Chapter 24

TWENTY-FOUR

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Thursday, September 19

10:10 a.m.

She'd ended the video call mere seconds after answering.

Long enough to confirm her darkest suspicion.

Despite how much she'd prepared for this moment, she'd lost her nerve. Elyse had taken screenshots of the preceding messages. Where'd you go? Answer your phone. Show me that beautiful body . And another video request had come through. Elyse had declined, then responded with a mom home. call u l8tr . That was how fifteen-year-olds communicated, right? There'd been a few times she hadn't been able to decipher Ava's texts because of her shorthand, but her response seemed to do the trick. As she earned herself a thumbs-up from the other end.

She'd bought herself some time.

While Elyse had gotten a pretty good look at the man who'd assaulted her three days ago, there were still gaps in her memory. Things she couldn't account for. Like the differences between the man in her memory, the one she'd met that day on the beach in person, and the other viewed through a phone screen. She couldn't make a mistake. She had to know for sure.

"All right. You can have your office back." Elyse logged out of the profile she'd created on the stolen phone and cleared the history from Wesley's internet browser. For a split second, she'd waited for her husband to answer.

But there was only earned silence.

Because he wasn't in the house. His following her to the trailhead, the threat of divorce, the affair—it'd all taken a back seat to her proving Samuel Thornton had abducted a fifteen-year-old girl. And, for the first time in days, she allowed herself to sit with the fact her marriage was over.

She'd prepared for this. Just as she'd prepared for everything else in her life. To shoulder it alone. That was how it worked when you were forced to raise two bratty brothers who loved nothing more than pushing buttons and parents more interested in their careers than the children they'd brought into the world. She'd figured out how to cook, how to bathe them, how to do laundry and load the dishwasher all while keeping up on her own homework. Because she'd had to. Her brothers—her parents—they'd all counted on her to be strong. And she'd done a damn good job.

She'd been strong faced with the uterine cancer diagnosis. Then with the decision not to terminate her pregnancy during chemo treatments. She'd somehow kept herself together after the delivery of that precious soul, even though the nurses advised against seeing her second baby. The one who would never take her own breath or whimper for her mother's attention. She'd cried and raged and yelled when learning about Wesley's first affair despite how tired she was from trying to be the mother Ava deserved. With home-cooked meals and daily check-ins. With advocating for her daughter against teachers and principals and ensuring deadlines were met. All while pursuing her own purpose for those mothers who got to take care of their babies. Distractions. All of it. She knew that, but the only other option was giving up entirely. Sinking into a destruction so intense she'd never recover.

She'd been strong before. She would do it again.

Except she didn't want to be strong anymore. She wanted to be soft. Love, happiness, peace—she'd had it all once. After Ava had been born, and hers and Wesley's entire lives had changed in an instant. It'd been visceral and solid. Steady. Wesley had been there for her, taking shifts at night, mixing formula, reading every book in the house. Not just the baby books they'd bought but full novels. Just so their daughter could hear his voice. He'd softened, then, too. Shown her how much he could really love. They'd been…happy. And she'd convinced herself all these years later nothing had changed—that they were still those people—but it'd been a lie. One she'd told herself a thousand times over.

She wanted to sleep without the knowledge there were very bad people in this world. Some closer than others. She wanted to spend more time with Ava binge watching shows, eating homemade brownies they'd made together, and teaching her daughter how to drive. Fantasies of girls' trips and college tours were right there within reach. The truth was the years had already gone by too fast. She wanted them all back. She wanted to go back to the days when her daughter had been safe.

All she had to do was forget that someone else's little girl needed her help.

But Ruby Davis was out there. Alone. Scared. Possibly hurt. And Elyse was the only one who had a chance of bringing her home.

There was no choice. Not really. Because it was still too easy to picture Ava's face in the place of Ruby's, in the place of Poppy's, and more than anything, Elyse would want someone fighting for her daughter if she'd been taken.

So Elyse knew what she had to do next.

Pocketing Poppy's cell phone, she entered her bedroom and pulled open her nightstand drawer. It was exactly as she'd left it. No signs of disturbance, but she wasn't willing to take the chance of anyone finding the evidence she'd collected over the past few days.

Wesley, she was sure, would be back. He had his own key. They owned this vacation house together, and she couldn't risk him discovering just how far down the rabbit hole she'd gone. Or give him the opportunity to use it against her. After all, if she was caught, he would get everything. Their homes, their savings, their retirement accounts. Ava.

She pried the photos of Ruby Davis taken from the beach house free and piled them across the bed. She added Poppy's phone to the collection, ensuring to power it off to avoid further video calls. Then pasted the sticky note with the passcode on the back. She couldn't destroy any of it. Not yet. If her plan failed, she could still give Ruby Davis a fighting chance with what she'd uncovered about Samuel Thornton. The photos of Ruby Davis, the messages to Katie Rose, memory of Poppy Slater's gold necklace. If something… terrible happened, it could be enough to convince Detective Moore she hadn't been crazy after all.

She'd hide the photos and phone someplace no one would ever think to look. Not even Leigh. While they'd only been friends for a few short months, Elyse had a sense of how the criminologist's mind worked. It was a skill Elyse had developed taking care of so many others, homing in on what someone needed. Before they even knew it for themselves. Wesley had always needed an audience, someone to perform for, and when she failed to give him that attention, he turned to someone who would. Ava needed protection. From herself, from the harsh realities of the real world. Perhaps Elyse had shielded her too much, particularly after losing the baby, but there'd been no one else to do the job. Her brothers needed to believe they'd overcome neglect and distant parents on their own. It was a rite of passage and a crutch they'd used often in their marriages. Never mind she'd been there to make sure they didn't starve and never asked for anything in return. And Leigh? She needed puzzles. Order. Patterns. She didn't like pieces that wouldn't fit together the first time around. It frustrated her and messed with her patience, and when Leigh got word of what happened here—and she would—Elyse was sure she could give her brilliant friend a puzzle that couldn't be solved.

She headed outside next. To the storage closet underneath the house. It was almost identical to the one she'd found beneath Samuel Thornton's beach front property, but hers had never held another human being hostage. An old toolbox neither she nor Wesley had touched since purchasing the house had been shoved in the corner. A remnant of the people who came before them. She'd never even looked inside. Never had to fix anything around the house. They'd hired handymen for that, complete with their own set of tools.

Pulling it into the light, she took inventory of the weathered plastic box. A few Allen wrenches that came with every piece of furniture nowadays. A hammer barely holding on to its dried, wooden grip. The thing would most likely fall straight off if she attempted to use it. A pair of dull needle-nose pliers and a flathead screwdriver. And a box cutter with a mere shard of a blade left. No. She was wrong. Elyse could see down into the hollow shaft of the metal grip. There was something else inside. Twisting the flathead into the screw holding the box cutter together, she exposed several never-used blades. "Well, that could come in handy."

She replaced the broken-off blade with a fresh one and secured the entire tool back together without cutting herself. A win. Packing everything up, she tossed the rest of the toolbox into the garbage can. Avoiding that nail Wesley had claimed he'd scratched himself on. Apart from the fact they'd forgotten to get the can to the curb in time for garbage day last week, and there was no other bag waiting at the bottom. He hadn't taken out the garbage and earned tetanus as a reward as he'd claimed. It'd been another lie. Another attempt to control her.

I lost it all, Elyse. Everything .

His voice crystalized as if her husband stood right next to her. The memory warped and blurred, like she'd just come out of some great hibernation and was blinking into the sunlight.

Her heart rate quickened, her breathing shallowed as it played—so clearly—out in front of her. She gripped the box cutter. The ache crested up her wrist and into her forearm. How Wesley had admitted to the affair, not in the bedroom as he had yesterday afternoon, but in the living room. Early. Told her everything. About the woman. Helen had been her name, but he knew now that it'd been a fake. About the photos, the blackmail, the money he'd sent. How he'd lost them everything. Their entire financial portfolio they'd spent eighteen years building together. Retirement accounts, Ava's college fund. Their home. It was gone. All gone.

The humidity beaded sweat at the nape of her neck, and Elyse took a step toward the front stairs. To run from reliving it all again. But physical movement only brought down a few more stubborn memory bricks. Wesley had planned this vacation. To get them out of the house while the home in Clarksburg was sold and emptied of their belongings. He'd known Gulf Shores was the only place for them to go, despite years of knowing she hated everything about this house. What had he expected her to do? Live here permanently?

You really don't remember anything from this morning? He'd asked her that in the emergency room, just after a doctor had explained the symptoms of her concussion and had her admitted to the hospital on Monday. Tears burned in her eyes. Not out of hurt but anger. At herself, at Wesley, at this impossible situation he'd put them in.

She'd get nothing from the divorce. Nothing to support her and Ava. She'd have to start over. Double her hours, take on another job. There was nothing left but this damned house. He'd taken it all.

Elyse forced herself toward the front door, counting off the number of stairs to keep herself from screaming into the cul-de-sac of homes just like this one. But dealing with her husband would have to wait. She had a lot more to do today. Things that couldn't be put off anymore.

Dragging a duffle bag out from beneath her bed, she tossed the box cutter inside with the nasal sedative she had to rely on to get through the long drive down to Gulf Shores every fall. Followed by a length of rope from the boat dock out back, a box of lavender latex gloves she carried with her in case of emergency, and duct tape from underneath the kitchen counter.

Everything she would need to save Ruby Davis.