He came for me, hauled me upright and dragged me a few feet. “Jesus, you’re a mess.” He knelt and let me fall over his shoulder, sandbag-style. I struck feebly at his back. But he was right. I had no other choice. I’d have to go back to the Ranseys and give Bea a chance to get it right.
I welcomed the darkness when it came for me again. I only wished, in the blink of thought I was allowed, that since I was going to die, I wished he’d just left me in the woods.
Chapter Forty-two
—not out of the woods.”
In my own grave. I opened my eyes onto a white ceiling. I tried to sit up, to run. I was tied again.
“Forget it. You’re not going anywhere.”
The voice. I did not trust it. I had a memory of talking to trees.
I blinked into brightness.
“Is that bothering you?”
A hazy figure walked into my view, pulled the shades. The white room now gray, I could see the outline of the man who held me captive.
I didn’t trust it.
“You’re not,” I said, my voice rasping and slicing at the words. “Wearing your hat.”
“No,” Russ said. “I’m a gentleman.”
“Paying respects. To the dead.”
“I don’t think we’re quite ready to get out the shovels.”
I concentrated on the ceiling, willing this to be real. “Dead,” I whispered, remembering how the tops of the pines nodded at me.
“Nope.” He brought a chair to the side of the bed and sat with his hands in his lap. He fidgeted, boot heels tapping against the leg of the chair.
“Can’t. Sit still,” I said.
He looked at me sadly. “Go ahead and rest. I’ll try to stop jangling.”
I reached out my hand. Tethered.
He shifted to the front of his chair and smoothed my hand back down. “You’re on some tubes. They want you to stay as still as you can. We’ll try together, OK?” He held my hand in his. His warm hand.
He was here. He had come all this way. He had come all this way to—bring news.
I tried to swallow the bile rising in my throat. “Joshua?”
He didn’t say anything. I squeezed his hand as best I could. He tried on a bemused smile. “Bo Ransey said you were pretty tough.”
Ransey.
“Bea,” I whispered. My throat burned from the effort. “Aidan. The lake.”
He hushed me until I had to rip my hand away.
“Bonnie. Aunt. Steve.” I tried to rise from the bed. The back of my skull had some screaming to do.
Somewhere behind me, a machine beeped.
Russ squinted at the contraptions to the side of my bed and leaned in closer. “If they see you all worked up,” he said in his horse-trainer voice, “they are going to make me leave.”
I lay back. We regarded each other.
“You don’t want me to leave?”
I remembered the moment when I had mistaken Bo Ransey for him. The wave of relief that was more than what it should have been.
“I don’t want to leave, either.” He took my hand again. “But I’m going to have to. It’s been nothing but paperwork since you rousted that kidnapper I’ve been looking for.”
I could barely mouth the word. “Aidan.”
“He’s doing fine, Anna. He’s just fine. I’m just going to trust that you didn’t go looking for him because you thought I wasn’t doing my job well enough. Again.”
I shook my head, regretted it.
“Stay still, now.”
“Joshua.”
“I wish you hadn’t gone off on your own like that. When I saw your truck being pulled out of the water—”
I couldn’t follow him. He’d been in town before Bo had found me, my truck already dragged out. He had been here for something else, and now Aidan was safe and so was I. And Bo was— “Bo?”
“Shh. I’ll tell you, if you just be still, is that a deal? I came up here on a lead. Bo Ransey followed me up here, vigilante that he is, and found you with your skull bashed in. Far from home but strangely not so far from an old stretch of property his family fishes and hunts from. Illegally, of course. They don’t own that garage she put you in. They don’t really own the house, either, which is how it never got tossed for Aidan. It’s still in Granddaddy’s trust, buried in legalese and decades of tax evasion.”
I tried to rise up from the bed, but Russ gave me a look. “Bo,” I said, trying to convey more meaning than I was capable of. He was part of it, and he’d convinced everyone. I tried to remember everything Bea had said. There was something nagging at me, something not right among the things she’d told me.
“Bo found you, stopped by the old place to grab something to stop your bleeding all over his truck, finds his kid, his sister, and his mother, and she’s mad as hell,” Russ said. “And you know what Big Mama said?”
I remembered Bo’s bright rage at the news conference. He’d really believed that his wife had taken Aidan. He’d believed with everything he had that Leila would produce their child if he yelled, if he pushed, if he pleaded. No matter what his handwriting said, he would have done anything for Aidan. Maybe, I realized, his resentment lines had come from his rotten mother. And Leila, caught in a failing marriage made worse by her controlling mother-in-law. What if she had been scared not of Bo but of what it meant to leave the Ransey family, to defy Mama Ransey?
“She did it,” I squeaked. “For him.”
Russ stared at me. “You mothers are a hard lot. She said, ‘Get the gun from my coat.’ Bo got the gun, his kid, and you out of there. We found Bea and Bonnie heading south. I think you covered more ground with your head caved in than they did in that stretch car of theirs.” He didn’t smile. “I just can’t believe—what were you thinking going into that house?”
“Police,” I said. “Nobody.” This was a good place to be a criminal, for all the attention you could raise. A good place to amass a million dollars in net worth out of ice cream.
He nodded. “That Vilas County cop thought you were a crank. I was out with the county chief when you came by. They just don’t get that many missing Indiana kids in one week.”
“Joshua.” I was suddenly done with anything having to do with Ranseys. All I wanted was my son. Before I could stop the rush of misery, I was crying.
“We’ll find him.” He was nearly off his chair, on his knees. “I swear, Anna. I can’t believe your kid. He’s like a Green Beret. Did you teach him that?”
I cut a look his way.
“Oh, yeah. I know all about it now. You’re quite the marathoner yourself, aren’t you? None of that anymore, right? None of that jumping around, your ass on fire.”
I let my eyes close. So tired. I listened to his breath, felt the weight of his hand on mine.
He hadn’t known to look for Aidan here. He’d been here already. Another case, and there was really only one other case it could be.
He’d come all this way. For Joshua.
After a few minutes, Russ slid his hand away from mine. I wasn’t asleep, but couldn’t open my eyes or say a word. I felt him leaning over me, a light touch at my temple.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I thought he’d be here.”
He came all this way. For me.
Chapter Forty-three
Drowsing, I became aware of an argument in the hall.