Count to Three

by T. R. Ragan

  God, how Dani missed the feel and smell of her, and talking to her, holding her, teaching her about the world.

  Dani pulled down the picture, sank slowly to the ground, her back against the wall as she slid downward, and kissed the tip of Tinsley’s paper nose. The tears came at once, flowing freely down her cheeks and off her chin.

  It had been a long time since she’d had a good cry. She welcomed the release.

  After a moment, she wiped away the tears and took a breath. Her gaze fell on a dusty bin to her left. The label, written in her own handwriting, read PHOTO ALBUMS. She flipped open the lid, hoping to find photos of her and Tinsley that she could frame. Instead of photo albums, though, she found an old jar filled to the brim with pennies and a scrapbook from Dani’s childhood. Some of Matthew’s stuff was inside the bin too. Like the track-and-field medals he’d won during high school. There were also a couple of yearbooks. At the very bottom of the bin was a pile of RAYTEX Annual Employee Reports.

  RAYTEX was a tech company based in Sacramento that helped small businesses get connected, and where Matthew still worked. She pulled the reports from the box. What had started out as a simple trifold brochure had grown over the years into slim, saddle-stitched booklets with multiple pages and an eye-catching design.

  She riffled through the booklets, stopping at the one dated a week before Tinsley went missing. The first page was a message from the CEO, talking about the new start-ups that had benefited from RAYTEX’s help. Next came information about what was happening in their city, along with the best conferences and tech meetups to attend. She flipped the page, surprised to see a two-page layout that was basically a collage of pictures beneath the header RAYTEX EMPLOYEES ARE FAMILY.

  Every year, RAYTEX held a picnic for its employees and their families. It made sense she wouldn’t have seen the booklet, considering everything going on at the time.

  The photo that grabbed her attention first was the one front and center. There were four people—Dani, Matthew, Becca, and Todd. She and Matthew used to hang out with Becca and her husband, Todd. The four of them had joined a bowling league and used to get together every few weeks to play mah-jongg.

  A twinge of sadness swept over her. Dani and Becca used to talk every day, but since Tinsley’s disappearance, they had talked only a handful of times. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Dani had only one thing on her mind after Tinsley was gone. Conversation became awkward. They both had moved on, gracefully and without guilt.

  There were truly no words to express what it felt like to lose a child.

  Dani still held on to hope that Tinsley was alive. She often imagined the homecoming, a surreal moment when she would see her daughter again. She imagined Tinsley would appear as an apparition right up until the moment Dani wrapped her arms fully around her. Only then would an overwhelming peace settle within and blanket her with joy.

  She sighed. For now, all she felt was loss—an empty black void.

  All those hopeful expectations for the future, gone in a flash. It was still, after all this time, impossible to make sense of what had happened. Dani’s world had truly been turned upside down, her hopes and dreams broken, tossed away, destroyed.

  Some of the pictures in the collage were so small and grainy it was hard to tell who was who. Her gaze settled on a group picture taken of everyone who had attended the picnic. She scanned the faces, looking for Matthew, finally spotting him in the background, talking to a woman. At first Dani thought it was herself he was chatting with, but the woman had on a summer dress, while Dani had been wearing a green blouse and white shorts.

  The woman who picked up Tinsley could have been your twin.

  That’s what Tinsley’s teacher had told Dani five years ago.

  She looked at the picture again, staring for so long at the woman talking to Matthew her eyes began to water. Leaning her head back against the wall, she inwardly scolded herself for being so quick to assume the woman might have anything to do with Tinsley’s disappearance.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d thought she spotted Tinsley’s abductor. She saw the woman everywhere, pushing her cart through the produce section at the grocery store, in line at the post office, working the register at Macy’s department store. All this time, and she still couldn’t get the woman out of her head.

  Maybe Matthew was right about her being so obsessed with finding Tinsley alive she would never be able to accept evidence to the contrary.

  And yet . . .

  She held tight to the booklet as she pushed herself to her feet and headed upstairs. Back at her desk, she opened the Annual Employee Report and used her magnifying glass to get a better look. She recognized the outfit Matthew was wearing, remembered picking it out for him. The woman, on the other hand, did not look familiar, which was strange considering Matthew’s department at the time had consisted of about twenty people. Back then, she had known every single one of them. Maybe the woman was someone’s wife or girlfriend whom she hadn’t met.

  The woman wasn’t the only one Dani saw everywhere she went. She saw Tinsley too. Over the years, whenever someone spotted a girl who fit Tinsley’s description and left a comment on the website Matthew had made to keep the community informed about Tinsley’s case, she’d gotten her hopes up.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Matthew would tell her. But she always got too excited. It didn’t matter where some random person said Tinsley had been spotted, Dani would seek out the person who’d commented and question them personally. She’d made a trip to New York City once and staked out an apartment where the person said he’d seen Tinsley. Five days later, Dani saw the girl exit the apartment. The only resemblance to Tinsley was hair color and height.

  Since that time, she’d become much more fastidious when it came to following a lead. It was one thing to be hopeful and quite another to spend thousands of dollars to follow a likely dead end.

  Again, Dani stared at the picture of Matthew and the woman before finally moving the magnifying glass over the other pictures, hoping to find Tinsley. The memories brought her back to a time when she had been so sure she and Matthew would spend a lifetime together. Like most marriages, things weren’t always perfect. But she’d been content. They’d had a beautiful daughter and a nice home. Matthew had loved his job.

  After Tinsley was born, Matthew had worked more and more, and although Dani could remember feeling lonely at times, Tinsley had kept her busy. Dani and Matthew had hardly ever argued back then, and maybe that should have been a warning. They hadn’t argued because they hardly saw one another. She had thought they were both happy. But then Tinsley had been taken, and their marriage had toppled like a house made of sticks.

  Looking through the magnifying glass, Dani spotted the mystery woman in another picture. She was working a booth, sitting on a bench and painting a little girl’s face—Tinsley’s face.

  A sudden coldness hit at Dani’s core. She shivered.

  Who was she?

  She could ask Matthew, but he wasn’t good with names and probably wouldn’t remember. Even if he did recall, he would most likely get angry with Dani for obsessing over the case after Kyle Harmon’s confession.

  Mimi Foster.

  Mimi had been at RAYTEX since Matthew was first hired. If this woman was still at RAYTEX, she would remember.

  Breathless, Dani looked through her contacts and found a number for RAYTEX. She called the number and waited for someone to answer.

  “RAYTEX. How can I help you?”

  “Hello. This is Dani Callahan calling. I would like to talk to Mimi Foster, please.”

  “Thank you. Transferring your call now.”

  After a few rings, another voice came on the line and said hello. It was strange to hear Mimi’s voice after all these years. “Hello, Mimi. It’s Dani Callahan. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  “Talk about a blast from the past,” Mimi said. “It’s always a good time to hear your voice. How are you?”

  “I’m do
ing okay. How about you?”

  “Henry and I are getting ready to head to the Bahamas next week for a much-needed break, so I am doing spectacular.” She laughed.

  “I’m glad,” Dani said.

  “You should come to the office sometime and say hello to everyone. We all miss you.”

  “I don’t think Matthew and Carole would approve,” Dani said.

  “No comment.”

  That made Dani smile. She knew Carole tended to be pushy and opinionated, which got on people’s nerves. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Well, I was looking through an old bin, and I found a pile of the Annual Employee Reports, including the one printed just before Tinsley disappeared. It looks like pictures were taken at the last RAYTEX picnic I attended at McKinley Park.”

  “Okay.”

  “Someone made a collage of the pictures, and there’s a woman I don’t recognize in two of the photos. In one of them she appears to be talking with Matthew. At first I thought the woman was me—same height, hair color, body shape—but it’s clearly not. I don’t remember meeting her at the picnic or at any other time, and I was hoping you might be able to put a name to the face.”

  “I’ll be happy to take a look,” Mimi said.

  “If you give me your email address, I can scan the page in the booklet and email it to you. Will that work?”

  “That would be fine,” Mimi said before giving her an email. “Send it over.”

  “I’d like to keep this between you and me, if that’s okay,” Dani added, worried that Matthew might get upset if he knew what she was up to.

  “I understand.”

  Once the call ended, Dani sat quietly for a moment. All she could hear was Matthew’s voice. It’s over. Time to move on. Let it go.

  She would do no such thing, she thought as she came to her feet and took the booklet to the scanner.

  Hope was all she had. Hope was what kept her going.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ali Cross woke up in an unfamiliar bed, sitting upright, propped against a wall of pillows. Her eyelids felt heavy—so heavy it took a tremendous amount of effort to keep her eyes open. When she attempted to move, an excruciating jolt of agonizing pain zipped through her lower half. Eyes clamped shut, she gritted her teeth until the pain subsided.

  How long had she been in this bed? An image of her captor hitting her with a baton flashed through her mind’s eye. Lifting the blanket, she saw that her right foot had been wrapped with clean white cloth and secured with adhesive tape. Her left foot had some bruising, but she could move her toes and turn her ankle from one side to the other.

  “You’re awake!”

  Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice. He stood beneath the doorframe, holding a tray of food and looking chipper despite the gauze and tape covering his bad eye. She hoped she had blinded him. She wanted to shout at him, tell him he was insane and needed help. Instead she said, “Please let me go.”

  “Never. The sooner you grasp that reality, the better off you’ll be.”

  “What did you do to my leg? If I’m bleeding internally, I could die. You need to get me to the hospital as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re not bleeding internally. Your ankle is definitely fractured, maybe even broken. It might take a few months to heal, but you’ll be fine.” He smiled as he came into the room and set the tray on a long bench at the end of the bed. “It was your fault it came to this, not mine. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen. Anyway, the swelling and pain could worsen over time, but it won’t kill you. What it will do,” he said with raised brows, “is stop you from trying to escape. You’re lucky I have enough pain pills to get you through the worst of it.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you hungry?”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m going to count to three. If you can’t be reasonable and talk to me like a grown-up, I’ll take the food back to the kitchen. One . . .”

  She could smell the food from here. Her stomach grumbled. “Yes,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

  He picked up the tray and brought it to the bed, making sure the wood legs rested on the mattress and not on her lap. Next, he picked up the neatly folded cloth napkin and laid it over her chest. She tried not to cringe when his knuckles brushed against her collarbone. He pulled a water bottle from his back pocket, unscrewed the plastic lid, and handed it to her. While she guzzled the water, he pulled the plastic wrap from around the top of the glass of orange juice. Straightening, he asked if she would like coffee.

  She shook her head.

  “I need words. One . . . two . . .”

  “No, thank you,” she said through gritted teeth. Coffee sounded good, but she wanted him to leave her alone. Unfortunately he grabbed the wooden chair with a leather padded seat from the corner of the room, dragged it over to the side of the bed, and sat down.

  “You’re going to watch me eat?” she asked.

  “I have a few questions for you.”

  She did her best to ignore him, to pretend he wasn’t there, as she picked up the fork and cut into the omelet. There were mushrooms and cheese inside. It tasted good. She wished he’d brought pancakes too.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  She took her time chewing and swallowing, using it as an excuse not to answer right away. Then she said, “No.”

  He stared at her, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Don’t lie to me. What about Dylan Rushdan?”

  She was lying. But how could he possibly know about Dylan? Nobody knew about her and Dylan. Not even her mother. She and Dylan had known each other since grammar school. Until recently they were best friends, but everything changed after Dylan kissed her and confessed his love for her. In that moment, she realized she’d always loved him. It had been one of the happiest moments of her life. If she told him the truth, though, she worried he might go after Dylan. “Dylan is not my boyfriend.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who is he, then?”

  “One of my very best friends,” she said, trying her best to sound natural. “I’ve known him since the second grade.”

  She noticed his shoulders relax. Thank God.

  “I have to admit that makes me happy to hear.”

  She said nothing, wishing he would go away.

  “I am sorry about your foot. It’s true what I said before about it being your fault, but still, I never even considered you might break a window to get away. I’m not a monster.”

  You’re the worst kind of monster, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “The window has been fixed. I had a security bar placed on the window too.”

  How could that be? She hadn’t heard a thing. “When were they here?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know . . . three days ago, I guess.” He shook his head. “Time really does fly.”

  She swallowed hard, and for the first time, now that the grogginess was wearing off and she’d eaten something, it dawned on her that her clothes had been replaced with a cotton nightshirt. Had she been knocked out for three days?

  “You were delirious at times,” he said, seeming to take note of her sudden worry. “I admit, I started to grow concerned when all you did for the first twenty-four hours was moan and groan and cry out in pain, even in your sleep. Nothing quieted you until I finally doubled the number of pills I gave you.”

  She didn’t remember any of it.

  He raked his hands through his hair. “I crushed the pills and put them in your water, but it wasn’t easy, getting you to drink it. Once I managed, though, you were out cold in a flash.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis, startling her.

  “I changed your clothes,” he went on as if he’d done something heroic, “and cleaned you up every time you filled up the inflatable bedpan. There’s a bathroom, of course,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder to a closed door, “but every time I tried to move you, you howled like a coyote with its foot in a trap.”

  The thought of him stripping
her clothes from her body, seeing her naked, touching her, washing her, made her feel nauseous. She set her fork on the tray. She couldn’t look at him. Didn’t dare.

  “I’m not some sort of disgusting pervert,” he said, again seeming to know exactly what she was thinking. “I would never take advantage of you in that way.”

  That’s exactly what he had done!

  “Of course,” he went on, “after we’ve gotten to know each other better and you’ve met my mom, we can talk about taking our relationship to the next level.”

  Her stomach churned, but still, the prospect of someone coming to the house, someone she might be able to convince to let her go, made her feel a little better. “Is your mom coming here?”

  “Of course. She’s dying to meet you. It’s all she talks about when I call her.”

  “When?” she blurted, trying to hide her excitement and failing miserably. “When is she coming?”

  “Calm down,” he said with a laugh. “She’ll be here in two weeks. I had no idea you would react this way. My last girlfriend was very upset when I talked about my mom coming to visit.”

  “What happened to your girlfriend?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long did you date? Did she break up with you?”

  “Of course not. I broke things off because she was too demanding. She was exhausting.”

  Ali wasn’t sure she believed he’d ever had a girlfriend. And if he had, she couldn’t imagine he was the one who’d broken things off. But she let it go because she wanted to know more about his mother so she could prepare for the visit. “What have you told your mom about me?”

  His gaze settled on hers, his eyelids heavy, a look that spoke of intimacy. Chills crawled up her arms and legs.

  “She knows that you have bright-green eyes, a smattering of freckles, and full lips. Most importantly, based on everything I told her, she is confident, as am I, that the two of us will make beautiful grandchildren to entertain her in her old age.”

  Bile threatened to come forth. “I’ve already decided I will never have children. There are too many things I want to do, places I want to see.” Another lie. But one she would cling to.