Secure Location

chapter Twenty-One

Meg bit her lip. She would not beg or cry. She would not give him the satisfaction. She would simply endure.

He surprised her when he backed away and pulled out the lone metal chair that sat at one end of the narrow table. He sat, his left side toward her. She watched as he picked up a gun, cradled it in one hand and gently rubbed it with a rag.

He didn’t say another word to her. Sometime later, maybe forty minutes or so, she saw one of his hands drift down below the table and he stroked himself through his pants. Her breath caught in her chest. She wanted to look away but she was frozen.

It went on for some minutes before he pushed back his chair and walked into the small bathroom. He shut the door but the wood was thin and the gap between the door and the floor significant. The sounds from the small room told the story.

A minute after he finished, the door opened. He didn’t look at her. He picked up the sleeping bag that hung on the back of the door, untied the strings, unrolled it onto the dirty carpet and lay down. He was asleep in minutes.

She had to pee but even if she could have gotten up, she didn’t think she would ever ask to use that bathroom. She would hold it until she exploded.

She couldn’t sleep. Not after what T.J. had told her. Everything she believed for years had changed and her mind was whirling.

Melissa Ann Percy. Everybody had called her Missy. And everybody had loved her, especially Meg. She’d been the little sister that Meg had always wanted. And whenever the Percys had called her to babysit, she’d jumped at the chance.

Mrs. Percy had always dressed her daughter like a little doll, in sweet dresses with matching tights. Missy’s blond hair had natural curls and she was forever losing the barrettes that Gloria insisted she start the day with.

A half hour before Missy died, Meg had run the bath water. It was the middle of July and Missy had been sweaty and dirty from playing outside. Meg could still feel the weight of the little girl’s body as she picked her up and swung her over the edge of the white tub. She’d soaped her up and Missy had giggled and squirmed and when she was all rinsed off, Meg had wrapped her wet naked body in a big towel.

She’d smelled so good.

Meg had dressed her in her favorite pajamas, the ones with little pigs running across them. And she’d brushed the tangles out of her hair. And she’d said yes when the little girl had begged for a treat before bedtime.

She’d been big enough to crawl up into her highchair and she’d raised her little arms, impatient for Meg to attach the tray. Then she’d grinned when Meg had pulled a bag of marshmallows out of the cupboard. They were her favorite.

Meg had given her one and watched her eat it. Then another. And then the doorbell had rung.

It was almost eight-thirty and close to dark. But she hadn’t been scared. Maiter wasn’t Houston, where Meg’s family had always double-checked to make sure their windows and doors were locked. It was the kind of place where kids slept out in the backyard in tents and teenagers hung around the park at night after the summer baseball game had ended, talking and maybe sneaking the occasional cigarette.

Everybody knew everybody. And while some teenage girls might have been bored in the little town, Meg had been glad that her dad had lost his job in Houston and they’d moved to Maiter. Otherwise, she’d have never met the Percys who lived across the street in the big white house. She’d never have met Missy.

She’d gone to answer the door and it had been Mrs. Moore, the woman who lived next door. The Percys had been collecting her mail while she’d been out of town visiting her mother and she’d come to get it. Meg had retrieved it off the big dining room table, chatted for just a minute, and closed the heavy door after the woman.

And then she’d gone back into the kitchen. And sweet Missy had been lying on the kitchen table, her lips blue.

Not breathing.

The open bag of marshmallows was next to her, with more spilled out on the table.

Meg had grabbed her, stuck her fingers in her mouth, and swept out half-chewed marshmallows. But she remained unresponsive. Meg had looked up and T.J. was standing in the doorway, between the kitchen and living room, his eyes wide. “Stay here,” Meg had yelled and she’d run out of the house into the night, the little girl in her arms, screaming for help.

Hours later, when it had all been over, and she’d been sitting at her own kitchen table, listening to the police talk to her parents, she’d heard them say “lodged in her windpipe, just like a cork.”

The small town, the one that she’d started to really like, was no longer friendly and welcoming. Because everywhere she went, she was the girl who let sweet Missy Percy choke to death.

But she hadn’t.

For years she’d relived every moment of that night, breaking each action into discreet moments. She’d heard the click of the tray snapping onto the highchair, hadn’t she? She’d only talked to the neighbor for a minute, right?

It drove her crazy.

In the end, she’d realized it didn’t matter. Missy was dead. The Percys had lost a daughter. T.J. had lost a sister.

She had lost everyone’s trust. She’d disappointed the people who loved her most.

Now, she stared at Troy Blakely and felt as if she wanted to jump out of her own skin. She hated. For the first time in her life, she knew that she honestly hated.

Intellectually, on a better day, she knew that she might be able to reason that he was a sick man. Had obviously been a sick child. But she could not bring herself to feel sorry for him.

No. She felt sorry for his parents. At what point did they know that they had raised a monster? At what point did they stop thinking about their little girl? They never got to see her first day of kindergarten, her first high school dance, her college graduation. They never again got to feel her chubby arms wrap around their necks. They never got to kiss her good-night and stroke her soft hair.

Her own parents had suffered, too. She could still remember sitting on the top step in the dark, weeks after Missy’s death, listening to her parents talk in the downstairs living room. Her father had been loudest. How could she have been so careless? Her mother’s voice softer but no less filled with despair. I don’t know.

A month later, after her father had lost his job, she’d tried to tell them how sorry she was. She’d cried and they’d told her that they still loved her. Her mother had patted her hand. We will never talk about this again.

And she hadn’t.

But she had thought about it every day for the past twenty years. And she had grieved.

* * *

MYERS’S TEAM IDENTIFIED twenty-nine buildings that had four or more stories in the eight-block area known as Valdez. It was called that because it surrounded Valdez Park, where a small statue marked the contributions of some hero from the Spanish-American war. The park might have been nice at one time but now it was run-down, matching the apartment buildings that lined the streets. At least half of them had more than ten floors and six had more than twenty floors. It was a hell of a lot of space to cover.

Myers started by calling in the canine unit. Four dogs and their handlers arrived within the half hour. They got a shirt out of Meg’s dirty laundry pile and the dogs picked up her scent. The officers, twelve in total, split into four teams of three. Each team took a dog and they started working the list. Cruz was grateful for the manpower. He realized it was probably every available cop that they could spare. He and Myers paired up, making a fifth team. They didn’t have a dog but Cruz didn’t intend to let that stop him.

The plan was fairly simple. Knock on doors, ask a few questions, show both Blakely’s and Meg’s pictures, and let the dog do his thing. If the animal showed any interest, investigate further. If not, move on. Any leads or new information would immediately get triaged back to the temporary command center that had been set up unobtrusively in a trailer in an empty parking lot.

Fortunately, the neighborhood was one that the police knew well in that there was frequent violence requiring a police response. They were on a first-name basis with lots of people in the community. Even so, some doors went unanswered. A few of the inhabitants might have been working but many more were likely inside but just not keen on interacting with the police.

They didn’t break down any doors. If they couldn’t get inside to do a visual, they relayed that information back to one additional officer who was charged with tracking down landlords, to get access through them.

Nobody recognized Blakely or Meg.

As report after report funneled into Myers, Cruz got more worried. Meg. Sweet Meg. Who could only see the good in people. How would she handle a crazy man?

Stay alive, Meg. Just stay alive until I can find you. Keep our baby safe.

Their baby. It was staggering news. Wonderful news. Terrifying news in these circumstances.

Meg had tried to tell him. Why the hell hadn’t he returned her call? Why the hell had he let his pride get in the way?

Eight hours later, it was just past midnight and the streetlights in the area that hadn’t been broken out had been burning for over four hours.

Cruz and Myers had been moving at a relentless pace. Ten minutes ago, Myers had insisted they return to the command center and he’d pushed a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee into Cruz’s hands. “Eat,” he said. “Before you fall down.”

Cruz gulped down the food. He was wadding up his sandwich wrapper when he glanced down the street. Two blocks away, he saw a man and a woman emerge from a building. They were moving fast, the man had his arm around the woman. The angle of the streetlight was just right and holy hell, he couldn’t be sure it was Meg but he’d caught a glimpse of rich, dark hair.

Cruz grabbed Myers’s arm, pointed and ran for his car. He had the car started and was pulling away when Myers wrenched open the passenger-side door and slid in. The man started talking into his radio, giving other officers their location. It took four blocks before Cruz’s vehicle and two other unmarked cars converged around the blue Focus.

There was enough light to see that it was Blakely and Meg and the bastard had a gun pointed at her head. She was alert and watchful and he willed her to stay calm, to not give the man any reason to shoot.

Stand down. Myers got the message to his team.

“How long to get a sniper to take him out?” Cruz asked, his voice low.

“Five minutes.”

Cruz pulled his gun. Myers looked at it, frowned, but didn’t say a word.

While five minutes wasn’t a long time, it was too long because Blakely decided to move. He opened his car door. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll kill her,” he yelled.

“Nobody needs to get hurt, Mr. Blakely,” Myers yelled back. “Let Meg go and we can talk about this.”

“We have to go to the bank,” Blakely yelled.

Myers looked at Cruz. What the hell?

Cruz shook his head. It was the middle of the night.

“Okay. Let Meg go and we’ll take you to the bank,” Myers said.

“She has to go, too.” Blakely sounded frantic. Cruz could see that the hand that held the gun was shaking. “First to the hotel, then to the bank. You get someone to open the bank now.”

“Okay, okay,” Myers said. “We’ll get in touch with the manager right now and see if he can come down and unlock the doors.” He turned to Cruz. “I want both of them out of that car. It’s a better shot for our sniper.”

Cruz didn’t answer. He judged the distance, angled his body and raised his gun. He didn’t intend to wait.

“Continue to stand down,” Myers instructed the other officers. “You, too,” he said to Cruz.

Cruz ignored him. He focused on Blakely and tried to keep his eyes off Meg. He couldn’t look at her pinched, tight face or focus on the fear in her eyes.

She’d always been his weakness and now more so than ever. His child’s life also hung in the balance. Without them, he was nothing.

“Damn you, Montoya,” Myers said. “Don’t make me take that gun away from you.”

Cruz continued to ignore him. Blakely was moving, pulling Meg out of the car. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her in front of him, using her as a human shield. He was only a few inches taller, not leaving a whole lot of room for error on the sniper’s part.

It had the potential to end very badly.

Cruz took a breath.

“Hurl,” he yelled.

A fraction of a second delay, then Meg bent at the waist. Cruz fired. His shot hit Blakely in the shoulder, knocking him back.

The two closest officers sprang forward and tackled him. Meg ran.

Cruz caught her before she’d gone ten feet. He swung her up in his arms, buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of life. For a long moment, he could not speak. “I thought I’d lost you,” he finally managed.

“I’m so sorry,” Meg said, pulling her head back. “I wasn’t as careful as I should have been.”

“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s over.”

She was shaking and he held her close. Finally, she lifted her eyes. “I have something to tell you.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m pregnant.”

He brushed her hair back from her face. “I know. Charlotte told me. It’s a long story that I’ll tell you sometime.”

“Are you mad?” she asked.

“Honey, I’m thrilled. I want you. I want our child. I want it all.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I wanted you to have it all,” she said. “That’s why I left.”

He nodded. “That’s what I figured. I’m sorry that little girl died. But it was just an accident. You can’t blame yourself.”

“It wasn’t an accident. It was T.J.”

He had all kinds of questions but now wasn’t the time. “Can you put it behind you?” he asked.

“I will never forget that she died. I will never forget her. But yes, knowing the truth helps.”

With the pad of his thumb, he brushed a tear off her cheek. “Here’s another truth, Meg. I love you.”

She looked him in the eye. “I love you, too. Always have. Always will.”

He smiled. “Will you marry me? Again?”