter disappeared, and she wasn’t going to.

  “You have to start living soon,” her husband, Scott, had told her so many times these past few days as he went off to work himself, pecking her unlovingly on the cheek. “We can’t stop living just because our daughter ran away. We still have a son, and he needs us.”

  Scott was determined that Carina had run off with her friends, that they had taken off on some trip to Las Vegas or maybe just Miami to go clubbing, and that they would be back soon. And the stuff they found at the golf course? Well, they had been drunk and goofed around out there before they decided just to take off. They were young and carefree, was his opinion.

  It had been seventeen days now. Who went clubbing for seventeen days? What teenager had that kind of money?

  “I think something happened to her,” Jane had said over and over again. “I can feel it in my heart. She’s in pain. She’s hurting. A mother knows these things.”

  But Scott hadn’t wanted to hear it. “I did the same thing when I was her age,” he said.

  “You went on spring break in Miami,” she replied.

  “But I lied to my parents and said I was staying with my best friend and his parents.”

  She shook her head. “How is that the same?”

  Jane exhaled and looked out the window at the canal behind her house. A boat chugged past. An elderly couple was sitting behind the wheel, smiling, with their fishing poles stuck on the roof. They were probably coming back from fishing on a nice, beautiful day, maybe having caught themselves a couple of trout for dinner.

  Jane and Scott used to go fishing, and it was their plan for retirement once that came along. Just the two of them, out on a boat going off-shore fishing off the coast with not a care in the world. That was the dream, and it was obtainable. Except now she feared it would never be. She would never be carefree again if Carina didn’t come back. She wasn’t sure she’d survive that. The past seventeen days had been so tough it felt like she would die.

  Jane exhaled and made herself a cup of coffee. She stared at a box of Oreos that her son had forgotten to put back in the cabinet. Usually, she’d take a couple, maybe eat the entire pack, but not today. She had lost a lot of weight since Carina had disappeared, and normally that would have been an accomplishment for her, something she’d be thrilled about, but now, it didn’t matter. She had no appetite, and she didn’t care anything about food anymore. It was so useless anyway. Their neighbors from across the street had been so nice and brought them food to eat, so they didn’t have to worry about cooking, and she had tried to have some of the chicken pot pie last night, but it hadn’t even tasted good. It was like it was growing in her mouth, and she had kept chewing and chewing at it, unable to swallow it. She had ended up spitting it out in the trash, then going for a glass of Chardonnay instead. The wine kept her calm and helped her sleep. Drinking wasn’t a solution; she knew that, and it could become a slippery slope. But right now, it was the only thing she could get down, and she needed it. That and her coffee to get her through the dreadful day.

  Her doorbell. Her first thought was that it was Carina, that she had finally come back. Jane almost dropped her cup on the tiles. Then she realized Carina would never ring the doorbell. Or would she? What if she was embarrassed? What if she had come back and was afraid they were angry with her, so she didn’t dare to walk right in?

  It could be.

  Jane put her cup down on the counter, feeling her pulse quicken, and rushed for the front door, images of Carina’s beautiful face flashing through her mind. There was nothing she wan
ted more right now than for her husband to have been right about their daughter.

  Jane grabbed the door handle and swung the door open when her hope froze instantly. Outside stood not Carina, but a FedEx guy.

  He smiled.

  “Mrs. Martin?”

  She nodded, disappointed. What had Scott bought now that they didn’t need? Another useless tool for his garage that he would never use? Something electronic that would end up gathering dust on his desk? Or was it Frank, their youngest? Had he been on Amazon and bought something silly?

  “That’s me.”

  “I have a package for you. I just need you to sign right there.”

  She grabbed the pen and scribbled an ugly signature on the display, then took the package.

  “Have a nice day,” he said and tipped his hat.

  “Thank you,” she said, even though she knew she wouldn’t. This day would be just like the sixteen previous, filled with despair and pain, longing for her daughter to come home.

  Little did Jane know as she put down the box and opened it, that this day was about to be a lot worse than all the previous ones.

  Chapter 26

  “When are you coming home, Mom?”

  I looked at the whiteboard by the wall behind Matt to see the girls looking back at me, almost accusingly. We hadn’t gotten anywhere all day.

  Some help I was.

  Guilt ate at me for not being at home with my children like I had promised them I would. Christine had come home from school and found my note written on our activity board in the kitchen, where I wrote I was going to help Matt out on a case today.

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” I told her. “But Grandma is there with you today.”

  “You know I don’t like being alone with her,” she said. “She’s creepy and weird. She keeps telling me to make better choices when I grab a snack, and then she looks at my ripped jeans and makes jokes asking me if I paid full price for them ‘cause then I would need my money back. Stuff like that. It’s annoying.”