“He wants to see me,” I tell Rowan. “That’s what all of this is about. It has to be the reason.”
Rowan shakes his head. “No. No way.”
He’s said this before when I’ve had an idea he doesn’t like. I know how to get around him.
“A meeting in a public place. I’ll go alone but wear a wire. You’ll know everything that’s happening. You can be close by. He can’t hurt me in a Starbucks.”
Rowan looks at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am. But these are my children.
“I don’t think he’s going through all of this just to have coffee with you.”
“So I’ll ask him what he does want. Maybe if he sees me, if he can see that this is over and whatever he thought he could get from me is gone, he’ll move on.”
I think it through as I talk.
“Hear me out,” I plead with Rowan, my eyes back on the school where my children are safe—for now. “What if he was just a man who was shopping for pants, and the things he did in that store came as a shock to him—so much so that they shattered his ego and made him seek a way to go back to his life? To his real job and his real name and the man he saw himself to be? He told me that was why he left Nichols—that he wanted to be the man he was before the shooting.”
Rowan wears a new expression now. Something I haven’t seen before.
“What?” I ask him.
“He was filming your girls at their school. And now you want to have a friendly chat and send him on his way? Back to his life before all of this?” He reminds me of the assault on Vera Pratt. “That’swhy he left the scene.”
While he’s talking me out of it, I begin to type a message.
“Elise,” Rowan says. “What the hell are you doing?”
I type until I’m done and hit Send.
“What will he do next? What will he do to my family if I don’t see him? If he shows, we’ll get him. If he doesn’t, then we’ve called his bluff. Given in to his demands. And we’ll move on to the next demand, and that will give us more information and buy us more time. Right now we’re the ones resisting, and it’s making him angry. Look what he did today—to my girls...” My voice shakes, and my face flushes with a surge of blood. These words are somehow bigger after they leave my mouth.
Rowan takes the phone from my hands and reads the message.
Tomorrow. 2:00 p.m. RidgewayDiner.
“You’re not doing this,” he says.
The phone chimes. I lean over, and we read the reply together. Wade doesn’t say anything I’m expecting—something likeCome aloneorThis better not be a setup. He doesn’t insist we meet somewhere more secluded. He doesn’t make any demands at all, and the burner phone remains dead silent in my pocket.
He simply says,See youthen.
Chapter Fourteen
I lie in bed with Mitch curled behind me, his chest tight up against my back. His arm tucked under mine, hands clutched together by my heart.
So much has left us. Moments like this one had bound us together. The simplest gesture of how he held me saying more than a millionI love you’s. I hadn’t thought about it before. I’d taken it for granted. His hand in mine, pulled to my heart. Every morning before we climbed out of bed to begin our days in our separate lives, we’d had this. Hands to heart. Proof of our connection. Our love. Binding us together.
We are bound together by something else now—fear. Both of our hands tremble.
We went through the options, not as a police family, but as terrified parents. Take them away somewhere. Send them to his mother in Florida.
We’ve been over this already. If Wade wanted to get to them, he could follow, and to a place we couldn’t control.
Here, we knew the neighbors and the teachers and the kids who played in the street. We had an entire department looking out for us, that now saw this as personal. One of their own being threatened. New measures were being put into place at the school, and our house was on virtual lockdown with an upgraded security system.
Again, we decide to stay so I can find Wade and put an end to this.
I leave our bed around midnight, as soon as Mitch has drifted off. I tiptoe into the girls’ room, stare at them both a good long moment. Then down the stairs to check on the detail. I can’t make out their faces, the two colleagues who have given up their night to protect my family. Rowan says they like the extra pay and the time off during the day to see more of their kids, or sleep if they don’t have kids, or do their laundry andbinge-watchtheir shows. He tries to alleviate the guilt.
