by Angela Foxxe
“She’ll be safest with them. They aren’t involved with Matt Baker.”
“Matt hired them.”
“Matt thinks he hired them. They were hired by her family to get her back.”
Senora pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling light-headed.
“I don’t understand.”
“The WereBears were hired to find Jessica and bring her back home.”
“Then why was she being held?”
“Because she has to be deprogrammed.”
“What?”
“She’s been brainwashed. That’s why she said something then corrected herself when she first woke up, but now she’s back to being herself. The people who took her from her family turned her into the perfect Stepford wife, and when glimmers of the person she used to be started to come out, they knew it was time to jump in. They have contacts on the inside, and everyone knew that Matt Baker was struggling to control his once docile wife. It was the perfect time to contact him and offer him a deal he couldn’t pass up.”
“This is too much. Your friend is delusional. There isn’t some widespread conspiracy-”
“There is, and Jessica is one of the victims. But the problem is the subliminal plant. She can’t just walk away from Matt without completing the deprogramming. As scary as that’s going to be for her, she has to complete the program. Otherwise, she’ll always try to find her way back to him. That’s why she got away from them.”
“What about her daughter?”
“It’s not her daughter.”
Senora’s jaw dropped.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s not her daughter’? She just told me how having a child changed her and that her marital problems didn’t start until she had Evie.”
“How old was Evie when you saw her at the Baker house?”
“I didn’t get a good look at her, and I’m not around little kids that much, but I would say around three, almost four.”
“Jessica has only been married to Matt for two years.”
“Maybe they got married after she was born.”
“No, Senora, they didn’t. Evie isn’t her child. Evie’s mother died in childbirth, which was why he needed another wife quick. Jessica Baker died in childbirth. This woman’s name is Naomi Martin, and she has a family in Spokane, Washington that misses her.”
“Spokane? That’s so far away.”
“Just outside of Spokane. But it makes so much sense. She was an avid hiker at home, which was why she was able to survive like she did. We need to find a way to get her inside with Michael, and then we need to leave.”
“I don’t understand why we’re in danger?”
“We don’t have time to delve into that right now. When we’re on the road, I’ll fill you in. But right now, I need you to stay calm and convince this woman to let us lead her into Michael’s house. Can you do that?”
“Of course, I can,” Senora said. “I’m not a child. I may not like it, but I know when I’m outgunned.”
“I’m not trying to force your hand.”
“It sure feels like it.”
“If you don’t want to help, I can just take her in and be done with it. But it will be much less traumatic for her if you can help coax her in, then we can explain to her that she’s safe.”
“I don’t think it’s going to go how you imagine it will, but it’s fine. Let’s get this over with, so I can go on vacation and forget that I made promises I couldn’t keep to a woman who thinks she’s someone she isn’t.”
“Thank you,” Ty said, but Senora had already turned on her heel and was headed for the Jeep.
They’d worked their way away from the vehicle during the course of the conversation, stepping a few feet further away with each new, startling revelation. Now, each step felt like Senora was walking to the guillotine. She was a horrible liar, and she knew when she opened that door that Jessica was going to feel betrayed and confused. It would be written all over Senora’s face, and Jessica would just know.
Senora kept her eyes on the ground, too ashamed to look through the window. She couldn’t see inside anyway. It was so dark without the streetlights, and the glow of the dashboard didn’t quite reach the back windows. Jessica could definitely see her, so Senora kept her face passive and focused on what she was going to say.
Ty was a few feet behind her, hanging back to give her space. His bootheels clicked on the concrete and echoed off the building and off the woods that surrounded the property. There was a light fog rolling in, giving the entire scene an eerie feeling that Senora wished would go away. She felt awful, and the reality of Jessica’s identity left her feeling ill.
Naomi Martin, she corrected as her hand grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open.
She waited for Naomi to jump out or to shriek in anger at Senora, somehow knowing that Senora was going to betray her. Instead, she was left shocked and rooted, frozen to the ground.
“What’s wrong?” Ty said from behind her, quickening his steps when he saw her freeze.
“She’s not here.”
“What?”
“She’s not in the car, Ty. Naomi is gone.”
CHAPTER 13
Naomi is gone.
The words spun through her head over and over as she ran through the woods, the backpack pulled tight so she could tie the ends around her waist and keep it from bouncing. She hadn’t had time to check to see what was in the backpack; she just knew that Ty and Senora had seemed prepared for anything, and the backpack would be enough for now. She would make it work.
She’d been so close to them when Senora had said the words, but somehow, they’d missed her. It was all well and good; she was never getting into the car with them again. They were one of them, and they couldn’t be trusted. She’d already been slipping away and well behind them when Senora had opened the door and said the words that were still ringing in her ears.
Naomi is gone.
Now, if she could just get her feet to quit weighing her down and the voices to quit swirling in her head, that would make this bearable.
She snorted but didn’t manage a laugh. Bearable. There were bears in the woods, and there were bears in that house that wanted to take her. She’d gotten away from them three times now, four if she counted this time. Still, Senora had seemed so trustworthy and genuine. But when Jessica had rolled the window down a crack, she’d heard enough to know that Senora was one of them, and she couldn’t trust any of them. Jessica was better off trusting herself and no one else. She was going to find the nearest town and figure out where she was, and then she was going to go back to New Edmonton and get Evie. Matt wasn’t going to win this one.
She jogged on in silence, her breathing slower than usual. Sure it was from whatever drug Ty had given her, she ignored the extra slow breathing and the heavy, led-like feeling in her legs. The more she ran, the faster she’d work the drugs out of her system. She just had to push through it. Just push through it.
Naomi is gone.
Evie isn’t hers.
There’s a family in Spokane.
Matt didn’t marry her until two years ago.
How old is Evie?
How old is Evie!
HOW OLD IS EVIE?!
Jessica wanted to scream out, but she didn’t. The thoughts were there and her own voice, declaring something she didn’t believe about coincidences. Something so simple, yet she had no idea where it had come from.
Naomi.
Jessica reached up with her hands, grabbing fistfuls of hair and yanking, trying to pull the thoughts out of her head. She was Jessica, mother of Evie. Sweet Evie, who would be four in December. Her sweet, precious Evie. The child she’d given birth to and loved more than she’d loved herself.
Do you remember giving birth?
She didn’t remember. She didn’t have to remember. Evie was there, sweet and sassy as could be and every bit like Naomi.
Jessica, she corrected herself, moaning under her breath against the pictures that flashed throug
h her head. The deplorable, dog kennel conditions of her captors. The darkness and the light. The sterile, hospital feel and the little room that was all hers. The pictures of a woman that looked like her in another life, hiking in the forest with a black, curly-haired dog.
Curly-coated Retriever, she thought, and she knew it was right. But she’d never seen a dog like that. And her kidnappers had kept her in a dog kennel. In the dark.
She latched onto that image, but it faded, replaced again by the small but cozy room with the pictures on all the walls.
Naomi.
“My name is Jessica,” she whispered out loud in the darkness.
Were they coming for her? Would they assume she’d run directly across the street and into the tree line? Would that buy her some time when she’d snuck from the other side of the Jeep toward the house until the house was between her and Senora, and the window above her head was dark and high, like a bathroom window? She wouldn’t have been seen, and they wouldn’t think she would take the long way through the fog and into the woods on the bear’s property. And now, she was running in the dark as fast as she could without being able to see much, and she couldn’t hear anything but the sound of her own breathing and the manic, constant, intrusive thoughts that were plaguing her.
They weren’t the good guys. Ty was wrong. They had held her captive, and they’d battered her.
She tried to pull up the memory of the incident that had left her face bruised and swollen, but nothing would come.
Still running, she could see herself running as if she were in two places at once. The second place, the place of her memories, was superimposed over the shadows in front of her. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself turn to look over her shoulder, and before she could stop it, she ran full force into a tree. She was knocked off her feet and onto the ground, knocking the wind out of her. In the present, her body reacted to the image, breathing out so forcefully that it hurt.
They beat me, she insisted, and the image played again and again. No matter how much she denied it, each time she ran into the tree and came away with a busted lip, a black eye, and a swollen cheek.
You ran into a tree, Naomi, a voice inside her taunted. It was a tree. It was a tree. No one hit you; you ran into a tree, the voice sang. Jessica shoved her fingers into her ears, still running in the dark night.
Tears flowed down her face, and the eerie fog parted and swirled around her with each step. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She didn’t run into a tree. They hurt her. They kept her in a tiny little cage like a dog-
In a room with a large bed and the softest rug she’d ever felt beneath her bare feet.
The internal battle raged on, and she couldn’t stop it. There were flashes of her as Jessica, snuggling with Evie on the couch, then another flash of herself hiking down a trail in the woods, stopping to take a picture of a beautiful waterfall with her cell phone’s camera.
She didn’t know when she’d stopped running or when the world she was in at that very moment slipped away and left her wading in a sea of confusing memories. The images spun around her head, and she sat down hard in the damp grass, tears streaming unchecked down her face.
She didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. If you’d asked her the day before, she would have told you that Evie’s birth was quick and easy and that Evie had been the perfect baby. But when Jessica tried to pull the memories of that day up, she couldn’t remember the actual birth. She couldn’t even remember being pregnant.
Who forgot being pregnant?
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head miserably.
Evie was her child, and she wouldn’t stop until she found her and got her away from Matt. Even Senora agreed that Matt was dangerous and would be going to jail. Evie would need her mother, and Naomi was her mother.
Naomi? Jessica thought, realizing that even in her own musings, she’d called herself Naomi. How could that be? It wasn’t true. The bears were lying, and they’d convinced Ty and then Senora that Jessica was crazy and that she wasn’t the person that she thought she was. This whole time, Senora had been her champion, and now Jessica was alone and lost. She didn’t know what city she was in or even what state at this point. And she was out in the woods again, in the darkness, trying to find her way around in the dark.
She wanted to stand up, but the grief was too much. She wanted Evie, wanted to hold her snuggly little self in her arms and breathe the scent of the baby shampoo that Jessica still used, even though Evie was almost four. Jessica inhaled and choked on a soft, miserable sob. Her thoughts were scattered, and she felt completely and utterly broken.
Her memories were falling into place right now, with each one feeling more like a scene from a movie than her life. The terrifying images that she’d clung to had begun to fade away, and all she could remember was the fight with Matt and then the nice, quiet, sterile rooms of the Campus.
Jessica hugged herself, rocking back and forth as she keened in agony. It felt like her heart was ripping in two, and the voices in her head wouldn’t stop. She was losing her grasp on reality, and she felt like she would fly apart and explode at any second.
What had caused the fight? Why had she stepped away from the obedient, sweet wife she’d been for as long as she could remember and turned into a strong-minded, independent woman?
The picture. It was the picture that had done it. She closed her eyes, trying not to push too hard and shove the memory back into the vault she’d created to protect herself. The change in her hadn’t been from giving birth; it had been because of the picture.
She could almost see it: the white and yellow plumes of the duster as she quickly tidied up before Matt got home. Evie was asleep, and Jessica had forgotten to keep an eye on the cleaning lady that came once a week.
Jessica had paid the woman and sent her on her way when she walked by the shelf filled with family photos in ornate frames and noticed the layer of dust on the frames. She’d checked the time and decided that she needed to take care of the frames before Matt came home, and then she could change and greet him before she left for her afternoon jog.
She’d been in a hurry, and she’d knocked one of the frames down and onto the floor. She’d cringed, waiting for the ugly sound of breaking glass, but the glass had held firm on the soft carpeting. The back popped off, and the picture fell out as the frame tumbled a few times before coming to a stop. Quickly, Jessica bent down to retrieve the photo, then gently pulled what turned out to be two photographs apart.
Behind the photo that she’d walked by daily for more than a year was another picture she didn’t remember seeing. She flipped it over and read Matt’s familiar cursive, which was neater than any man’s handwriting that she’d seen.
Jessica Marie Baker and Evie Renae Baker
Evie’s date of birth was hastily written beneath the names. Jessica flipped the picture over again, a smile on her face as she held it close and peered at the tiny baby in the picture which had obviously been taken from across the room.
Jessica gasped when her eyes fell onto the face of the woman holding the baby just as the front door opened behind her.
She turned, her face stricken when her eyes met Matt’s.
“What are you doing?” Matt asked, face pinched with anger the instant he saw the picture.
“The frame fell, and the picture popped out with the other one. Matt, who is this woman?”
“That’s you,” he said, closing the distance between them in three quick, angry steps. “Who else would it be?”
Jessica shook her head.
“That’s not me,” she said.
“Jessica, you’re being silly,” Matt said, yanking the photo out of her hand and putting it into his suit pocket. “Have you eaten today? You look a little flushed.” He put his hand on her head as if to feel for a fever. “Are you feeling well?”
Jessica slapped his hand away.
“Who is she?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“Stop this!” Matt shriek
ed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Stop what you’re doing, Jessica. This is you with Evie on the day she was born. Who the hell else would it be, Naomi?”
Matt stopped, looking at her with eyes that were wide. She’d heard it; he’d called her another name. Jessica looked at him, then Evie had started calling out to her. Her little voice came through the monitor in a hushed whisper. She had heard them fighting, and she was scared.
“Mommy,” Evie called out into the monitor. “Mommy, I need you.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Jessica said. “You’re hiding something, and I’m not going to let your secrets tear this family apart. Evie deserves better than that, and so help me, Matt Baker, I love you.”
She turned and went up the stairs before he could say anything, scooping Evie up from her bed and twirling the little girl around until her sweet little giggles filled the room.
“Is daddy mad?” Evie had whispered into her ear, chubby toddler arms wrapped around Jessica’s neck.
“Daddy had a rough day at work,” Jessica lied. “So, we’re going to order pizza and have a movie night.”
Evie had smiled then, kissing Jessica on the cheek and declaring that she was the best mommy in the world, then climbing down from her arms and running to change into her favorite princess dress.
Jessica had been kidnapped two weeks later, and until tonight, she hadn’t even remembered the picture.
Naomi.
She tried the name out, her eyes still squeezed shut against the deluge of tears that wouldn’t seem to quit. This was a nightmare, and she knew that they were wrong. They were all wrong. Evie was her little girl, and she was Jessica Baker, mother, housewife, and survivor. They weren’t going to break her. She was going to escape this mess, and she was going to find her little girl to protect her from the monster who called himself a husband and a father.
She had to move. The longer she sat there, weeping, the more likely it was that they would find her. She couldn’t let them find her, even if she didn’t really understand who they were. She’d made a promise to Evie, and she wasn’t going to let her little girl down.
