Obsessed

by Jenn Faulk

  OBSESSED

  L. N. Cronk

  Jenn Faulk

  Published by Rivulet Publishing

  Kindle Edition

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.

  Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

  ~Peter~

  If only I had known, this situation could have been so different . . . so easily.

  An impossibly small receiver snaking into my ear. A similarly sized microphone placed elsewhere on the table. And then Andrew, sitting just a few tables over, reminding me to stop obsessing over the sugar packets, and telling me exactly what to say and when to say it, thereby making me look oh-so-cool.

  Nearly every sitcom that’s lasted more than two seasons has pulled off some similar version of Cyrano de Bergerac, but the characters on those shows always planned things out in advance. I’ve planned nothing in advance because I had absolutely no idea that I was going to be meeting Maggie. I would have done things differently if only I had known.

  I mean, of course I knew that I was meeting Maggie. She did, after all, call me less than an hour ago and ask me to meet her here at the coffee shop. But what I didn’t know? I didn’t know that—as soon as I saw her—I was suddenly and desperately going to want to appear to be oh-so-cool.

  Because I didn’t know that I was going to be meeting Maggie.

  Maggie, who is much more breathtaking than she sounded on the phone. Maggie, who is wearing faded calf-length jeans, pink flip flops, and a sleeveless paisley shirt showing off bronzed arms.

  Maggie, with exactly the right number of freckles dotted across the bridge of her nose and hazel eyes and straight, white teeth. Maggie, whose copper curls swing and bounce as she approaches my table.

  If only I had known.

  ~Maggie~

  He’s the last hope I have.

  That’s what I’m thinking as I walk up to the table where he’s sitting. I pick him out easily enough in the crowd at the coffee shop. He’s alone, all by himself, while all around us there are groups, people talking and laughing together, people going through life as if there’s a reason to keep living.

  I’m not sure there is.

  Emma’s been gone for three days now. The police have been no help. Everything I’ve done on my own to track down Brandon, to try and figure out why he took our baby, and to get her back . . . well, it’s led to nothing.

  Detective Meyer, who a few weeks ago had started looking into a bunch of money that Brandon claimed was stolen from his bank account, took pity on me. He didn’t volunteer to pursue a missing child case because Emma is with Brandon. There is no custody agreement—Brandon is her father, there’s no proof that he took her across state lines, and that’s that. I’d been inconsolable when he told me there was nothing he could do, but my tears prompted him to give me a name, a number, and the very last hope I have.

  Peter Garrison. There he sits, waiting for me, his fingers moving carefully over the sugar packets on the table.

  I walk up to him, willing my voice to stay steady, my tears to stay where they are, and my heart to stop pounding. I wipe my hands on my capris before holding one out to him with a hopeful look.

  “Peter?”

  He looks up at me, apparently startled, then nods, stands, and reaches his hand out to shake my sweaty one. He bumps into the table as he reaches for my hand, spilling more than a little water from his glass. He glances down with another startled look on his face and then up at me with obvious concern. Whether it’s about me or the water, I have no idea.

  “Uh, hi,” he says. “Maggie?”

  I’m still looking at the water that’s dripping off the table and onto his jeans. He follows my gaze for just a minute, seems to consider sopping up the mess, then sits down. Then, as quickly as he sits down, he stands once more, his hand held out.

  Again.

  I put my hand into his to spare him any further embarrassment.

  “Yes, I’m Maggie,” I say, swallowing, reminding myself to stay calm and coherent, to keep from getting emotional. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  He nods uncertainly.

  “Sit down,” he says, pointing to the chair opposite his. Then he adds, even more uncertainly, “I mean . . . if you want.”

  I sit down, momentarily distracted from the lump in my throat. It’s the look on his face. A grimace of sorts, as if he’s in pain. He’s an average looking guy, maybe a couple of years older than me, just about my height, dark hair . . .

  But that pained look on his face, as though he’s uncomfortable. And his words.

  If you want.

  I’m the one who asked him here. I’m the one who needs his help. Why would he say this?

  As he stares at me, I go ahead and just ask him.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, I uhh . . .” he begins, managing to somehow look even more uncomfortable. “I just, uhh . . .”

  He purses his lips together for a moment and glances away, rubbing his cheek and then looking back at me while rubbing his other cheek in the exact same spot.

  “I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do,” he finally explains. “I should have said, ‘Would you like to sit down?’” He looks at me like he’s hoping for understanding, then asks, “Would you like to sit down?”

  “I am sitting down,” I say. Because I am. I have been, the entire time he’s been looking around and rubbing his cheeks.

  I resist the temptation to find his number back in my purse and double check to make sure that the detective gave me the right guy.

  Computer genius. Hacker extraordinaire. This guy. Peter Garrison.

  I’m told if anyone can find Emma, it’s him. If he can track down Brandon’s money, he can find Brandon, then he’ll lead me to Emma.

  I look to him expectantly.

  “I know,” he says, then he sighs. He hesitates for a long moment, clearly uncertain how to proceed before finally deciding on, “So, um, you said that you want me to help you figure out where Brandon’s money went?”

  Yes, but it’s more than that.

  I’ve gone over the best way to tell him this, but no matter how I explain it, I come out looking bad. I’m so tired of looking bad and of being silently judged by everyone.

  But Emma . . .

  “Well, mostly I want you to help me figure out where Brandon went,” I say. “He has my daughter. Emma.”

  “Why?”

  Isn’t that the question? The million dollar question, the answer to which went missing along with Emma. Brandon came to pick her up for what I thought was a normal visit. I knew he’d been having some trouble with his business, but I didn’t know the extent of it. We didn’t talk about those things anymore. We were way past confidences with one another, as if he’d ever completely let me into all of his life before . . .

  Not helpful, Maggie. What matters now is Emma.

  I’d kissed her goodbye, already counting the hours until I’d see her again. I’d handed Brandon a diaper bag with just enough to get her through those forty-eight hours. Just forty-eight hours.

  “It was supposed to be a two-night visit,” I tell Peter. “But he took her and didn’t bring her back, and I can’t get in touch with him. He’s not answering my calls . . . not returning my messages. I don’t know where he is. The police don’t know where he is, and he has our daughter, and I . . .”

  I stop talking. Not because there isn’t more to say but because I can’t manage it past the sobs that are working their way into my voice.

 
; I look to Peter helplessly.

  He looks back at me, obviously confused. “‘Our daughter?’ She’s his daughter, too?” He narrows his eyes as if he’s trying to comprehend. “I didn’t know he had a daughter . . .”

  He looks away for a moment before bringing his eyes back to me quickly as if he’s decided on something.

  “I can do it,” he says with a confident nod. “I can help you find her.”

  That’s enough for me. I don’t care what he’s going to charge me to do all of his fancy computer searching, hacking, whatsits, or whatever.

  He can find Emma.

  “Thank you, Peter,” I say softly, even as I feel the tears start to fall down my cheeks.

  ~Peter~

  “So she’s hot?”

  Leave it to Andrew to reduce everything I’ve just told him to those three words.

  “She’s pretty,” I admit, “but the point is that she wasn’t after the money. She was trying to find her kid.”

  “So she’s a damsel in distress,” Andrew further observes.

  “Something like that.”

  He gives me a wicked smile.

  “And you’re her knight in shining armor?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Screw it up already?” he guesses.

  I sigh.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “Not a whole lot.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “It’s not my fault!” I insist. “She said she wanted to meet me. She didn’t say anything about the kid.”

  “You just assumed it was about the money.”

  “Of course I assumed it was about the money. We’re talking almost a million dollars here. I spent the first five minutes of our conversation figuring out how to tell her that I wasn’t going to help her.”

  “And then?”

  “Then all of a sudden I got it,” I say. “Now it’s not just the money that’s missing, it’s him, too. And he’s got their kid.”

  “You find the money, you find him. You find him, you find the kid.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, like I said.” Andrew repeats, raising an eyebrow at me. “She’s a damsel in distress and you’re her knight in shining armor.”

  I raise both of my eyebrows back at him and roll my eyes.

  “First of all,” I say. “I have to actually find the money.”

  “That’s your specialty,” Andrew says, dismissing me with his hand. “Not an issue. It’s already a done deal.”

  I shrug.

  “Second of all,” I add. “She probably thinks I’m weird.”

  “No,” Andrew deadpans. “Not you.”

  I sigh again.

  “Listen,” he says, reaching out and patting me on the knee. “I’ll tell you what. You figure out where the money is and then we’ll practice you telling her. Everything except the part where she throws her arms around you and gives you a wet, sloppy kiss.”

  I laugh. I give him a smile. And he knows he’s got a deal.

  ~Maggie~

  “Weird . . . like psychotic weird?”

  I take a deep breath as I move my economics book across the kitchen table and pick up my political science book. I’m not sure why I’m attempting to do any studying when I haven’t been able to concentrate since Emma went missing. But I know that I desperately need some normalcy, and this seemed like a logical place to start. That’s why I called Tanner, hoping that he could give me a pep talk, tell me that Emma’s going to be found, that I need to study in the meantime and keep on living my life.

  Like that will happen.

  “No,” I murmur into my phone, my eyes scanning over what I’m supposed to read this weekend. I flip the pages, the words written there not even computing. “And, wow, Tanner. Why would that be the first thing you ask about the guy?”

  I can hear a loud squeak on the phone, likely evidence that my brother is now leaning forward in his chair, his arms on the desk in front of him, his head in his hands. I can picture him there just like that, just as worried as I’ve been these past two days.

  “Because my niece is missing,” he says. “Because my sister is all on her own. Because I’m having a hard time trusting anyone since that good for nothing, horrible Brandon—”

  “Yes, yes,” I interrupt him, even as he echoes my own sentiments on Brandon. “But Peter’s not weird in a dangerous, shady way. Just . . . nerdy. Maybe socially inept. The guy could barely talk until I asked him to explain how he can use his computer programs to find Brandon’s money. And then, he talked on and on and on for fifteen minutes straight.”

  That’s exactly what Peter had done. Once he’d wrapped his mind around the fact that Emma had been taken and that I have a real, urgent need to locate Brandon, he’d agreed to help me. When I’d asked how exactly he could do that, he’d told me all about his work, getting so excited at some points that he’d had to stop himself, take large, nearly gasping breaths, then launch into another discourse about his computers.

  So weird.

  But he’s willing to help me, which is more than I can say about most people at this point.

  “Maggie,” Tanner says, urgency in his voice, “just come out here and stay with me. Seriously. I don’t like the idea of you staying by yourself. What if Brandon was mixed up with something really bad? They could come after you next.”

  The thought has crossed my mind. But I’d dismissed it because entertaining it means believing for even a minute that Emma is in danger.

  I can’t go there.

  “I trust him,” I say, thinking of Brandon and forcing the words from my lips. “He loves Emma. He’d never put her into danger. So nothing bad is going on. Just . . .”

  He’s a good father. A lousy man, sure, but a good father.

  The reasoning feels weak even as I express it. Brandon does love Emma, more than I would have believed he could back when I’d told him I was pregnant. I’m certain that he loves Emma.

  I’m not certain about much else, though. Brandon really isn’t a guy I can trust. He’s proven that before, but telling Tanner this won’t help anything, so I let myself lie, trying to believe the words myself even as I say them.

  “Well, I don’t trust him,” Tanner says. “There’s no reason for you to stay there. Come here, and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  “I have work,” I say, shutting my book. “I have my job.”

  “A job,” Tanner answers. “You could get one here—”

  “And you have no room for me,” I argue. “Or time. Tanner, you don’t want to flunk out your first semester of seminary because your sister was taking up your time with her drama. And you have a wedding to plan—”

  “Ana’s planning the whole thing,” he argues. “And your ‘drama’ is my drama because she’s my niece, and . . .”

  I blink back tears as I hear the emotion in my brother’s voice. He’s been there for me through it all. When I estranged myself from the rest of the family by taking up with Brandon in the first place, when I’d been so cavalier and unapologetic about the pregnancy, when I’d refused to let my mom and stepdad back into my life after Emma had been born, all because of my pride, because I wouldn’t admit I’d made some bad choices, because I wouldn’t let them see how scared I was, because I’d never forget the hard but truthful things they’d said . . .

  Well, Tanner had been there. Never judging me, though I knew what he thought. He’d just been there.

  “I know,” I whisper, tears in my eyes. “I know, Tanner.”

  “I told Mom and Seth,” he says, his voice strangled now. “They want to help you, however they can. And they’re praying.”

  This makes the tears come even faster. “Whole lot of good praying will do now,” I manage between heavy breaths. “Should’ve been praying before this, so that none of this would’ve happened.”

  “You need to get past this bitterness you have,” Tanner says, so softly that I have to press the phone closer to my ear to hear him. “They weren�
�t right when they said the things they did, back when you found out you were pregnant. But you weren’t right either, Maggie. And you’re not right even now, when you refuse to forgive them.”

  Truth. All truth.

  But I don’t want to concede it right now. There’s too much else to deal with, like Emma.

  Just Emma.

  “I just want my baby,” I say, the tears coming honestly now for all that I’ve lost and all that I could still lose.

  I can hear Tanner fighting to keep his composure on the other end of the line.

  “Then let’s hope this Peter guy knows what he’s doing.”

  ~Peter~

  Andrew leaves, bounding down the hall. Andrew bounds everywhere he goes. Always has. When he was eleven months old, he pulled himself up into a standing position, took off, and hasn’t stopped since.

  That’s a big difference between the two of us: Andrew’s always on the move, and I’m usually sitting in front of a computer. Our ages are another big difference: Andrew’s not even eighteen yet, and I just turned twenty-four.

  Actually there are a lot of other differences—more differences than similarities. We had the same parents and we live in the same house, but other than that, we don’t have a whole lot in common.

  His bedroom door closes, and I wheel my desk chair back to my computer so I can resume what I’d been doing before Andrew popped in. Three weeks ago—when Brandon was “robbed”—the police asked me to help them investigate. Brandon had given me all of his account numbers, all of his user names, all of his passwords. He was helpful—way more helpful than I would have expected from someone who was clearly trying to commit insurance fraud.

  I go back through his activity again now, and still all I can find is irrefutable evidence that Brandon’s money was taken out of his accounts by someone with full access to his phone and all of his accounts and passwords. His phone was not out of commission when he claimed he was locked out. He was using it the whole time: quickly and efficiently withdrawing money. Several thousand dollars at a time.