“Is it a real gun?”
Gilly looked down into Zoe’s upturned face.
“Yes.”
“Why is she shooting at us?”
“You see where we have these scratches?” Gilly tapped the angry red lines on Zoe’s forearm.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, sometimes people get their brains hurt, and it makes them do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
“They get scratches on their brain?”
“Sort of like that.”
“I wish I would have done what Daddy said.”
“What did he say?”
“That if a stranger comed up to me, I haf to yell my head off, but the lady said she was Mommy’s friend. We were going to see her.”
“That’s why you got in the car?”
“Yes.” A beat. “The lady lied.”
“Yes, she did.”
Zoe toyed with the button on Gilly’s shirt. Tears brimmed in her eyes and spilled, making fresh tracks through the history of tears that had already dried on her cheeks. “She threw away my skirt with butterflies on it.”
“Maybe we can get it back.”
“She gived me shots, too, and it hurt.”
“I know, baby. I’m so sorry.” Gilly loosened a corner of her shirt and wiped Zoe’s face, under her nose, pushing away her anger. It was useless now.
“She said it was medicine to make me feel better, but it didn’t. It made me dizzy. I threw up in the bed, and she wouldn’t let me go to the potty, and I wet myself, and I smell bad.” The words broke on Zoe’s sobs of remembered terror and current humiliation, and Gilly gathered her more closely to her breast, murmuring comfort. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And she waited to hear it, any second, the sound of Liz coming through the woods. But there was no sound of that. Liz didn’t appear, although she must have heard Zoe crying. Where was she? Could she have left? But Gilly would have heard the truck, as close as they still were to the house.
Zoe’s sobs subsided into tired hiccups. She laid her head down again on Gilly’s chest, and Gilly stroked her hair. “There was once a king . . .” She began the opening line of the fairy tale Zoe loved so much, and Zoe sighed.
Gilly came to herself with a start, looking around wildly. The trees loomed overhead; moonlight silvered their branches. She had heard someone—a man—shout, or had it been a dream? Zoe was still stuporous against her chest, but Gilly’s head felt clearer, as if the morphine had finally worn off. She must have dozed, but for how long? The last thing she remembered was beginning the fairy tale. She shifted uncomfortably. Her body, her arms and legs especially, felt weighted with exhaustion, and her mouth was drier than dirt. She needed to get up and get herself and Zoe out of here. But how? No way could Zoe walk far under her own power. She would have to be carried. Gilly pulled Zoe’s hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. She said her name. “Zoe? Can you wake up?”
“Are we going home now?”
“We’re going to try. Do you think you can walk a little way, and when you get tired, I’ll carry you? We’ll have to go through the woods until we find the road—”
“What if the eyeball-eating monsters get us?”
“I won’t let them,” Gilly said.
“Maybe they ate the bad lady.”
“That is a thought,” Gilly said.
“Can we go to the calf and eat pancakes after we find the road?”
“Do you mean the café? Cricket’s?” Gilly asked, smiling down at Zoe.
“Next you were going to make a g’raffe, you said. Will you?”
“Yes,” Gilly said. “We’ll go there, and I will make you a giraffe pancake with blueberry eyes and a chocolate chip nose. How about that?”
“Promise?”
Gilly was on the verge of it, making that promise, when the gunshot sounded. She clutched Zoe to her, worked her way to her feet, ready to run deeper into the woods. But now she saw lights. Sparks of red and blue flashed through the trees. She heard voices, men’s voices. One in particular rose above the others, shouting, “Zoe? Where are you?”
Her head came off Gilly’s shoulder. “Daddy?”
Gilly waited, hardly daring to believe it, but then he was there. She thought—believed with her whole heart—it was Jake, in the flesh, coming toward them.
27
Daddy! Daddy!”
He heard Zoe calling, and he ran, breakneck, mindless, swinging the beam of the flashlight Clint had given him across his path. On catching sight of Zoe, seeing her in Gilly’s arms, he staggered, weak from relief, an engulfing wave of jubilation. Gilly set Zoe on her feet, and he went to his knees, gathering her tightly against him, burying his face in her neck. “Boy, am I glad to see you.” Tears wet his face. He couldn’t stop them.
Standing back, Zoe touched his cheeks. “You’re crying, Daddy.” Her own blue eyes filled and brimmed over.
“It’s because I’m so happy to see you.” Setting the flashlight on the ground, he pulled her back against his chest, reveling in the warm, living, breathing sense of her. He would never let her out of his sight again. It was impossible, he knew that, but he made the promise to himself anyway. “Are you okay? Did she hurt you?” He stood Zoe out of his embrace, looking her over.
“Miss Gilly got me away, Daddy. The bad woman had a gun. She shot at us—” Zoe’s voice broke, and she was trembling.
“It’s all right now, ZooRoo.” He wrapped her in his arms again. “Captain Mackie and some other policemen are taking her to jail.” Jake glanced up at Gilly. “Thank you,” he said, and it was hard pushing the words, small and so inadequate, through the narrowed channel of his throat.
“I’m glad you found us.” In the flashlight’s glow, Gilly’s eyes, too, were shimmery with tears. “I didn’t know how we were going to get out of here.”
“I’m so sorry you got pulled into this.”
“Well, I kind of asked for it.”
“The dream.”
“Yeah. And for once it worked—sort of.” She smiled again.
“It took me a bit, but when I figured out it was Karen’s house you’d described—”
“Karen? I thought her name was Liz.”
“Elizabeth is her middle name.”
“Ah, yes. She did say something about going by Liz.” Gilly’s hand settled gently on the crown of Zoe’s head. “Well, this little one is very brave.”
Jake’s eyes teared again. He pulled Zoe to him. “What do you say, ZooRoo, you ready to go home?”
She nodded against his neck.
He scooped her into his arms, and together with Gilly, they walked back toward the Clayton house, brightly lit now in the glare of headlights from a half dozen emergency vehicles.
It turned out they didn’t get home until the following day, Sunday.
While Zoe’s vitals checked out within normal range at the scene, the paramedics, and Zoe’s pediatrician, whom they contacted, wanted her transported to Wyatt General for a thorough examination. They kept her there overnight, rehydrating her and monitoring her for any sign of trouble from the morphine she’d been given.
Jake’s mom came with a shopping bag, and Jake grinned, seeing her peep into the room. She looked from Zoe, lying in the small bed, blissfully unaware, to Jake, where he was stretched out in an uncomfortable orange cushioned chair.
“She’s asleep?” His mom mouthed her query.
He nodded and went to join her in the hall.
“I went by your house.” She opened the sack. “I’ve brought her some pajamas and clean clothes to wear home, her hairbrush, your toothbrushes. They’ll release her tomorrow? She’s really okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s fine, or she will be.”
Setting the sack down, his mom wrapped her arm around his waist. “Thank God.”
“The doc said the effects from the morphine won’t entirely wear off for twenty-four hours, and we don’t know the last time Karen injected her.”
“Did anybody ask Karen?”
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“She claims she doesn’t remember. She shot herself up with it, too, and Gilly.”
“Is Gilly here?”
“No. The paramedics wanted her to get checked out, but she refused. She went with the detective who’s working her husband’s murder case, Carl Bowen—”
His mother frowned, and Jake told her what he’d heard about Warren Jester from Clint—who’d heard it from Detective Bowen—that Jester had been spooked when he’d heard the news story about Gilly being the psychic hired by Jake to find his daughter. “According to what Jester told his sister, he’s been scared ever since the night he shot Gilly’s husband that she was going to ID him somehow, either because she was there and saw him, or through a dream, or one of her visions, but it was seeing her photo and hearing the story about Zoe on the news that put him over the edge. He figured he had to do something, stop her somehow.”
“The police don’t know where he is? Are they looking out for her?”
“I think that’s why Bowen’s here,” Jake said, although he thought it was more than that. He’d seen how Bowen looked at Gilly. Jake thought he should be grateful to the detective. It meant Bowen would stay on his toes. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Gilly. “I feel bad Jester found her because of the situation with Zoe.”
“You couldn’t have known. It’s just one of those unfortunate things. Life can be so strange.”
Jake hooted softly.
His mom looked up at him, searching his gaze. “Are you all right?”
He knew what she was asking. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s like somebody took a boulder off my chest, and I can breathe. I don’t want to let Zoe out of my sight, though, and I know I’m going to have to.”
“We’ll both have to work on that. I was thinking of asking if I could move in with you, sleep in the hallway outside her door.”
Jake laughed, not hard, or long, but it felt good. “Might not be a wide enough fit for both of us.”
A beat.
“I thought I would be mad as hell.”
His mom looked at him, brows raised.
“When Zoe was missing, when I had to face it that some stranger had her, I wanted to kill whoever it was. I imagined it. Strangling them with my bare hands. But when it all went down at Karen’s house, there I was, sitting with my arm around her. She was so pathetic, Mom.”
“If only she’d gotten help when you were teenagers—”
“She blames me for how the baby was born in a mental hospital. She thinks if it had been a real hospital—maybe she’s right, Ma. If I’d been there for her, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered, Jake. The baby had died some time before they induced labor.”
“How do you know?”
“I had a friend, a nurse who worked at the hospital. She told me. It happens sometimes when a girl is very young.”
Jake stared into the middle distance, not comforted. He thought he would always feel responsible now.
“I remember feeling so frustrated then, with her and with her parents. Karen’s issues, her emotions, the attachment she had to you—it was over the top. The times I tried to talk to her mother, she was as bad as Karen, going on about a wedding and grandchildren. That is not what your dad and I wanted for you. Not at eighteen.”
“I had it bad for her, too.”
“Yes, but you woke up. You saw that the relationship wasn’t healthy. You two weren’t bringing out the best in each other.”
“It was too late.”
“You aren’t to blame, Jake.”
“She hates me, truly hates me. It’s hard to take, that kind of hate.”
“Oh, honey.” His mom took his hand. “I could say that’s not your burden to bear either. I could say she’s projecting, but I know you aren’t ready to hear that any more than I am ready to forgive her for the pain she’s caused you and Zoe.” Giving his hand a bit of a shake before releasing it, she said, “I guess we’ll have to work on it.”
“I really hope never to see her again.”
“How would you? Unless there’s a trial—”
“According to Clint, she doesn’t even want an attorney.”
“That’s—I guess she’ll end up back at the state hospital then, or maybe she has better insurance now.”
Jake didn’t answer. What was there he could say?
“I had to dodge a bunch of reporters outside the hospital,” his mom said after a moment.
“I gave them a statement and asked if they’d leave Zoe alone,” Jake said. “I don’t want them questioning her. It’s going to be hard enough for her to talk to Clint.”
“What has her doctor said about the morphine? Any lasting effects?”
“He seems to think it might be good in the long run, that it’ll blank out her memory, or the way she remembers—it might just seem to her as if she took a long nap.”
“When I think—if it had gone on any longer—” His mom’s voice was rough. She cleared her throat. “Thank God for Gilly and her dream.”
“Yes,” Jake said. “I’ll never be done thanking God for her.”
28
After Jake left with Zoe in the ambulance, Carl drove Gilly to the police station, where Captain Mackie took her statement. They sat down in his office, the captain behind his desk, Carl and Gilly in the two chairs in front of it.
“I’m not going to keep you.” Captain Mackie glanced at Gilly. “I just wanted to get your impressions. Did Karen talk about her intent? Was this something she’d been planning?”
“For six months, if you can believe what she told me. She’s been coming here for weeks, waiting for her chance. I thought she was my friend, but everything she told me was a lie. She built this whole persona, this life, and I bought into it, every word.” Gilly shook her head. She was angry at the way she’d been used, but it was astonishment at Liz’s nerve that made her feel lightheaded. “She wanted a family,” Gilly said, “attention—someone to know she was unhappy. She saw me talking with Jake and making the pancakes for Zoe, and she thought—wrongly—that I was competition.”
“She targeted you? It was part of her plan to befriend you?”
“That’s what she said. The first time we met she was at the park where I walk my dog. She didn’t even have a dog, but I didn’t question it.” Gilly swiped her hair behind her ears. How pathetic it sounded now. Had she been—was she that lonely, that desperate for a friend? “I was in her way, or that was her perception. When I remember—I mean the day before Zoe disappeared, I went with Liz—Karen—to look at a house she wanted to buy. That Friday, she was supposed to come to my house for dinner. I can’t get over it—how she faked everything. Her concern for Zoe—my God, if you could have heard—but she told me she’s had issues, mental and emotional issues before.”
“She was high school age when the trouble began,” the captain said. “She ended up being sent to the state mental hospital. Did she talk about that?”
Gilly answered, “Yes. It’s a wild story, but from everything she said, after she escaped from there, she was stable for a long time.”
“Something must have changed, set her off,” Carl said.
“It was a locket she found,” Gilly said, and she related the details about it that Karen had told her. “It’s awful, what she’s done, but on some level, I can understand it, too.” Gilly paused, fighting the confusion of her emotions. “It’s a horrible experience, losing a child.”
“I think you’ve had enough, been through enough, for now.” The captain pulled papers on his desk into a stack.
“What will happen to her?” Gilly asked.
“She’ll be arraigned. The judge will decide on the issue of bail. He’ll appoint a public defender, although she’s saying she doesn’t want an attorney. I would imagine a psych exam will be done at some point.”
“Will she get out—on bail, I mean?” The prospect made Gilly anxious.
“There’s a good chance she won’t. Even if the judge grants bail,
I doubt she’s got the resources to meet it. In any case, we’ll be running surveillance on your house.”
“I’ll be around, too,” Carl said.
“I’d like to go home, if that’s all right.” Gilly stood up. Her legs were trembling, and she locked her knees.
Captain Mackie came around the desk and put his hand on her shoulder. “What you did today took some kind of courage,” he said.
“Anybody else would have done the same.”
“I don’t know. If you hadn’t called in with the details from your dream, we might not have found Zoe in time. I might want to call on you again.” He smiled.
Gilly didn’t. She wanted to say he was giving her too much credit. But even had she been able to form the words, she didn’t trust herself to speak. Her tears were riding too close to the surface. She was still shaky with the receding effects of panic and morphine, and with growing joy over Zoe’s rescue. She doubted she would ever forget the look of pure elation on Jake’s face when she’d set his daughter on her feet in front of him, safe and mostly sound.
But as thrilled as Gilly had been, her own heart and arms felt Zoe’s absence. It was unreasoning and pointless—her longing. Zoe didn’t belong to her any more than she belonged to Liz. Gilly had told herself that while she, Jake, and Zoe had still been in the woods, and once they walked out, she’d lost sight of them in all the chaos. The place had been swarming with emergency vehicles, every flavor and variety of law enforcement.
“Zoe’s going to be okay?” Gilly asked the captain as they walked out of his office. “Have you heard from the hospital?”
What Lies Below: A Novel Page 28
