“Don’t play ignorant with me.” Joel jerked Foster to his feet.
“I had plans for her,” Foster argued, struggling against Joel’s hold.
“Try it and I’ll shoot. I mean it.” Sheriff Dunst leveled the gun on Foster.
“It’s my house. I have a right to be there,” Foster went on. “You all chased my mother away, but I came back.”
“How long have you been funneling women through that house?” Sheriff Dunst demanded. He glanced to where Ivy had sunk to the ground, the wet earth soaking through her dress.
“Longer than you’ve been alive.” Foster spat at the ground in a defiant move against the lawman.
“That’s impossible,” Sheriff Dunst said.
“There’s big business in it,” Foster laughed, and the sound resonated inside Ivy’s head. “The people of Oakwood have been too stupid to see it since my father before me. I don’t owe you anything.”
Joel shoved Foster, and the man tripped and stumbled to the ground. He stared up at Joel, mud spattered on his face. “Hey!”
“What have you done with the women?” Joel said. His back was still to Ivy, but the expression on Sheriff Dunst’s face told her he was none too pleased that she’d followed them into the woods.
Foster snarled, “We sold them. Just like my father used to do.”
“To who?” Sheriff Dunst demanded.
Foster glanced at him. “Whoever wanted them. I don’t know. We’re just a midway point. I’m a runner is all.”
Sheriff Dunst shook his head in disgust. “And your father was a part of this?”
“Right under my mother’s nose.” Foster laughed again. “My father made her believe she was crazy. She would catch a glimpse of one of them girls sometimes when he snuck them from the secret room and down the hall to hand off to the next carrier. He told her she was insane and that she was lucky he didn’t put her in an institution. Crazies run in my mother’s family, you know.”
“Not just your mother’s.” Joel yanked him to his feet and slammed him against the trunk of a pine tree. “Why did you kill Gabriella?”
Foster frowned. “Who?”
Ivy stiffened, leaning forward to catch every word.
“The girl you stuffed in the hollow oak tree.” Joel gave Foster a shake.
“Her?” Foster sniffed. “She deserved it.”
“Why’d you put her body in the tree when you knew someone would find her?” Sheriff Dunst interjected.
“I didn’t think anyone would find her until later. I didn’t have much of a choice. The ground was still half frozen.”
Ivy clapped her hand over her mouth as Joel slammed his fist into Foster’s stomach. The man doubled over.
Joel stood over him. “Where’s her baby?”
Foster coughed, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t answer. Joel reached down and clutched the man’s neck, his face inches from Foster’s. “Where is the baby?”
Foster glared at Joel, then his eyes lifted and he caught sight of Ivy. Her body went cold at the fury that emanated from the man fighting against Joel’s hold.
“Where!” Joel’s hand tightened around Foster’s throat. Foster kept staring at Ivy. She couldn’t blink. She couldn’t breathe. She had to know.
“Find it yourself,” Foster finally said.
Sheriff Dunst’s stern shout didn’t stop Joel from plowing his fist into Foster’s gut one more time.
Silence emphasized every tiny sound as Ivy’s father stitched a cut above her eyebrow from where Foster had backhanded her. She avoided his eyes, but the ministrations of his hands were soothing to both her body and spirit. There had been moments when she wondered if she would ever see him again. The memory of the hidden space in Foster Hill House and the hints of the evil that happened there humbled Ivy. She could have been killed. She had always promised herself she’d be prepared for death, but now that she had faced its sincere possibility, she realized how much her life meant to her, even with its dark edges and painful moments.
The examination room door burst open.
“Joel!” Her father’s face brightened at the sight of him, as if Ivy telling him that Joel was all right had not been enough to appease his worry.
Ivy twisted on the table to see him. He was still covered in mud, his hair matted, his shirt torn and his trouser pocket ripped. Disbelief shone in his eyes as he locked gazes with her.
“Why did you follow us? You weren’t thinking at all! You could’ve been killed!” The accusation in his voice did not match the worried expression in his eyes.
“Because she has always done what she wants.” Dr. Thorpe muttered under his breath as he pulled the thread through her skin.
Ivy winced. Both at the truth in her father’s words and the sting of the stitching.
Joel dropped onto a chair, his elbows on his knees, and rested his forehead on his palms. “If something had happened to you . . .”
“It didn’t.” Ivy bit her lip as her father tied off the stitch. How did she tell him she had followed because she thought something terrible might have happened to Joel? The kiss they had shared in the woods only hours before seemed a distant memory now.
“Ivy, you should’ve let Joel do his job.”
Ivy met her father’s reprimand with shock. Her father snipped the last stitch and stepped back.
“Dr. Thorpe.” Joel lifted his head from his hands. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “May I speak with Ivy?”
Ivy’s father glanced between them.
“Alone,” Joel added.
Dr. Thorpe walked to a basin of water to wash his hands. “All right then.” He sloshed water on his forearms, shook his hands, and reached for a towel. When he turned, he leveled a fatherly gaze on Ivy. She squirmed. She always hated it when he looked at her that way. She didn’t know if she should feel criticized or loved.
“Ivy, you took years off my life when you disappeared.” He rolled down his sleeves. “I lost Andrew—” the doctor’s voice cracked—“and most of you with him. I don’t know what I would’ve done had I lost what little of you I have left.”
Her father brushed a kiss on Ivy’s cheek. His mustache tickled her skin, and Ivy remembered his kissing her as a child. There was nostalgia behind her father’s peck, an unspoken plea. Like her, he needed resolution too. Andrew was buried. Gabriella was buried. Many more would be buried. She could not continue to hold on to the grave.
The door closed behind him, leaving her alone with Joel.
“You’re absolutely filthy.” She slid off the examination table. A glimpse of her reflection in a mirror on the wall showed Ivy how bruised her face really was. As for cleanliness, she wasn’t in much better condition and still in her soiled nightgown, covered only by the blanket she pulled tighter around her.
Joel brushed at the dried mud on his sleeve, oblivious to the dirt that crumbled to the wood floor.
“Did Foster give up where Gabriella’s baby is?” She hugged herself as Joel’s gaze skimmed her neck where her gown was torn. She squirmed beneath his observation.
Joel cleared his throat. “He won’t talk. I think he’s miffed he gave up as much as he did.”