Before She's Gone, page 27
“I’m sorry, Jacob. I don’t like being touched,” I said in a tone so firm, it shocked me. “You know that. I’ve never been okay with anyone touching me.”
“God,” he snapped. “I thought we were past that, Annabeth. I was just trying to comfort you.”
“I know you were,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I have been nothing but patient and understanding with you. A lesser man would find someone who cared back.”
“Jacob, I’ve told you I don’t feel that way.”
“Save it,” he snapped.
Jacob jerked the door open, storming out of the room. His temper had always been short, though most of the time, he tried to hide it from me. It was surprising to see him on edge, especially since I was the one with a missing son. I didn’t have time to mull over his attitude before a handsome man in a police uniform stepped into the room.
He took one look at my frantic gaze and stepped away from the door, leaving it open, to my approval and surprise. Extending a hand, he slowly walked forward. Each step seemed carefully calculated. Suddenly, I felt very frumpy. I had to look like a hot mess, but it didn’t matter. If Officer Stud Muffin was going to help me find my baby boy, then I’d work with him.
“Ms. Simmons?” he asked. “I’m Detective Reyes. How are you feeling?”
“Angry,” I snapped quicker than expected. “I want to know what you are doing to find my son.”
He smiled sympathetically. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. We are doing everything possible to find Gregory. Is there anything you can tell me about your attacker?”
I cringed. “Yes. It was the same man as before. The one who killed my Greg.”
Reyes looked down at his notepad and flipped a few pages back. “I’m sorry for your loss. That was ten years ago, correct?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You were in a coma?”
“For twenty-six days,” I said.
“What happened after that?”
“Doesn’t your notebook tell you all that? I lost everything from amnesia.”
“That’s rough. How is your memory doing now?”
I shrugged. “Some days are better than others. It took me years to remember everything that happened before the attack.”
“But you do remember it all now?”
Shaking my head, I tried again to recall what had happened on that fateful night. My body shook, my head starting to hurt instantly. I was used to the pain. “Mostly, everything right up to the attack. The rest is still in bits and pieces. I don’t know who attacked me, if that’s what you’re asking. All I know is that it was the same man.”
“How can you be sure?” Reyes asked.
I glared at him. “Because you remember the person who had his way with you repeatedly. You remember their smell, the shape of their body, everything but what the police need to catch him. When someone spends a month shoving their dick, fist, and anything else they find lying around inside your body, you can’t forget.” My voice cracked. “No matter how hard you try.”
His eyes grew wide, a red blush gracing his cheeks as he quickly looked away from me and back down to the notebook. “Um.”
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. “Listen, if you aren’t going to help me find my baby, then go away. I can do it without you.”
“Annabeth,” he said softly. “I really want to help you, but we just don’t have a lot to go on. Is there anything else at all that you can tell me? Eye color, hair?”
“No!” I yelled, my temper finally breaking through. “I’ve told you everything! Why don’t you send the nurse in here so she can get me out of this place on your way out, okay?”
Reyes raised his hands in a show of surrender, taking a step back while I calmed down. His eyes shifted briefly to the door, but instead of leaving, he waited. All I wanted was for him to go away. I wanted time to collect my thoughts and try to get a plan together. If I couldn’t count on the police, I would take care of it myself. Reyes didn’t seem to understand just how dire the situation really was.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said after a while. “I can’t imagine how I would feel if one of my girls went missing. You are handling all of this much better than I would.”
My eyes lifted in surprise. “You have kids?”
He nodded. “Two girls. Their mother passed away three years ago.”
“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. There was no way for you to know. I don’t really share details of my life on cases, but it seemed like you needed to know.”
“Thank you,” I said. “How old are they?”
A sly grin passed his lips. “Twin girls, seven. They certainly give me a run for my money. Your son has Asperger’s, correct?”
I nodded. “He’s high-functioning though. Only certain things set him off, like loud noises. He’s so smart though. I had to hire a tutor for myself just to keep up with him. He loves puzzles.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing then. Perhaps he’ll be able to find a way to escape the kidnapper.”
“I wish I could have the same faith as you, but I’ve been there before, wherever the man held me. It’s a maze. I don’t even know if we were in a building.”
“You told the nurse the last time you were here that it smelled damp? Perhaps a basement?”
I shuddered. “I just don’t know. All I can think about is finding him. I feel so useless sitting here, doing nothing.”
“But you aren’t doing nothing,” Reyes said as he carefully took a step closer to me. “The more details that I have about the man who took him and what you went through last time, the better my chances are of being able to catch him.”
“You want to know about the last time?” I asked.
My heart started to race. The idea of reliving the past wasn’t something I took lightly. I’d spent years trying to keep things bottled up inside. I knew it wasn’t healthy to keep things in. My doctor had said as much several times. But opening up to a complete stranger? That was almost more than I could take altogether. Why would I tell him the sordid details of my capture? I shuddered and closed my eyes, softly shaking my head.
“Annabeth, how am I going to find your son unless you can help me?” he pressed. “Do it for your boy, not for me or anyone else. Help me find him, please.”
I took a deep breath, shuddering at the memory as I cleared my throat. “Some of it, I remember like it was yesterday. Some details still come and go. I can’t count on them. Most of the time, I wonder if I can even count on myself.”
I looked up at him and chuckled. “You might want to pull up a chair. This is going to take a little bit of time.”
He grinned, quickly grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and pulling it close to the bed. “I have all the time in the world.”
“But Gregory might not,” I whispered.
When he reached across the bed and gently took my hand, I winced and pulled away. The shocking realization that his touch didn’t send me running for the door wasn’t something I could think about. I had to be strong for my son. I’d already faced down the monster, but now he had my boy. I had to stay focused, no matter how painful it was.
“It’s strange,” I whispered. “Even the simplest things like the color of my attacker’s eyes elude me at times, but not Greg. Everything about him is crystal clear.”
“Did you lose any memories of him when you woke up last time?”
I nodded my head. “It’s very disconcerting to wake up and not be sure of who you are. My mother would sit at my side for hours and show me pictures, hoping to jog some recollection. Listening to her and hearing the heartbreak in her voice were almost unbearable. Slowly, pieces of it started to come back, but I still didn’t recognize the carefree, young, and happy woman I saw in the pictures. It was only when she showed me Gregory’s photo that I started to remember him.”
“Then,” I stammered, “Then, she told me what happened. How they had found his body in the cabin that we were renting for our honeymoon.”
“You were married young,” Reyes pressed.
“Very. Nineteen. But my mother loved Gregory like her own son. He was just a few years older than me, but our love was the kind you find in a fairytale. We met in school as children and grew up together. When we announced our engagement, my mother wasn’t even surprised. She loved him almost as much as I did.”
“What about his family?”
“He never really had one. His older brother took care of him, but he was just a kid himself, to be honest. By the time Gregory was eighteen, he was living with my mother and me. He went right to college and still worked to help her pay bills. We were just kids, of course, and broke up a time or two. But our love was stronger than the outside world, and we always seemed to find each other again.”
“That’s beautiful,” he whispered.
I chucked. “It’s tragic. I never wanted a story like Romeo and Juliet. We had a simple wedding, neither of us having much family. Just my mom, my brother, and Jacob.”
Reyes’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve known Mr. Morse that long?”
I nodded. “He did some work for my mother when I was a teen. I guess we sort of adopted him into the family after that.”
“That’s very admirable of her.”
I shrugged. “I never really thought much of it. He needed a family and we had the room. I think people see him and think the worst. He’s harmless, really. He’s just got a short fuse sometimes.”
“Very little respect for authority too, it would seem.”
I cocked my head. “I’ve never seen that side of him.”
Reyes shook his head, a somewhat fake smile appearing. “Please, continue with your story. I don’t want to get off track.”
I frowned but dropped the subject. If he was going to help me find Gregory, I had to stay focused. Getting sidetracked talking about Jacob wasn’t going to help anyone.
“Um,” I muttered. “Right. So, we were married. My mother paid for us to get a cabin in the Catskills for a weekend. He was working, and I was finishing up college, so it was just for a few nights.” I sighed as I recalled the memory. “That was all we needed though. Just a little time for us to really be a married couple.”
“You were still living with your mother at that point?” he asked.
“Yeah, but she didn’t mind us even then. It wasn’t supposed to be our forever home. We’d been saving for months to rent our own place. The proudest moment of our lives was the day we signed the lease. I was going to tell my mother when we got back from our honeymoon.”
I swallowed as I continued. “The first night there was wonderful. The next day, I left just for a few minutes to go down to the store. We’d drunk our way through a bottle of wine and had every intention of doing the same that evening. It was raining, and the roads were slick.”
The memories were overpowering. I blinked back the tears. The closer we got to the kidnapping and later, the torture, the more I felt myself becoming unhinged. I knew from my sessions with Dr. Andrews that I had to breathe. If I didn’t, then I would have a panic attack for certain, and I’d be no closer to the answers Reyes and I both needed. I glanced at him beneath my eyelashes. He sat, waiting so patiently for me to tell him more. Where was he ten years ago when my husband’s murder had gone unsolved?
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I haven’t shared this with anyone besides my doctor. It’s just going to take me a little time.”
“I understand,” Reyes said as he sat back.
“So, the road getting to the cabin was a mess. The mud was one of the first memories that came back to me. Everything was washed out. When I got back to the cabin, I saw tracks in the mud. It was one of those things that I just didn’t think about until it was too late. I thought maybe the cabin was up high enough that my tracks hadn’t been washed out. There was no car waiting for me, nothing. I think back to that moment and wonder if I had been more cautious, more vigilant, maybe things would be different.”
“Hey,” he whispered. “You can’t be doing that to yourself. You couldn’t know what would be waiting for you.”
“Or who,” I gasped.
All at once, it came flooding back to me. I started to shake.
“Annabeth?” His voice sounded far away.
“I can’t!” My chest hurt. I closed down, giving up my life up to the darkness.
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About Cole Baxter
Cole Baxter loves writing psychological suspense thrillers. It’s all about that last reveal that he loves shocking readers with.
He grew up in New York, where there crime was all around. He decided to turn that into something positive with his fiction.
His stories will have you reading through the night—they are very addictive!
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Also by Cole Baxter
Before She’s Gone
Stolen Son
Cole Baxter, Before She's Gone
