No One Can Know

by Lucy Kerr

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Make me.”

  His hands flexed as if he was about to try but caught himself.

  “Charlie,” he said, obviously hoping to appeal to her better nature, “talk some sense into her.”

  We exchanged glances, and Charlie flipped her braid over her shoulder. “She is making sense. We know the area—both of us do.”

  “I know it better,” I put in. “You didn’t spend much time out there.”

  “Like you were around to know?” Ignoring my sputter of outrage, she returned to Noah. “We both know Henderson’s. Wouldn’t it be good to have people on the ground who are familiar with the terrain?”

  “One of whom has medical training?” I added. “You know we’re right.”

  He frowned. “Stay put.”

  I patted the car beneath me. “Bet on it.”

  He jogged back to one of the FBI agents, and they spoke for a few minutes. The other man glanced over at us, squinting through the increasingly heavy rain, and I lifted a hand in greeting. Charlie put up her hood.

  Noah shook his head, and they continued speaking. Finally, they both approached.

  “You volunteering to help in the search?” He stroked his mustache, considering.

  “Yes, sir,” Charlie said eagerly.

  “Which one of you is the nurse?”

  I raised my hand again.

  “Which one of you found the body of the kidnapper?”

  I kept my hand up.

  He eyed me. “This isn’t that, got it? You two help out today, you’re just searching. The agents at the scene will direct you. If you find the baby, you start yelling—someone will hear you and come running. You will do exactly what my agents tell you at all times. You do otherwise, and I’ll bring you up on federal obstruction charges.”

  “Yes, sir,” we echoed.

  He jerked a thumb at us. “Take ’em over, make sure they’ve got vests so nobody thinks they’re the kidnapper and accidentally shoots them. It’s on your head if they get in trouble, MacLean.”

  “They won’t,” he said, scowling at me.

  The agent left, and Noah stared at us for a long minute. “Get. Off. My. Car.”

  We scrambled to obey.

  “Sit in the back,” he said. “Both of you. Hand to God, Frankie, if you give me the slightest hint of lip, I will leave you locked in there until the case is over, whether that’s tonight or two weeks from now.”

  “Thank you” was all I said.

  He shook his head and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  *

  Henderson’s farm was sprawling, acres and acres of overgrown fields and tumbledown buildings. In the cold gray rain, flashlights dancing across the grounds and across shed windows, it was nearly postapocalyptic.

  “How long?” Noah asked tersely once we’d arrived. We were pulling on neon-yellow vests with reflective stripes, the same one cops wore during traffic duty. The word “POLICE” was stenciled front and back in large letters, presumably so the other agents didn’t shoot us.

  “We’ll stay until we find him,” I said, and Charlie nodded agreement.

  “No,” Noah replied. “How much time do we have? Trey’s a baby; the temperature’s dropping, and we don’t know the last time he was fed. How long before …”

  Next to me, Charlie made a noise of distress.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “There are too many factors in play. Standing around talking won’t help, though.”

  “Got it.” He led us over to a woman crouched in the back of a van, a lamp trained on a large map of the area. “Two more volunteers. Where do you want them?”

  “The message said Henderson’s,” she replied, handing us heavy-duty flashlights. It wasn’t full dark yet, but the storm had flattened what the daylight remained; everything looked murky, dirty, and ominous. “We’re moving our way across the property, searching the buildings off the main routes first, working our way back to the far edges of the land.”

  “Why?” Charlie asked.

  “The kidnapper would have wanted to make a quick getaway,” she said patiently. “The longer he was here, the greater the risk of discovery. It makes sense he’d stay close to the main roads and stash the baby somewhere convenient. It’s possible he even covered the terrain on foot.”

  Charlie frowned, as if she didn’t believe the woman.

  “It’s standard procedure,” the woman assured us.

  “Nothing about this has been standard,” I said slowly, picking up on Charlie’s skepticism. “Charlie, when you were here, where were the parties held?”

  She pursed her lips, trying to orient herself on the map. Then she tapped a cluster of worker’s cottages on the southwest side. “Over here, mostly.”

  “Those are very isolated,” said the woman. “It’s unlikely he’d spend so much time on the property.”

  “That’s why he’d go there. They’re out of the way, so they’re less likely to be seen.”

  “In fact,” I said, “this part of the property backs up to this grove of maple trees—and on the other side of the grove is the county highway. It makes more sense that he’d pop across that way.”

  “There’s no path through those trees,” she argued. “No easy way to access it.”

  “Nothing marked, maybe. Kids cut through those woods all the time. Hunters too.”

  She studied the map. “We can reassign some people, I suppose.”

  “We can head out there now,” I said. “Send the rest of the team when they’re free.”

  “I’ll take them,” Noah said, and the woman nodded, already speaking into her walkie-talkie.

  A short while later, the car bouncing and jolting over rutted pathways, we’d reached the cottages. Shacks, really—corrugated tin roofs and scrap lumber walls, windows busted out after years of teen parties.

  “You two work together,” Noah ordered as he let us out of the car. “No splitting up.”

  “We’ll cover more ground separately,” I argued.

  “No lip,” he said and fingered the handcuffs on his belt, intention clear. “Stay together, or you go back to the squad car.”

  “Together’s good,” Charlie said, and I nodded in agreement. I swung my backpack over my shoulder, and we set off toward the southwest while Noah took the southeast.

  “Hard to believe anyone comes out here now,” Charlie said as we began checking the shacks. The rain was falling steadily, and the rumble of thunder nearly obscured her words.

  “It doesn’t look like they do,” I said. We’d inspected three of the shacks, and none of them showed any signs of recent use. The fourth had a pile of broken glass in the corner, old beer bottles tossed against the heavily graffitied wall, but there was no sign of a fire, inside or out. “Not much, anyway.”

  “You know what’s crazy?” Charlie asked. “Mom had no idea about this place. Even back when we were kids.”

  “Well, she doesn’t have any reason to think about it right now. Riley’s still got a few years.”

  Charlie scowled at the notion. “That’s not funny.”

  “It’s kind of funny,” I said. “You’ll be telling her not to do something you totally did. Can’t wait to see her face when she figures it out.”

  “Parents must know about this place now, don’t they? That’s probably why it isn’t used as much.”

  “Kids still come out here,” I replied. “But I don’t think it’s common knowledge. You’d have to be a local.”

  “A local from a long time ago,” Charlie mused. She pulled out her phone, hunching over to shield the display from the rain. “Mom left me a voice mail.”

  “Go ahead,” I told her. “Catch up when you’re ready.”

  I thought back to the map the female agent had shown us. I knew those woods. So did Noah. Because while plenty of parties had happened in the worker cottages, we’d wanted more privacy. Deep within the maple grove was a small clearing with a sugaring cabin. Warmer, quieter, and sweetly scented
from years of boiling sap, the sugarhouse was a closely guarded secret, even among my classmates. I hadn’t seen it on the map, but if the killer had parked south of the dairy and come through the woods on foot, he might have stumbled across it.

  “Back in a few,” I called to Charlie through the open door of the cottage.

  Brow furrowed, she nodded, barely glancing up while she listened to her phone.

  Twenty-Eight

  The ground was covered with sodden maple leaves, their brilliant colors muted in the deepening darkness. I slogged through them, trying to remember the exact path to the sugarhouse. Overhead, the thunder rolled in a near-continuous pulse. The trees blocked some of the rain but didn’t seem to cut the wind.

  A flash of lightning overhead had me quickening my pace, relying on instinct more than vision to guide my feet.

  Instinct. My instincts had warned me about something else earlier. Something about Jess. Dove Cottage. What was it?

  Twenty yards ahead, behind a stand of old maples, stood the sugarhouse. A one-room wooden building with a tall peaked roof, vents on the top and along the sides. Remarkably, almost all of the windows were still intact. As I’d thought, almost nobody knew it was here.

  I thought I heard a cry, but there was no way to know from here if it was Trey or simply the creaking of the trees in the wind.

  I edged across the clearing, senses straining, hands shaking with cold and fear.

  The wind picked up, and lightning ripped across the sky, making me flinch. A moment later, the door swung wide, and Steven Tibbs came out, his coat wrapped around a tiny squalling bundle.

  He stopped short when he saw me. “Frankie?”

  “Steven?” I took two steps forward, then stopped. “Is that Trey? Did you—?”

  He blinked away rain. “I found him,” he said, stumbling over the words. “I had a feeling.”

  “When did you get here? Shouldn’t you be home, waiting for news?”

  His mouth twisted. “Like I’d leave this to the police?”

  “But how—?”

  “I had a feeling,” he repeated, louder this time. “There’s a bond, you know. Between a parent and a child. A father and his son.”

  Training overtook bewilderment, and I snapped into action. “Is Trey okay?”

  “He’s perfect,” Steven said, awkwardly jostling the screaming child.

  “Let me take a look,” I urged. “Make sure he’s not dehydrated or suffering from hypothermia.”

  “He’s perfect,” he repeated. “It’s a miracle, Frankie.”

  I wasn’t about to argue. “Let me examine Trey. It’ll take five minutes, and then we can get him to the hospital.”

  He stumbled backward. “They lost him once. I’m not risking it again.”

  “You want to make sure he’s healthy, don’t you?” I said, my voice soothing. “Five minutes. A quick exam. I’ve done a million of them, and you’ll be right here. Then you can bring him home.”

  He shielded Trey as lightning crackled overhead, shadows lunging and flickering around us.

  “Steven,” I said, trying not to betray my nervousness, “the baby’s getting soaked. It’s not good for him; he won’t be able to maintain his body temp. You want him to be warm, right?”

  Wordlessly, he turned and went back inside the sugarhouse.

  Once we were inside, I played my flashlight around the large square room. It looked much as I remembered it—metal sugaring vats and a boiler against one wall, taps and buckets hanging along another. Overhead was a vented cupola, and even now, the years-old scent of wood, sap, and syrup combined to turn the damp air sweet. A car seat waited in the center of the room, a shearling-lined bunting covering it, a battery-operated lantern sitting next to it. A few dirty diapers, neatly secured, had been tossed into the far corner. Next to the car seat were a jumble of empty bottles, and a pile of blankets lay on the floor. I spread them out and switched on the lantern, gesturing for Steven to set Trey down on the makeshift bed while I dumped my backpack on the floor.

  “He’s dressed for the weather, at least,” I said, noting the polar fleece pajamas he was wearing. “Hello, sweetheart. Let’s take a peek at you, hmn?”

  The baby had stopped crying. He was quieter than I would have liked, drowsy with cold and hunger and the unique ability of newborns to sleep through distress. But his color seemed good, his pulse was strong, and he didn’t appear to be suffering from hypothermia or dehydration. Steven hovered over me while I worked, saying nothing.

  “He looks pretty good,” I said. “We need to get him back right away. We have no idea how long it’s been since the kidnapper left him here or how long it’s been since he ate. His diaper’s wet—that’s a good sign—but I don’t want to change him until we’re someplace warmer.” I zipped up the his pajamas, then swaddled him in several layers of blankets. “It’s amazing he’s doing so well. If he’d been out here even a few hours more … your timing was perfect.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Steven said yet again.

  Something in his voice—confidence and certainty, instead of gratitude and relief—sent the back of my neck tingling again. “Two miracles in one lifetime,” I said lightly, keeping a hand on Trey. “Lucky man.”

  He cocked his head, gave me his campaign smile. “What do you mean?”

  “The fire, right? You got there at exactly the right time. If you hadn’t gone to help your dad with inventory, who knows what might have happened?”

  “Two miracles,” he agreed.

  I wasn’t so sure anymore. According to my mom’s breathless recap, the downtown fire had started in a trash can when a lit cigarette had been tossed atop a pile of old cleaning rags. They’d smoldered for hours, according to the fire marshal, before they caught fully and jumped to the building.

  And Steven had been there. How fortunate, everyone had said, that he came along at exactly the right moment. According to Charlie, he’d been at the scene earlier. Early enough, in fact, that I couldn’t help wondering if it was his cigarette that had started the fire in the first place—and when he’d returned and discovered the horrific fallout, he’d made the best of a bad situation.

  I wondered if he’d done the same tonight.

  I stood, hugging Trey close to my chest and swaying gently. “What gave you the idea to come out here? I didn’t know anyone else knew this place existed.”

  Steven shrugged. “You and Noah MacLean weren’t the only people to use it.”

  “No.” My skin prickled a warning. “We weren’t. Seems weird that an out-of-towner would, though.”

  His smile grew fixed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Jess didn’t grow up here. How would she have known about it?”

  “Maybe her partner did.”

  “Maybe,” I said softly, “but we haven’t found any evidence she had a partner—not Josh Miller, not anyone.”

  “You haven’t looked hard enough,” he snapped. “She was working with someone. She colluded to steal my son.”

  I thought about Dove Cottage. The portable crib. The feeding supplies. The neat, freshly laundered piles of clothing. The baby name book.

  Kate’s baby name book.

  “Trey is for Steven the third, isn’t it?”

  He nodded cautiously.

  “Family tradition,” I said, “like how Charlie and I have boys’ nicknames. Was that always the plan?” She stenciled his name on the wall, Charlie had said.

  “Of course. From the day we knew he was a boy.” He held out his arms. “I’ll take my son now.”

  I backed up a step. “So why’d Kate buy a baby name book?” A monogrammed blanket.

  He opened his mouth, closed it again. Finally, he said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Jess had a baby name book with her.” A little rocking chair with his name painted on it.

  “She stole my son. Of course she’d give him a new name. She probably planned to change her own too.”

  “It wasn’t her book. It was Kat
e’s. She’d only bought it a few weeks ago.”

  Steven stuttered. “I don’t—”

  “It bothered me, that book, but I couldn’t figure out why. And then it hit me. Kate didn’t need a baby name book unless she’d decided to name him something else. But you would never have agreed to that.”

  He stared at me.

  “Unless you weren’t going to be around,” I continued. “Unless Kate was planning to leave you. Here’s what I think happened, Steven. She wanted to leave, for whatever reason. Maybe she didn’t like being a politician’s wife. Maybe she was bored. Maybe you’d done something unforgivable—cheated, maybe? We all know how politicians can be when it comes to interns. So soon before the election, it would be political suicide if she left you. Especially when you were running as a family man with family values. It’s all about the optics, right? So instead, you hired Josh Miller to kill her.”

  A boom of thunder rattled the walls, and I clutched Trey tightly, putting more distance between us. Steven tracked my movements with an unblinking stare.

  “He was only supposed to scare her,” he said hoarsely. “Make her see that it was better to stay with me, where I could protect her. I never meant for them to be hurt. I loved her. I really did. I only wanted her to stay.”

  “You killed her.”

  “I wasn’t driving!”

  “You hired the guy who did it. How did it work, Steven? Did you pay Josh? Get him drugs? Or did you botch his case on purpose? Make sure it never got out of the grand jury?”

  He flinched, and I knew I’d struck true.

  “Josh came to the funeral to see you. To let you know he was still in town, and he had proof of your involvement.”

  “He was going to blackmail me.” He sounded insulted.

  “So you arranged a meeting at the junkyard to pay him off. And instead, you shot him.”

  “He deserved it. He was only supposed to scare Kate, not hurt her.” He pressed a fist to his temple. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  It was what Steven told me in the NICU, the night Kate died. He’d told me, but I hadn’t understood. He hadn’t been suffering from survivor’s guilt. He’d been guilty. That’s why he’d resigned himself to the police never catching the driver, why the initial search of his files hadn’t flagged Josh’s case. He couldn’t afford a thorough investigation.