by Dana Marton
Jess set the tissue box next to Kaylee and Zelda on the couch. “I’m going to make tea.”
She went back to the kitchen. She needed to keep moving. Maybe moving would keep the black hole of grief from finding her. She didn’t want to be sucked under. She wanted to stay strong and available for Zelda and Kaylee.
As she crossed the kitchen to the sink, Derek followed her, stopping at her elbow, and asking under his breath, “Do you think social services will get involved?”
Jess nearly dropped the pot she was filling.
Kaylee was under eighteen. Foster care?
“No way is Kaylee going to strangers,” she hissed. “Not for a single day. I don’t care if I have to kidnap her from the system.”
Derek didn’t argue. Misery tightened the skin around his eyes. His voice was laced with frustration and shock. “Hell of a thing is, Chuck and I talked about making me Kaylee’s guardian if anything happened to him. He brought it up once. I said sure. I mean, of course. She’s a great kid. But then it just never came up again.” His hand on the counter tightened into a fist. “I had a deadline, and I just forgot about it. At Chuck’s age . . . It didn’t seem like a likely thing, that it’d ever come up.”
Jess shut off the water as she turned to him. Chuck asked him? Zelda was Kaylee’s grandmother in every way that counted. But then, as the sound of Zelda’s quiet crying reached her, she got it. Yes, of course, Derek was the logical choice. Zelda was more than a decade older than Chuck. Nobody expected Chuck to pass first. And Derek was decades younger than Zelda.
Jess twisted toward the living room to ask what kind of tea they wanted and caught sight of Kaylee, frozen in the kitchen doorway, eyes wide, face tearstained, her tone on the edge of hysterical as she asked, “Is social services going to take me?”
Oh God, how much had she heard? Jess stepped toward her. “No, honey. No.”
Kaylee ran. She still had her boots and coat on. She ran straight out the door. A few seconds later, through the kitchen window, Jess saw her run into the sugar shack.
She set down the teapot and wiped her hands on her jeans. “I’ll go after her.”
Derek caught her by the elbow. “Give her a minute.” Then he said, “Let me call my attorney. She’s a shark in copyright law. I’m sure she has friends in family law. She’ll know someone who’ll help.”
He was pulling his cell phone from his pocket already.
As he began to talk, Jess went to Zelda who, for the first time, looked her age. She had collapsed into herself, her face crumpled. She was alternately shaking her head and burying her face in her hands.
Jess sat next to her and hugged and hugged her, until Zelda looked at her at last, teary-eyed and weak-voiced. “Where did Kaylee go?”
“The sugar shack.”
“She’s ours.” Zelda’s tone, her eyes, even the tilt of her chin, turned fierce. “Nobody is going to take her from us.”
“Nobody,” Jess promised.
“Oh God, Chuck.” Zelda crumpled again, and buried her face in her hands. A couple of seconds passed before she looked up, her face streaked with tears. She shook her head. “I thought we had time. I was so selfish. I was so stupid. I’m just a stupid old woman, aren’t I? Had the best thing, and I . . .” She shook her head. She couldn’t finish.
“You’re a woman who just lost the man she loved. Give yourself a break.”
Zelda’s gaze hung on Jess’s. “You think he knew I loved him?”
“Everybody did. And Chuck was no dummy.”
Zelda almost smiled. “No. He wasn’t. He was the best man I’d ever known. I don’t know how I’m going to live without him.”
Jess gave her another hug. “We’ll figure it out together.”
She stayed with Zelda while Derek kept making phone calls in the kitchen. Half an hour passed before she finally stood. She understood that Kaylee needed time alone. But she also needed to know that she wasn’t alone, and never would be. So as Jess stepped away from the couch, she said, “I’ll go sit with Kaylee for a while.”
“See if you can talk her into coming back in. Blood doesn’t make family, love does. We’re family in every way that counts. We need to be together.” Zelda’s tear-filled eyes went to Derek, who was on another call, explaining the situation to someone new on the other end. When Zelda’s gaze swung back to Jess, she said, “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”
Jess nodded, even if she couldn’t think about a relationship with Derek right now. Too much was going on. But she did acknowledge that she would have to think about Derek later.
She filled her lungs with crisp winter air as she stepped outside. The crows were gone from the trees. The smell of snow was in the air once again. The warm spell was over. As she walked toward the sugar shack, the dirt crunched under her boots. The mud of the yard had frozen.
She went in the front, but she couldn’t see Kaylee anywhere. Zak . . . somebody worked the vats. She couldn’t remember his last name. Her brain was numb.
“Where’s Kaylee?”
“Ran in the front, ran out the back. Everything OK?”
“Chuck passed away.” The words hurt.
Zak dropped the empty bucket he was holding. “Are you serious?” He sagged against a tower of buckets and knocked them over, caught himself before he fell with them. “When? What happened?”
“A couple of hours ago. He had a massive stroke at the hospital.”
Zak gaped, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t believe it. What can I do? Do you want me to pass the word?”
“If you don’t mind.” Jess probably should be doing that, but she wanted to be with Kaylee and Zelda. And what else should she say—No, keep it a secret? There’d be others coming and going from the sugar shack. Whether she wanted it to or not, the news would spread. Most of Taylorville would know in an hour.
She’d send an employee e-mail tonight, something official. When she had the funeral details, she’d call the obituary into the Taylorville Times. Pain cut through her. Oh God, Chuck.
“Did he suffer?” Zak asked, pale.
“He died in an instant.”
Zak asked a few more questions, about how Zelda was doing, about what he could do to help with the sugaring. He kept trailing off, dazed, kept shaking his head, as if he couldn’t believe or accept the sad news. Finally, he collapsed onto a plastic chair.
“Thank you for holding down the fort, Zak.” Jess put a hand on his shoulder before going through the back door after Kaylee. The temperature was dropping outside. She wanted to make sure that Kaylee wasn’t freezing out there.
Except, Kaylee wasn’t sitting on the loading dock.
Jess scrutinized the woods on the left and the fallow field on the right. The log home Chuck had built four decades ago stood on the other side of the fields. For the first years he’d worked for Taylor’s Sugar House, he’d made a deal with Jess’s grandfather to take less money, but put his pay toward a piece of land.
Jess had been over there a million times when she’d been a kid. Back then, Chuck used to breed terriers as a hobby. He’d almost always had puppies, a source of endless fascination for Jess and Derek.
Maybe they could adopt a puppy for Kaylee, Jess thought as she walked. A terrier in honor of her grandfather.
The lights were off in the house. The door wasn’t locked. Nobody around these parts bothered.
Jess knocked before she stepped inside, expecting to find Kaylee sitting, crying in the dark, but the living room stood empty. “Kaylee?”
Jess walked into the kitchen. She even checked the laundry and bathroom. The house was a little messy, but not bad—about what you’d expect from a place where a bachelor and a teenager lived. Piles of magazines and junk mail towered here and there, some dirty dishes in the sink, too many shoes by the front door instead of put away.
“Kaylee?” Jess called up the stairs.
When no response came, she ran up. She stopped in front of the girl’s closed bedroom door and leaned her
forehead against the wood. “Hey. Let’s go back. Zelda’s a mess. We should all be together. Derek’s calling his lawyer. You’re not going anywhere, I swear. We wouldn’t let you. You think some little old CPS lady can get through Derek? No way.”
She told Kaylee how it would be, tried to paint a picture of how they would be a family. She would be loved, Jess promised. But Kaylee wouldn’t talk to her.
Jess knocked on the door, then pushed it open. “Hey.” But she was talking to the empty bed. Kaylee wasn’t in there.
Probably in her grandfather’s room.
Jess checked. Nothing. The guest room and the bathroom also stood empty.
She heard a noise downstairs, so she went back down. “Kaylee. Let’s talk.”
Nobody responded. Jess stood still in the middle of the living room for a couple of seconds. The house felt unoccupied. Kaylee hadn’t come home.
Where did she go?
Jess opened the front door and looked toward the trees. Had Kaylee, in her grief, run blindly into the woods?
The crows were back in the trees. A gust of wind blew over the open field, making Jess shiver. The threat of danger hung in the air, almost like a physical presence.
Jess shook off the fantastical thought and focused on the practical. Did Kaylee have her gloves and hat in her pockets? She hadn’t been wearing them earlier. But the weather outside was too cold to be out there too long without full protection.
As Jess stepped forward, a scrap of paper half tucked under the doormat caught her eye. That wasn’t there earlier. Her instincts prickled. The little hairs stood up at the back of her neck. Nothing about the white scrap was in any way threatening, but unease filled her as she bent down, reluctant to touch the little slip.
She picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it. The single sentence—in the angular handwriting of a man, all capital letters—had the power to stop her heart.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GIRL.
Blood rushed in Jess’s ears. Every muscle in her body drew tight as she shoved the note into her pocket to keep her hands free and ready to fight. Except, there was nobody there.
She desperately scanned the landscape. Oh God. Not Kaylee. Bile rose in her throat. Talk how? She yanked the note back out. Where the hell was the damn phone number?
But then she caught a shadow at the edge of the woods in the twilight, just a few steps in from the edge of the forest, right below where the crows gathered. She couldn’t see the man’s face. Was he wearing a mask?
The world spun with Jess. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Nausea rolled in her stomach. The note dropped from her hand, and the wind immediately swept it away.
The man stepped back. Then another step and another, until she could no longer see him. The bushes had no leaves yet, but the jumble of branches hid him anyway. At a little past four o’clock in winter, dusk was already dimming the light.
She couldn’t lose sight of him.
“No! Wait!”
Jess ran.
Chapter Twenty-One
DEREK MADE COFFEE and poured himself a cup. He found some soothing lavender tea and steeped some for Zelda, then went to sit with her.
She stared at the black TV screen, rocking herself, still in shock.
“What can I do to help?” he asked as he handed her the steaming mug.
She looked at him as if he was crazy. As if there was no help. She was probably right. But the idea that he could do nothing didn’t sit well with the SEAL in him.
“I talked to my lawyer. She hooked me up with a family lawyer. The family lawyer is flying out from New York first thing in the morning. Her firm has an office in Burlington, so they have people who are licensed to work in the state.”
The lawyer was probably going to cost him half his royalties on the new book, but he didn’t care. He’d gladly give all the money he had to give Kaylee a sense of stability, of family.
“Thank you. Chuck would want Kaylee with us. I was a young single mother when we met, you know,” Zelda said. “Chuck was in his twenties. I was in my thirties. I thought he was so young. Yet more mature than my husband had ever been. Chuck raised himself, with a lot of hard work.”
She began telling stories about the old days, some of which Derek had already heard, and some that were new to him. Half an hour passed before he said, “I wonder how Kaylee is doing.”
He pulled his phone and texted Jess. Everything OK?
She didn’t respond.
He didn’t worry. They were in the sugar shack. If Kaylee was sobbing in Jess’s arms, Jess wouldn’t pick up the phone. They’d come in when they were ready.
Then another half an hour passed, and they still hadn’t returned, so Derek said to Zelda, “I’ll go and check on them.”
“Good.” Zelda stood too. “We all need to eat something. We have to be strong and be there for Kaylee. And she can’t be skipping meals either.”
Zelda was a cook at heart; she healed in her kitchen, with the food she made with her two hands. Making something would help her to feel better.
“I’ll get them.” Derek grabbed his coat and ran out to the sugar shack.
Zak was testing the sugar content, looking up as Derek walked in. “Holding at five percent. Chuck would be happy.” But the guy’s expression was stricken.
Derek paused. “We have to make sure we put a bottle in the coffin with him. Could you make sure we have that ready when the time comes?”
A sad smile popped onto Zak’s face. “Chuck would like that.”
“Jess and Kaylee?”
Zak nodded toward the back door.
Derek walked through. When he didn’t find them on the loading dock, he figured they’d gone over to Chuck’s place. The lights were on. He sent another text. Want me to drive around and get you?
That way they wouldn’t have to walk back across in the cold.
A minute ticked by. When Jess didn’t respond, Derek strode across the frozen field. His instincts prickled stronger and stronger, until he broke into a run.
“Jess!” he shouted for her even before he reached the house. He bounded through the front door. “Jess! Kaylee!”
He had the place searched in under three minutes.
Empty.
They’d left the sugar shack and made it here—that the lights were on told him that much. But then what? How could they disappear? No way they’d gone for a walk in the cold, in the falling darkness.
Everything in him screamed that they’d been taken. If not, where could have they gone? Jess’s rental had been in the driveway when he’d left Zelda. Chuck’s pickup, which Kaylee usually borrowed if she had to go somewhere, was still in front of the sugar shack.
Derek grabbed his phone and dialed the police station. “I’d like to file two missing persons reports.”
If it turned out to be a false alarm, he was willing to be embarrassed.
“You need to come into the station, sir,” the dispatcher said.
“I don’t have the time. Could you please put the sheriff on the line? This is Derek Daley.”
Whether because Derek was a local celebrity or not, the dispatcher put him through without argument.
“Sheriff Rollins.” If the sheriff looked a hundred, he sounded a hundred and ten.
“Derek Daley. Kaylee Hernandez and Jess Taylor are missing. You need to put out an APB and start looking.”
The sheriff hesitated. Then again, he hesitated over everything these days. “When was the last time they were seen?”
“An hour ago.”
Silence on the other end, several seconds of it before the sheriff said, “I heard about Chuck. A damn good man. Shame to lose him that young.”
“I think Kaylee and Jess were taken.”
“Could be they’re holed up somewhere, crying. That’d be my first guess. You know womenfolk.”
“I think it’s the wood-chipper killer.”
“Derek . . .” The sheriff’s voice was infused with patience. “Jess’s ideas about a serial kille
r, they’re just that. Her way of coping with the past. Hannah Wilson was a one-off. We still don’t know what happened to her. But we have no reason to believe there’s a serial killer on the prowl. None.”
“Whoever kidnapped Jess and me ten years ago talked about a wood chipper.”
“And Jess said that in several interviews at the time. Could be Hannah Wilson’s killer got the idea from there.”
“Jess and Kaylee are missing.”
“They’ll be back by dinner. If not, come in tomorrow morning and we’ll file a missing persons report. We won’t wait for the full twenty-four hours, all right? Best I can do.”
“Thanks.” Derek hung up. Shit.
He ran for the Taylor house. He needed to tell Zelda something. But how much more could Zelda take tonight?
Linda Fischer’s red Ford Fiesta was in the driveway. Linda was the neighbor Zelda had been helping with the wedding quilt. She must have heard about Chuck. As Derek watched, other cars were arriving.
At the end, he didn’t go inside. He sent Zelda a text. We’ll be a while.
Her friends would be with her—all good women. They would take care of her tonight. She didn’t need the extra worry right now.
Derek jumped into his own truck and unlocked the glove compartment, withdrew his SIG, and shoved the handgun into the back of his waistband. Next he reached behind his seat, pulled out a sturdy metal flashlight, and clipped it on his belt. Then off he went, back to the sugar shack, to Zak.
“I can’t find Kaylee and Jess anywhere. I think they might have gone into the sugar bush. Do you still have those squatch-cams up? How does that work?”
Zak was the vice president of the Versquatchers, Chuck’s second.
“Over a hundred cameras. Every new member has to donate a camera to the club as an entry requirement. Each member is responsible for checking his or her camera once a week. Then if someone has something, they report at the monthly meeting. But usually sooner. We just post the footage in our private Facebook group.”
“Motion sensor? Night-vision cams?”
“Sure. The sasquatch move at dusk and dawn for the most.”
“Call in the Versquatchers.”
