She started to laugh but it sounded crazy. Like maybe she was losing her mind. “He will. I’ve seen the look in his eyes. He’s—he put his hands around my neck, like he wanted to choke me to death.” She was crying again, though I don’t know if she realized it. “He can’t let me go. He has to kill me. I’ve seen his face. I’ve seen his everything.”
She turned away from me, pressing her face into the wall, like she couldn’t stand looking at me any longer, and I kneeled there on the disgusting mattress, feeling helpless. Hopeless. Then anger surged through me, making my blood spark with fiery heat, and I clutched my hands into fists. “I won’t let him touch you ever again.”
She didn’t bother looking at me. “Go away.”
Her words shocked me. Didn’t she want my help? Or had she already given up? “Tell me your name,” I demanded rather than asked. I wanted to tell her mine, to give us a connection.
“No.” She glared at me from over her shoulder, her hair flopping over one eye. “Leave me alone. You don’t really want to help me. You’re too scared you’ll get caught.”
I could hardly begin to comprehend what she said to me. She couldn’t mean it. Was she willing to give up everything, her entire life, so she could . . . what?
Die at the hands of my father?
Screw that. Fuck that. I refused to let that happen. I was going to save her. I had to. It was the only choice.
“I’ll be back,” I told her as I stood and brushed off the front of my jeans. She still wouldn’t look at me, her face mashed into the wall, her shoulders gently shaking, as if she was still crying.
Seeing that, hearing her quiet sobs . . . it broke my unbreakable heart.
I found her.
My pursuit of one Katherine “Katie” Watts was relentless. After watching her interview with Lisa Swanson, I spent almost a week scouring the Web for any bit of information I could unearth. Every news article I could find about the crime and her discovery, I read; some of it I’d seen before, after it first happened. Every crime documentary created about her, I watched on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix . . . all of them. Again and again. Over and over. Some I’d seen but many were new, coming out after I forced myself to let her go, pushing her and what happened between us out of my brain.
Now I was looking for a clue. A glimmer of truth, a bit of information I might’ve missed before.
It helped. After some slightly unethical searching on the Web, I discovered where she lived growing up, where she went to elementary school, and who her best friend was, the one that accompanied her the day she was taken. Her name had been withheld on the media but I scoured the court documents until I discovered it on the witness list.
Sarah Ellis was easy to find. Her Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts popped up with ease, even with all the other Sarah Ellises out there. But it didn’t look like she was in contact with Katie anymore, so there was no point in pursuing her.
I finally stumbled upon some pertinent information by accident. Legally, too—during a civil search, I found the documents for the purchase of Katie’s house.
Meaning . . . I had her address.
I pulled up her house on Google Maps and studied it. Older. Small. Tiny front yard, rosebushes line the white fence. There’s a little porch with a swing on it. It looks like a safe neighborhood, quiet, that borderlines a grove of towering pine trees.
She’s lived there a year. The deed is in her name only. No guy. I’m assuming she doesn’t have a guy.
I’m really fucking hoping she doesn’t have one.
The interview is on right now—I’m watching it again because there’s something about Katie’s voice that soothes me. Gives me hope. Makes me yearn. We’d forged such a connection then, when we were young and felt like no one else understood us. Her parents severed that and I told myself it was for the best. I didn’t need her, didn’t want to need her, so I forgot about her.
Or so I thought.
Now I’m fucking obsessed. I want to meet the Katie of today and tell her I’m sorry. That I hope she’s happy. I want to ask her if the ghost of my father still haunts her.
Because he haunts me. Constantly.
“What are your plans for the future?” Lisa asks Katie. The interview is almost over.
“Right now I just live day by day,” Katie responds, her sweet voice filling my head, invading my thoughts. I pause in my search and lift my head, studying her image on my TV.
So beautiful. Her golden-blond hair is long and wavy at the ends and her blue eyes are dark, like a midnight sky. She looks innocent. Like an angel.
She could be my angel. She could save me. If I could just see her, talk to her. Just once.
“You must have some plans, don’t you? Things you wish for? A career? Marriage? Children?” Lisa persists.
The flinch is there, so subtle I’m sure the average person wouldn’t notice.