Suddenly, the first year of attending university, his records showed nothing. I frowned. There was definitely a pattern of anger issues and then suddenly nothing? Obviously, Frank found that strange as well and had dug even further into some financial records. Brian’s father had made several huge donations to the university he had attended. And one enormous one to his old high school. The donations smacked of payoffs to keep things completely off the record and to seal other, older records. I felt a shudder of fear go through me at the thought of the kind of person Rabbit was living with now. The control both Brian and his father wielded over her life.
Aggressive behavior, such as Brian displayed, didn’t just disappear. And someone like Douglas James didn’t just quietly make enormous donations without publicity. He was as much of a media hog as his son. He was hiding Brian’s escalating violence with his money. I shook my head. I wondered if he ever considered investing the money in professional help for his son rather than hiding it. Did he think behavior like this would just go away? My gut told me it didn’t. It was still there, threatening Rabbit’s safety.
I closed my eyes and took in several calming breaths. I had to keep a clear head.
I looked through all the pictures he had included in the file. No wonder I hadn’t recognized Elizabeth in the article when I had seen it. The manner in which she was dressed and presented, she looked much older, and always so solemn. In the pictures, Brian’s massive size dwarfed Elizabeth, making her look even smaller than she was.
Elizabeth. The name seemed so foreign to me when I thought of her.
Rabbit.
Yes. That was my girl.
Her file was much thinner. She came from a small town in Manitoba, moved to Toronto only a few years ago, not long after her parents, Sandra and Kevin Brady, were killed in a car accident. She married Brian less than a year later. She no longer worked, but volunteered at the same library where she ran a reading program for children and also taught illiterate adults to read. She was active on several charity boards, attended a lot of dinners and functions and was rarely ever seen without Brian beside her. Frank had found some earlier pictures of her and I stared at them with longing. They were more like the Rabbit I knew. She appeared happy, laughing. And looked younger.
I laid out three photos on the table and studied them. The change in Rabbit was dramatic. In one she looked her age, maybe even younger than her twenty-two years and happy, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, smiling with her parents. The next was a few years later, she was twenty-five and it was taken not long after she moved to Toronto. In it she still looked younger, but sadder, more solemn, standing beside Brian. The third was a year later. She was far thinner, her hair up, dressed in black and looking older than her years. If I had met her at one of these events, I would easily have put her in her thirties. I studied the last picture again, focusing on her expression. She wasn’t just serious. She was … blank. Her face was blank. I shook my head. While she was here her face and eyes were so expressive and I could read her so easily. My finger pushed at the third picture. I didn’t know that woman. That was not my Rabbit.
I sighed and pulled the laptop closer. I hit the play button and again watched the press conference Brian held announcing his wife’s return. It was brief and to the point and he took no questions; Elizabeth was not in attendance. He simply stated that Elizabeth had been located in a small town many miles away. She had escaped her captors and was recovering. She suffered some aftereffects of her ordeal but he was confident she would recover fully. He asked for their privacy while his wife healed. No interviews or questions would be taken. The search for her abductors was still active.
My eyes narrowed as I watched him over and over again. He played it well. Confident and aggressive, not at all nervous in front of the cameras. Almost smug. I watched the first press conference again as well. I noticed some of his confidence was lacking. Was it guilt or simply worry?
I slammed the laptop shut and stood up. I was so frustrated. My head was filled with so many questions and thoughts; none of them good. All of them led to one conclusion, and I had nothing concrete to prove it other than my instinct.
I had moved too fast. I had made the wrong decision.
He had anger issues. She was beaten. Even without a working memory, her first reaction to him had been negative and his reaction was equally as telling.
I shouldn’t have sent her back.
Rabbit wasn’t safe and I needed to make her safe.
I needed to get her back here.
Home.
With me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rabbit
The sky was light and I shifted in bed, pulling Joshua’s t-shirt a little closer, breathing in its fading scent. Ten days. I had been ‘home’ for ten days. And, despite the time, I still felt less at home now than I had felt almost immediately with Joshua.