“Wha … wait. Max … did you target me because … because I look more like her?” My chin jerked toward Madison.
Max opened his mouth to answer, but Madison elbowed him aside and stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter, Savannah. This is happening. That is Max’s child—and no one is going to raise my husband’s child except me, his wife! You are not a mother, you worthless, drunk skank! Sleeping with another woman’s husband does not mean you get to raise his child!”
“Wha …? He never told me he was married, Madison! He talked about having just broken up with someone!” I shouted, the exertion sending new waves of dizziness through my head. “Besides, you don’t get to decide that we’re not fit to be mothers!” I turned to Max. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I was going to tell you everything, Savannah,” Jenna spoke through sobs. “I never wanted this to happen to you.” Her eyes, red-rimmed, turned on our captors. “I tried to stop them. I tried, Savannah—”
“Quiet, Jenna,” Max hissed.
“I willnotbe quiet! Not anymore! Savannah—they’ve been planning on taking your baby all along. Everything they did … the liquor store, and the fake DCS investigator …”
“I saidquiet, Jenna!” Max shouted.
“Enough!” Nora bellowed. “We don’t have time for this nonsense. The nurse is going to be here soon, Max. You need to shut her up.”
Jenna’s voice was frantic. “And now they’re going to kill me, and try to pin it on you—”
“We said shut up!” screamed Madison, marching forward with a white cloth in her hand. Jenna jerked her head back and forth, holding her breath, trying to avoid the cloth, but after a few moments, she went limp.
“What are you doing to her?” I cried.
They ignored my question. “We can’t just keep drugging her forever,” Nora said to her daughter, hands on her hips. “Why don’t we just get rid of her now?”
“No, mother. Just a little bit longer. Her time of death has to line up just right. Once the baby is born, then Savannah takes her out. Remember? Then dear little Savannah goes to jail. Where she belongs.”
CHAPTER32
NORA CLAPPED HERhands together like a kindergarten teacher trying to get her students’ attention. “Alright, everyone—time to focus. The nurse will be here any minute. We need to get Jenna to the back bedroom and start preparing.”
Max turned to Madison. “I’ll get her arms, you get her feet.”
I watched in horrified shock as they carried Jenna’s unconscious body past the kitchenette and down the hallway. My mind was racing.They’re going to kill Jenna … and frame me for it. Like they’ve already framed me for her disappearance.
Madison returned a moment later. She put a black bottle and the white cloth away in a black leather duffel bag that sat on top of a stack of diaper boxes. When she turned around to face me again, I noticed she’d taken something out of the bag too.
A gun.
She ran her hand over the dark barrel as she walked toward my bed.
“It’s very simple, Savannah. You can survive this, knowing that Baby Charlie is well taken care of, in a loving home … or you can die. I’ve come too far; I’m not going to let anything screw this up for Max and me. Not this time.” She pointed thegun directly at my head, and I felt all the breath leave my body. “Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded wordlessly. Madison smiled.
It was unnerving—she used to look like a supermodel when she flashed her pretty smile. Now only her right side remained pristine. Purplish-black bruising surrounding a long line of swollen stitches on the left side of her face gave her a nightmarish, two-faced quality.
Just like her duplicitous personality. All of the upper peninsula thought she was Miss America, but I knew the truth—she was a callous, insensitive, ruthless witch who, apparently, was willing to kill to get what she wanted.
“Good.” She put the gun back into the duffel bag.
A bright light shone through the blinds of the window next to the front door and swept across the room. I heard tires flattening dirt and rocks, then the sound of a car door opening and closing. Someone had arrived.
Within seconds, there was a knock on the door.
“Ah! That must be her,” Nora said.
Nora’s heelsclick-clackedon the wooden floor. She opened the door. “You must be Colleen.”
“Yes, I’m Nurse Colleen. Here to help with the birth,” said a deep female voice.
