Chapter 28

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

G abriel wedged himself between the door and the car and talked to Alan over the roof of her sedan. While he was distracted, Amanda searched for something she could use as a weapon, or something to remove the handcuffs. She looked inside the console between the seats. Lots of CDs. Nothing else. She stretched across the car, grabbed her purse from the passenger side floor, and dumped the contents onto the seat.

She needed a paperclip or something. She grabbed a pen and tried to shove it in the keyhole. Too big. She unscrewed the pen, slid the spring inside onto her palm. Her fingers were trembling so badly, she feared she'd drop it. She held it carefully and stuck it in the keyhole. No luck. She grabbed the small plastic tube of ink and shoved it in there, listening to the men talk.

"Do you have her keys?" Gabriel asked.

Alan, standing near the passenger door, reached in his pocket. The keys clattered across the roof of the car. Gabriel pocketed them and closed the car door.

Amanda worked the pen, trying to unlock the cuffs. She couldn't do it. Could she slip her hand out? She tugged, tried to squeeze out, scrunching her hand as small as she could make it. She pulled until tears filled her eyes from the pain. The cuff was too tight. She tried to jimmy the lock again.

Gabriel and Alan met in front of the car. Gabriel laid his right arm across Alan's shoulders, patting him as they walked to Alan's car. Puffs of steamy breath surrounded the two men in the icy air. Alan turned to open his car door, a wide smile on his face.

Her stomach turned over. That fawning sycophant was her only chance for survival. Would he call Mark? Or would Gabriel convince him not to?

When Alan bent to get in his car, Gabriel pulled a rock the size of a baseball from his coat pocket. He gave Alan's shoulder one last squeeze, then struck him on the head.

Alan looked at him, mouth opened in shock.

Gabriel smashed the rock into his head again.

As he fell, Alan looked in her direction. The rock connected with his skull a third time.

Gabriel crouched beside the crumpled man, hit his head again a few times, then leaned over his face. Feeling for breath, maybe? But Amanda knew Alan wasn't breathing. No steam rose from his mouth now.

She'd stopped working the lock. She couldn't scream past the fear in her throat. Felt herself growing dizzy and sick. Alan would tell her to exhale. But Alan was dead.

She had to get away.

Her whole body vibrated as she fumbled with the car door. Finally, the button slid into the locked position.

How could she get away? She tried again to pull her hand from the cuff until the metal scraped away skin and blood dripped onto her palm.

Maybe if she put the pen back together, she could use it as a weapon. She fumbled with it, dropped the outer case .

Gabriel approached the passenger door. He tried the handle, found it locked, and withdrew her keys from his pocket. He unlocked the door and opened it. "Where are your gloves?"

"You killed him." Her voice shrilled in the car.

"I had to. He was beginning to doubt me." He sifted through the contents of her purse scattered on the passenger seat. "I didn't think he had it in him to carry off this ruse. I never wanted him to befriend you, but when you flagged him down in the hotel lobby, he decided he wanted to help. I think he really liked you."

One item at a time, he put her things back into her purse. "He comes off as so normal, doesn't he? You'd never know about his psychotic tendencies. That's the medication. And superior counseling." Gabriel returned everything to the purse except her gloves, then tossed the purse into the backseat. "Here we go." He stepped out of the car, bent to look in. "Be right back."

She watched as he smeared her gloves in the bloody wound on Alan's head, then tossed them beside the discarded rock. He looked around the scene before returning to the car.

He opened the back door, grabbed her computer bag, then settled himself in the passenger seat, the bag on his lap. "It was his own fault," he said. "I never wanted him to get hurt. I liked Alan. Nice guy. Definitely one of my success stories. Not a lot of schizophrenics can have a career like he had."

"But you . . . you killed him."

"Actually, it looks like you killed him. Your gloves, your DNA. When they find his body, they'll think it was you."

She looked out the front, saw the gloves, the bloody rock. Gabriel was framing her for Alan's murder.

"That's why I hit him so many times. Obviously, I could've killed him with one blow. I had to hold back, hit like a girl." He smiled at his joke. "They'll believe someone of inferior strength killed him. No defensive wounds—it would've been a friend for sure. Which you were."

Gabriel pulled her computer out of the bag, set the bag near his feet, and turned the computer over. From his pocket, he retrieved a shiny metal object. "Magnet. Should erase the hard drive, but we'll test it, just to be sure." He passed the magnet over the laptop, not missing a spot.

"Alan abducted that girl for me. I heard you tell him about her. Maryanne. Sweet little thing. Anyway, he delivered her to me. And when she didn't make it home, he bought my story. But I don't think he would've believed me if I told him you ran away, too. And once you started asking him to call your husband . . . well, we couldn't have that, now could we?"

"What kind of a man?—?"

"You have no idea how many people I've helped over the years. People like him. Like you, Amanda. Do you remember how you were when you first came into my office? A scared, guilty girl. You could barely function. I gave you the tools to live, gave you the confidence to do all you've done. And how do you repay me?" He smashed his fist down on her laptop. "With this!" He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his fists to relax. When he faced her again, his lips shifted into a sad smile. "I never wanted it to end this way. You've given me no choice."

Gabriel turned the computer over and powered it on. It displayed nothing but a black screen. "Success," he said.

He tossed the computer onto the back seat and dug in her bag until he found her flash drive. "I'll keep this," he said, pocketing it. "It'll be fun to see what else you have stored on here."

Gabriel stepped out of the car and made his way to the driver's side. This was it. He'd kill her now, leave her body to rot beside Alan's. Oh God, oh God . . . She didn't know how to pray, wished she'd listened to Mark's prayers more closely. If God didn't intervene, she was going to die .

Gabriel opened her door. "Come on."

"Please let me go. I promise I won't tell anyone."

Gabriel bent over, grabbed her chin, and turned her face until it was inches from his. "You've made that promise before, Amanda. I believed you once. I won't be duped again."

He unfastened the cuff attached to the door and yanked her from the car. He dragged her, stumbling down the narrow lane until they reached a silver, snow-covered sedan. He looked at her with a grin as he tossed her keys into the woods. "They'll find them eventually."

Then he pushed a button on a keyless remote, and the trunk of the sedan popped open. "I hope you don't still suffer from claustrophobia."

Panicked, she yanked against his grip, kicked him in the shin.

Gabriel threw her against the open trunk and backhanded her.

Pain exploded on her face. She crumpled, dizzy, unable to fight back when he lifted her and shoved her into the trunk.

He slammed the door on top of her, leaving her in cold blackness.

Cold seeped through Mark’s jacket, but he barely noticed, staring at his smartphone as if it might have the answer, but knowing as the pit in his stomach grew that Amanda would die tonight. She would die, and there was nothing he could do to protect her.

He couldn't leave, couldn't move. This is where she'd been seen last. Where could he go now? Back to his mother's house to wait for a call? We've found your wife's body . . .

But they wouldn't call, because there wouldn't be a body to find. Like the teenage girl who'd had the courage to turn in Sheppard, Amanda's body would never be discovered.

The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he rubbed the skin. There was something there—something that bothered him. It was like he'd just revealed a piece to a jigsaw puzzle, and he couldn't figure out how to fit it in. But it mattered. What it was, he didn't know, but it lingered in his thoughts like the snow clinging to his coat. Just when he tried to grab the thought, like the snow, it melted away.

He went back to where his mind had been a moment before. The teenager who had accused Sheppard had disappeared. Though foul play was suspected, the girl was never found. It wasn't that easy to hide a body and keep it hidden forever. Surely Sheppard's property had been searched after the girl disappeared. But what if . . . what if she wasn't on Sheppard's property? Nobody had ever put Sheppard together with Morass before. Maybe they needed to search for Morass's property.

He dialed Chris. “Maybe Morass owns?—?”

“I was just looking that up. Hold on.”

Mark clamped his mouth, assuming that telling his friend to hurry up wouldn’t help.

“Here it is,” Chris said. “He owns a house near Lake Winnipesaukee. It must be a vacation home."

“Send me the address. I bet Amanda's on her way there right now."

The car was moving. With each turn, Amanda rolled and lurched. How long had it been? It felt like ten hours, but it was probably more like ten minutes. She wore no watch, usually relying on her cell phone to tell her the time. No cell phone now, no clock to tick away the final moments of her life .

The trunk was her coffin, smaller than a coffin. Panic rose from deep within her, a surge of adrenaline combined with fear, growing until she couldn't hold it in any longer. She screamed, kicked, punched at the metal surrounding her. It was no use. She'd never get out, but she couldn't give up, not yet. She pounded her feet into the trunk's door over and over, not making a single dent. In frustration she smashed her hand into the hard metal of the trunk lid, and pain shot up her arm.

The pain brought her back to reality. She couldn't panic. She couldn't hyperventilate—with the limited air, she'd pass out for sure. She needed to think.

She took three deep breaths, forcing herself to exhale completely, and then thought about the air supply again. Would there be enough, or would she suffocate? She concentrated on her breathing. In and out. Slowly. No rush. No panic. No fear.

Right. She was terrified.

In retrospect, it seemed obvious that Sheppard was dangerous. She'd known, yet she hadn't been afraid. Why? Because she'd trusted Mark to protect her. After all, wasn't that why she'd been attracted to him in the first place? If any man could protect her from Gabriel Sheppard, it was Mark Johnson. Being married to him, Amanda had allowed herself to slip into the fantasy that Gabriel Sheppard wouldn't hurt her. Now, as the bruise on her cheek throbbed, the lies she'd told herself faded away. Sheppard was going to kill her.

From the look in his eyes, he was looking forward to it.

And Mark . . . Mark was gone. When Chris had told her Mark's nickname— the prophet —it hadn't surprised her. Mark always knew more than anyone else. And she'd always trusted him.

For almost ten years, Mark had been her rock, the solid ground she'd built her life on. When he seemed to despise her for her past, she was crushed. And when she'd learned about his affair with Annalise, she'd lost faith in him. He wasn't the man she'd thought he was. He wasn't trustworthy. He wasn't her savior. He was just a flawed man, like the rest. That was why she'd gone against his advice this weekend, because she no longer trusted him.

And now she had nobody she could trust.

The swaying of the car and the fear enveloping her reminded her of the terrible accident that had killed her best friend and sent her to therapy. Amanda and Lisa had been making plans to ditch her little brother as soon as they got to the beach. And then suddenly, shrieking tires, a short scream, and the deafening sound of metal against metal. It happened so fast. One minute they were planning a trip to the arcade, the next . . .

Amanda never lost consciousness. Trapped between two bodies and unable to even flinch, let alone get herself out, she stared at the only thing visible outside of the car—the dark green side of the overturned tractor-trailer—and prayed.

Please save them. Please send someone to rescue us. She'd said it over and over, trusting God even as she felt her friends slip away.

By the time the ambulance arrived, Lisa, her brother, and her mother were dead. Lisa's father clung to life but died a few hours later from complications during surgery.

Amanda walked away from the accident with minor injuries.

It was Dr. Sheppard who'd suggested it was human instinct to want to believe in a higher power when feeling powerless. Believe in yourself —that's what he'd encouraged her to do. But how could she? He'd said it himself—she'd been powerless. She never believed in herself and had no idea how. So she'd believed in Gabriel. And when he'd proved to be less than perfect, she looked for someone else to place her faith in. And she found what she was looking for in Mark .

She'd discarded the God who'd let her down. But Gabriel was a madman, and Mark was gone. God was all she had left.

Amanda hadn't really prayed since the car accident.

Dear God , she thought, and with that, a small sob escaped. Dear God, have You been there all along? I have no right to ask You for anything now, and if You're there . . . Oh, God, please be there. I need You to be there now.

I don't want to die like this. I want to go home. I want to kiss my daughters and raise them and take care of them.

She thought of Mark, and tears burned. She loved him. She'd always loved him, but she'd been so foolish. How could she have thrown away their marriage so callously? Now, all she wanted was to feel Mark's arms around her again.

God, give me the chance to tell Mark I love him, to tell him how sorry I am for everything. If he rejects me, at least he'll know how I feel.

She loved Mark, and she couldn't stand the thought that he might live the rest of his life and never know the truth.

Please, God, don't let it be too late. Help me. If You're there, please help me.

But why would God help her now? For some reason, she'd been spared in that car accident. And what had she done? She'd become involved with a married man. She'd almost broken up a family. She should have died—that's what she deserved.

She couldn't think about that. She didn't want what she deserved.

The car made a sharp turn, and Amanda's head smashed into the metal behind her. She rubbed the tender spot as the road became rougher. Her right side was almost numb from the pressure of her body against the metal plate of the trunk's floor. It took some maneuvering, but she managed to turn herself over. Something jabbed into her hip. She reached her hand underneath her and found nothing there. Whatever it was, it was in her coat.

She gasped. Could it be? She twisted onto her back and reached into her inside coat pocket. It closed around a small, round can, which she tugged out. Though she couldn't see it, she knew exactly what it was. Pepper spray. Thank you, God.

The car slowed down as the road became rough and bumpy. And then the car stopped. She felt it settle as Gabriel parked.

She was out of time. Should she spray it as soon as he opened the trunk? No, because then she'd be stuck inside, and he could close the trunk until his eyes recovered. How long would that take? Why hadn't she asked Mark more questions about how it worked?

She'd have to wait for an opportunity. She stuck the pepper spray in her coat pocket. It was her only chance.