I shake my head. “Actually no. Park, go see if you can find anything on her cat’s collar.” He tears out of the room without hesitation. “Fitz, pull up this guy’s old parking tickets, he had hundreds of them. Locations and dates on as many as you can.” I go to my laptop and open the document I have on Annie. Since I’ve had that twisted feeling Vito wasn’t the answer to everything, I’ve been trying to figure out what I could have missed, so I made a timeline of her whereabouts the last several years. “Can you compare these with his parking tickets?”
“Yeah, I just need a couple of minutes.”
I chew my thumbnail and tap my foot anxiously.
“Oh shit.” Fitz enlarges a graph that shows what I suspected. “This isn’t a coincidence.”
Poe’s been following her, watching. His tickets align with her schooling, are down the street from her home, and are near her place of work. But if he got parking violations, he wouldn’t have been in his car, so what was he doing? Watching her from a different vantage point, binoculars, a camera lens…camera.
“Holy fuck.”
“What?” Parker asks.
Something I was always suspicious of, something I confronted him about, something I knew he was lying about but couldn’t prove. “What was the date Phil Farrow initially queried Lawless for protection services?”
He shares his screen, and I watch as he zooms through files and data. “March eighteenth.”
“Pull up the pictures that were left on Phil’s desk. Scroll.Stop.Zoom in on Annie’s nightstand, the word-of-the-day calendar. What’s the date?”
It seems to take forever, but the pixilation finally clears:March 23rd.
“Phil called us before the pictures were even taken.” I state the obvious, and the mood in the room shifts to even morestifling. “Which means he knew they were going to be taken. That’s why we never found evidence of someone leaving them on his desk because there was none. Phil set it up. He hired someone to take those pictures of her. Why, though?”
Drew speaks up. “Would we have taken the case without proof that her life was in danger back then?”
My jaw sets, and I shake my head. “Dad was the one who arranged it, but at that time, no. We didn’t have the staffing.” It makes sense. “Phil paid Poe to take those pictures…Poe became infatuated with Annie, and after the trial, he kept his eyes on her. When Phil died, he moved across the hall from her.”
Drew bobs his head as his neck gets red. “Profile fits.”
“He’s either gonna take her somewhere he thinks she’ll be safe…or bring her back to where his obsession began…when he first took those pictures.” I clench my jaw, forcing myself to stay focused. Annie’s life depends on it. “Find out who the current owner of her old house is, pull up everything you can on Poe’s residences past and present, and locate any family land or properties.”
Hold on, Blue. I’m gonna find you. Just hold on.
Idon’tlikeitwhenyoucry.
Annie
I’m sick. Physically ill. My stomach is in knots, and I’m feverish from the inside out, yet I’m trembling so badly that the bed I’m tied to is rattling against the wall. My joints ache from the strain; my palms are damp, my mouth is incredibly dry, and my tongue feels thick. Any saliva I have pools at the back of my throat, slides down like it’s coated in Teflon, then surges back up, acidity burning through the nonstick layer and corroding my bones.
My vision is foggy and obscured by a blindfold, so I can only see as far as my eyes can take me through the slit, from this position. The severity of my captor’s disillusionment becomes more chilling as familiarity settles and understanding sinks in that I’m in a replica of my old room.
There’s the same white desk I did my homework on a thousand times, familiar books stacked neatly on the shelves, even an identical pink wall clock, which is currently stuck at 11:37. The nightstand holds a word-of-the-day calendar with a date from almost six years ago: March 23. Above me, a similar gold light fixture hangs from the ceiling, and the curtains are identical polka-dotted tan and pink.
I’m dressed in pink pajamas—thank God I used to wear a t-shirt set instead of a tank top back then. I shiver rememberingthe feel of this creep taking my clothes off and dressing me like I’m a baby, his hot breath against my skin.
I’ve already tugged on my bindings and am resigned to the fact that I’ll never be able to break free of them. There’s no point in wasting my energy trying. Plus, if I ever get the opportunity to fight back, I’ll need all my strength.
I drag my head across the bed, loosening the blindfold more, but when it falls off, I panic, afraid he’ll be mad.
But then there’s a noise. I hear it coming from the corner. Inside the closet…maybe. A secret door? I jump when I hear it again and feel my heart thump erratically. The door creaks open, and Tara is there…I can’t tell if he’s alive at first.
Her hands are tied above her, and she’s hanging from a hook, her mouth duct taped, face bloodied, body limp. Then her eyes open and she pleads with me. I can do nothing but stare at her and bite back a sob so I don’t draw any attention toward us. “Who is he?” I mouth.
She shakes her head and her body, telling me something I don’t understand, but she’s barely moving…she’s too weak. And that’s when I start fighting, too. I can’t begin to imagine what she’s been through. I need to escape. I jolt, jerk, twist, and pull, but all it does is tear the skin against my bindings.
Tara sobs and tries to fight her way free, but she gives up. She destroyed everything I own, but she doesn’t deserve tobe destroyedbecause of it. I want to help her, but I can’t. I can’t even move. “Ben will find us,”I mouth. “Just hold on. Hold on.”
My mind races, searching for anything that can be used as a weapon to fight him off. The sound of footsteps in the hall freezes me in place, every muscle tenses in anticipation. My breathing accelerates as the door slowly opens, and the shadow of a man emerges. His voice is creepy, high-pitched, and eerily friendly. “Annie. You’re awake.”
