by Elle Gray
“Alright. Are you ready?”
Olivia was about to respond when her phone began to ring in her pocket. She pulled it out and answered right away.
“Olivia, we have a problem,” Jonathan started as soon as she picked up. Her heart leaped in her chest. What could possibly be wrong now?”
“What’s happened?”
“We’ve had a report of a missing woman in Baltimore. She seems to have gone missing in the middle of the night, as many of our victims have.”
“Okay…”
“She’s blonde, twenty-one years old, from a broken home—I know it doesn’t fit your profile. I might be wrong, but it looks like it could be related to your case. Her mother is out of the picture. I’m concerned that she’s the kidnapper.”
Olivia leaned back in her chair, taking a second to process the information. “Okay. What’s the name of the missing woman?”
“Her name is Lauren Best.”
“Lauren... the girls said that the kidnapper referred to them as Lauren,” Olivia breathed. “Okay, this changes things. If the kidnapper has just taken her daughter, then she’s not dead after all. She’s just had her daughter taken out of her reach.”
“According to Lauren’s father, his ex-wife Sandra has been unstable for some time. She had a troubled childhood, which led to alcoholic tendencies. The pair of them had a difficult marriage and divorced not long after they bought a home together. She lost custody of the child for being an unfit parent.”
Olivia sighed. She’d been right about a lot of parts of the case, but she’d gotten a lot of it wrong too. If the kidnapper finally had her daughter back in her grasp, then she must have finally come undone. She got what she wanted... but what would the cost be?
“But here’s the most pertinent issue,” Jonathan continued. “That home they bought before the divorce? It’s the same house in Seattle that Amelia Barnes lives in now.”
That sent a shock to Olivia’s heart. Suddenly the connections made sense now. It was like she had been putting together a puzzle without seeing the picture on the box all this time, and now it appeared right before her. She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Okay, Jonathan, thank you. We’re going to go back to the cabin where the kidnapper—Sandra, possibly—held the girls. If she’s gone into a manic stage, she might still return there. We have to hope she will because it’s the first real lead we’ve had this whole time.”
“Good luck, Olivia.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He hung up the phone and Brock waited for Olivia to explain what had been said.
“Well?”
“I think we’re looking for a woman named Sandra Best,” she said quietly. “Lauren Best just went missing from Baltimore. She’s older than the other girls, but she fits our theory. We were wrong. The kidnapper didn’t lose her daughter to death, she was denied her in the divorce proceedings. And get this—before the divorce, she lived with her daughter in the same house in Seattle that the Barnes family now lives in.”
“Oh my god,” Brock gasped. “That’s it! That’s the connection!”
Olivia nodded. “She has been trying desperately to get her back, but it hasn’t been enough. Now, she’s taken her real daughter—and hopefully, she’s still going to be hiding out in the forest.”
“Well, we can hope, at least. Let’s go. We don’t want to give her any opportunity to run again.”
Olivia and Brock rushed out to his car. Olivia checked her gun and pressed her hand to her bulletproof vest anxiously. This was it. They had to get it right. There wouldn’t be any second chances.
“This changes everything,” Brock said as he began to drive. “If she’s got another hostage, then we need to be even more careful than before. There’s more at stake now.”
“I’m trained in hostage negotiation,” Olivia said firmly. “I think it’s still best if I go alone.”
Olivia could see the concern in Brock’s eyes. She could tell he wanted to dissuade her from her plan. But she also knew he trusted her. He took a deep breath, his lips pressed firmly together.
“You’re only going to get one shot at this. Make it count.”
Brock parked up at the very edge of the forest and Olivia got out of the car as quickly as she could. They’d only been driving for twenty minutes, but it was enough time to make her feel nervous about what she had to do. There was a lot of pressure, but Olivia knew she could do it. She knew that she could avenge the girls after all they’d suffered.
“Are we definitely in the right place?” she asked Brock. He nodded.
“I used the coordinates we came up with from the map. If we head straight through the forest from here for a few miles, then we should reach the cabin. The only issue is that it’s pretty wild out there.”
Olivia stared out into the thick trees. He was right. The ground was a tangle of brambles and overgrown vegetation. She knew it wouldn’t be an easy walk, and it would be easy for them to get off track. Worse still, the sun was beginning to set, so they’d have to do it in the dark. She had a flashlight to guide her, but she wasn’t sure how much use it would be in the complete darkness of the woods. But she thought of Lauren, out there with her mother, probably scared out of her mind, and she knew she would face whatever the forest had in store for her just to save her.
“Let’s get this over with,” Olivia said, trying to move as fast as possible as she picked her way through the forest. As they stumbled through the obstacle course of wilderness, Olivia felt thorns snagging her legs and tree roots threatening to trip her up. She appreciated nature in all of its glory, but right at that moment, she wished she could bulldoze the forest just to get to her goal.
She’d been thrown so many challenges in this case, but this somehow felt like the hardest. She was so close to the end of it all that she didn’t want this final hurdle to be what felled her. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t allow another case to go unsolved. She held her sister and her mom close to her heart as she soldiered on, Brock close on her heels.
The sky darkened to the point where it was impossible to see without the flashlight. Olivia used it to scan the path ahead of her, but it was getting harder and harder to proceed onward. The trees around her were tall and the leaves knitted together to form a huge green blanket above their heads. She couldn’t even see the moon through the leaves. Feeling her heart pound hard against her chest, she told herself to just keep moving. She ignored the sharp jabs of tree branches that seemed to be warning her to stay back, to keep her nose out of business that wasn’t hers. But Olivia wouldn’t stop until Lauren was safe and Sandra was locked away and couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Olivia had lost all track of time. It was too dark to see her watch, but she suspected they’d been walking for about an hour or two, and still, there was no sign of the cabin. At least the forest and darkness would give her coverage when she finally made it to the place she was headed. Every passing minute out there in the forest made her feel more and more anxious. So much could go wrong. She could end up with a bullet through her head. She was walking into the situation not really knowing who she was dealing with. But Olivia felt like maybe she could deal with it if she was the one who got hurt. She’d put so much into the case that it almost felt like she was willing to die to get those girls the justice they deserved. She wanted to prove that she was good through and through. She wanted to prove that she had it in her to be brave and to do whatever it took to save someone else.
She hadn’t saved Veronica. She hadn’t saved her mother. But she’d save Lauren if it was the last thing she did.
“You okay?” Brock whispered into the darkness. It was almost as though he’d been able to hear her chaotic thoughts circling around her head.
“I’m okay,” Olivia replied a little breathlessly, batting a tree branch out of her way. “I just want to get there.”
“It’s not much further. We’re coming up on three miles from the road. Unless we somehow took a wrong turn…”
> Olivia couldn’t even consider the possibility that they’d somehow gotten it wrong. She needed to see it end right there and now. She flicked her flashlight over the scene ahead of her, but she saw nothing but more trees. She checked her phone to see if she could consult a map, but she had no signal, as she’d expected. They really were alone out there.
“Do you think we should back up and reorient ourselves?”
“No. We’ll only get lost if we try to change direction,” Olivia insisted. “We can press on. We’ll get there. I know it.”
There was a feeling inside her the further into the forest they delved. Olivia felt like she could sense the truth reaching out to grab her, to reel her in, to get to the bottom of it all. She continued on even as her feet began to hurt and her skin stung from the keen whip of the trees. She pushed forward even as fear gripped her. The end had to be close. It had to be.
Another half-hour passed before Olivia heard the cry in the woods. It was a loud, desperate cry that could only belong to a human. Olivia stopped in her tracks, not wanting to make a single noise. She knew that if she did, she might lose the element of surprise. She didn’t want to make herself known until it was absolutely necessary. She turned and shined the flashlight on Brock, who winced under the bright beam.
“We’re close,” Olivia whispered. “I have to go from here alone. If I run into trouble…”
She didn’t even want to finish that sentence. She wished that she could ask for Brock to go with her, but she knew that would be the wrong choice. She had to appeal to Sandra, woman to woman. She had to be alone.
“Please be careful,” Brock whispered to her. “I’ve got your back. I’m coming running at the first sign of trouble, okay?”
Olivia nodded, even though she wasn’t sure he could see her. She switched off her flashlight and allowed her eyes to adjust a little to the darkness. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to see her coming. It took a minute, but she realized as she walked forward that the trees had cleared a little like someone had been maintaining the area. She noticed fewer brambles catching on her and fewer leaves crunching beneath her feet. It made it much easier for her to approach, and she even caught a glimpse of the moon above her.
And in the moonlight, she saw the cabin ahead. It was really more of a shack. It was made of old, dark wood, and it looked like it had been thrown together by someone who knew nothing about building. It didn’t seem to have any windows, but the woodwork was shoddy, and through the gaps in the walls, she could see that there was some sort of light coming from within. Olivia swallowed. She knew she’d been right to abandon her flashlight.
She crept around the side of the cabin, her heart rate much higher in pace than her footsteps. She felt sure that even the slightest misstep would give her away. After all, she knew what it was like to be a paranoid woman in the woods. She’d spent many nights lying awake, tuned into the noises of the forest. And now that she knew the horrors that the same forest held, deep in its depths, she was sure that she was right to be scared.
She heard sobbing from inside the cabin. Then followed someone talking. Their voice was gentle and soothing, but garbled and quick. It was an odd juxtaposition, but Olivia was sure she understood. Sandra was a mother trying to make her terrified child feel better, but she knew that she was the cause of the fear inside her daughter. She was acting manically, losing her grip on what she was actually trying to achieve. She’d got ahold of her daughter, but where could she go from there?
Olivia had to stop her before she figured that out.
Olivia crept toward the jagged wooden door. There was no doorknob, but as she placed her palm on it, she felt it give easily, pushing open. It creaked a little, but she could still hear distant talking from the woman and the terrified sobs of her daughter. She hadn’t been noticed.
Olivia braved putting the flashlight back into use, holding her gun in the other hand. The dim beam shone light on the room in front of her. She saw several flies gathering in the air, their low buzz like a backing track to the women in the other room. It was then that she noticed the terrible smell of the cabin. It was like every unpleasant smell she could think of had gathered in the small, cramped space. She could smell the damp wood and the faint smell of urine—and worse, the scent of someone who hadn’t showered in some time. It was the smell of neglect over time.
Olivia’s flashlight flickered around her, searching for a route to the kidnapper and her prisoner. Instead, her eyes fell upon something more sinister. Across the walls were a series of photographs. She saw that all the girls in the photographs looked similar, though they weren’t all the same. She saw a photograph of a young girl laughing at the camera, her blonde hair blowing in the wind as she posed on a beach. She couldn’t be more than fifteen. She wore a blue floral dress. When she moved the flashlight, she saw a picture that disturbed her even more. It was a picture of Amelia, her face streaked with tears as she sat on the floor. Her wrists were bound with rope and her hair was a mess, but it was impossible not to note the similarities between her and the other girl. And then Olivia understood why.
She was wearing the same blue floral dress.
She shuddered. She couldn’t imagine what Amelia had been feeling at that moment, scared out of her wits and unable to communicate or understand what was happening. She imagined someone struggling to force her into the dress just to take the picture. And when she scanned the walls once again, she saw that there were too many pictures to count. She knew that she shouldn’t be stopping to look at them, but it was impossible not to stare at the horrors in front of her. Some of the girls she could identify as the three victims she knew of, but many, she didn’t recognize. How long had Sandra been doing this to young girls all over the country? And how many of them hadn’t made it home?
Olivia had to end it. Right then. She held her gun with a steady hand and found the door with her flashlight. The cabin had become strangely silent. As she walked through the cabin, it was impossible for her to stay silent, so she picked up her pace. As she swung the door open, the room before her was cast into the light of a battery-powered lantern in the corner of the room. Olivia’s mouth fell open in horror as she saw a young woman tied to the chair in front of her. Her mouth was gagged and rope bound her wrists and legs. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by her gag.
“Lauren?”
Her eyes widened and she managed to nod. Olivia couldn’t see anyone else in the room, so she scanned her flashlight, looking for the person who’d tied Lauren up.
“Come out with your hands up,” Olivia announced, her voice steady. She was prepared for anything. “You don’t need to hurt anyone else, please. I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk.”
There was one corner of the room that wasn’t cast into the light, still coated in shadow. And that was where the woman moved from. She shuffled into the light, her head bowed, her entire body shaking. Olivia’s eyes slowly widened in realization.
“Susan?”
Twenty-Six
Susan…
Olivia couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t realized that the person she was looking for was right under her nose the entire time. She never would’ve suspected Susan, but as she stared at her, unhinged and wild right before her eyes, it seemed to make more sense than any other explanation.
“I never wanted you to see me this way, Agent Knight,” Susan said, her head hung low. She reached out and brushed her hand over Lauren’s shoulder, not seeming to notice how she flinched away from her touch. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to understand.”
“You can help me understand,” Olivia said gently. “And then we can talk about it. What are you doing here, Susan? I came here looking for someone else—someone named Sandra Best.”
Susan sighed, not looking Olivia in the eye. “I used to go by that name. A long time ago. I’ve had a lot of names over the years. I was born as Emily Crompton, but my mother abandoned me at an orphanage, so I abandoned that name too. When I was old enough, I change
d my name to Sandra Strickland. I liked that name. It gave me a chance to start again. And then when I got married, I became Sandra Best. The name you know me by, that’s my most recent. I had to change it so that nobody would ever figure out who I was. How my past unfolded…”
Olivia nodded slowly, keeping a steady eye on Lauren. She could see the young woman was terrified, but Olivia didn’t think she’d hurt her. Lauren was the one thing she’d been fighting for for so long. She wasn’t about to let her slip away.
“What happened to you, Susan?” Olivia asked gently. “Taking children from their homes in the middle of the night—you know that’s wrong. You’re a smart woman. You know that hurting other people won’t gain you anything.”
Susan’s eyes snapped to meet Olivia’s. “I’m not doing this to hurt anyone. I never wanted to hurt a single soul. I’m not a bad person, Olivia. I’m just lonely. So lonely…”
“But all those families you’ve taken children from. You destroyed their lives,” Olivia whispered. “You didn’t just take Hayleigh, Sophia, and Amelia, did you? There were others.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing at the start. I just wanted company. I wanted the chance to be a mother again,” Susan whispered. “I lost my baby girl. Her father took her away from me. He said I wasn’t a fit parent. But I love Lauren more than anything in the entire world. That’s why I had to bring her here today. Because all those little girls... none of them were good enough to replace my baby girl. Can’t you see how perfect she is, Olivia? Can’t you see how a mother’s love can drive her to do crazy things?”
Olivia didn’t know what to say. “I don’t have a daughter. I don’t know what it’s like.”
“Then what about your own mother, Olivia? Did she love you in the way my mother never did? Did she do anything she could to protect you?”
The question transported Olivia back through the years. She had a sudden, sharp recollection of her mother snatching her out of the road, saving her from being hit by a car when she’d stepped before she should have. She thought of how her mother held her that day and cried as though her life had actually been taken from her. She thought of all the times her mom had done things for her.
