“No,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “You weren’t.”
“Yes, he was,” Rain said. “We were all together. Except for Becky. She’d gone to her room with a headache.”
“And then you left to check on the kids,” Peggy said to Caroline.
“And when I came back, you were gone,” Caroline said to her brother.
“I went back to our room to try to convince Becky to rejoin the party. All of you…you know that. It wasn’t my idea to go back, but you were giving me such grief about it…”
“Yes, we played right into your hands, didn’t we? Except you didn’t go back to your room because you knew Becky wasn’t there. She was waiting for you in the lobby, or wherever it was you’d arranged to meet. All you had to do was wait for me to check on the kids and leave.”
“Your timeline is all wrong,” Steve insisted. “You’re forgetting I was with you when Hunter came back from checking the kids at nine-thirty.”
“Except he didn’t check on them,” Caroline said.
“That’s right,” Jerrod concurred. “He was too busy screwing my wife.”
“Do we have to keep harping on that?” Rain asked.
“You saw Hunter in the hallway,” Caroline reminded her brother. “You told me so yourself. You realized then he hadn’t checked on the kids.”
“Which proves only that Hunter was a liar, not that I’m a kidnapper.”
“Which proves you had both the time and the opportunity to kidnap Samantha.”
“So you’re saying that Becky and I stole Samantha from her crib and then…what? What exactly did we do with her?”
“You put her in some kind of carrying case,” Michelle said. “A man was holding it. He’d been standing in the doorway. I couldn’t see his face. He closed the bag and walked away.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Everything worked exactly according to plan. Even better, actually,” Caroline continued. “You thought you had half an hour to steal Samantha and spirit her out of the country. Turned out you had twice that.”
“How would I know for sure you’d leave the kids alone?”
“You didn’t. But you knew Hunter. You knew he’d arranged a special surprise for that night because, once again, that surprise was your idea. You knew he’d probably be able to persuade me.”
“That’s a whole lot of probability. Again, where’s your proof?”
“Come to your Uncle Stevie,” Michelle said in a tiny voice.
“What?”
“That’s what you said when Aunt Becky lifted Samantha out of her crib and handed her over to you. You said, ‘Come to your Uncle Stevie.’ The same thing you said to her yesterday. That’s when it all came back to me. That’s when I knew for sure it was you.”
The room fell silent.
Steve’s eyes shot to Greg Fisher. “This is wild speculation. Surely you don’t believe this garbage. They have nothing—”
“They have an eyewitness,” Fisher said, smiling at Michelle. “She sounded pretty credible to me.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone, pressed a series of numbers, and spoke softly into it. “There are agents waiting outside,” he told Steve, taking his elbow and leading him to the door. “You might want to contact an attorney.”
“You’re not actually going to arrest him,” Mary protested, following them outside.
The rest of them remained rooted to the spot, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
“What just happened?” Jerrod asked as the front door slammed shut.
Caroline sank to the floor beside the Christmas tree. Her eyes darted from Hunter to Peggy and Fletcher, to Jerrod and Rain, their shocked faces reflecting their attempt to make sense of everything they’d just heard. Michelle and Samantha sat down on either side of her, holding tight to her hands.
“Did I tell you that Jerrod got us tickets for Dance with the Devil?” she heard Rain ask, her voice reaching across fifteen years, transporting Caroline back through time.
Caroline closed her eyes and watched that night unfold behind her eyelids, as if it were a movie she’d seen before. Only this time she was playing all the parts.
“Did I tell you that Jerrod got us tickets for Dance with the Devil?”
“What’s that?” Caroline snuck a glance in the direction of her suite and then at her watch. She pushed away what was left of her lobster dinner, which was most of it. She was too nervous to eat. It was almost time to check on the kids.
“They were fine when I checked on them thirty minutes ago,” Hunter whispered. “They’re fine now. Finish your meal.”
“Dance with the Devil? It’s only the hottest show on Broadway. It’s impossible to get tickets, especially on Thanksgiving weekend. But Superman here managed to do it.” Rain threw a proprietary arm across her husband’s shoulders, sneaking a smile in Hunter’s direction.
“So you’ll be spending Thanksgiving in New York,” Becky said. “Lucky you.”