I closed that folder and opened the next one. My breath caught in my throat.
These photos started just like the others, with dozens of surreptitious pictures. But the photos in these other twelve files gave way to more disturbing ones: posed images of Harris with these women, seemingly on a date, same as he had been tonight. Then those same women in various staged poses—naked, eyes closed, expressions slack as he touched and kissed and violated them, their glittering custom wedding bands always carefully captured in the frame.
I swallowed back bile, scrolling through countless images of these other twelve women he’d stalked and then dated over the last thirty-six months, all of them slightly similar in appearance and build, sickened by the realization he’d probably drugged and raped them all. The final image in each woman’s folder was a horrifyingly intimate photo with a message pasted in text over top.
Do exactly as I said, and be discreet, or I’ll show these pictures to your husband and tell him what you’ve done.
I felt sick as the puzzle pieces slammed into place. He was blackmailing them. Blackmailing them to ensure their silence. Harris was preying on married women with children. Women with successful, rich husbands who had the means, social standing, and resources to completely ruin their lives. He had purposefully taken misleading photos, suggesting he’d been dating his victims, that the sex was consensual. When in fact, Harris was a twisted, sick predator who apparently preferred his victims passed out in the back of his car.
I sagged against the bench seat and stared at Harris’s phone. Then at Patricia’s note. Patricia was right. I didn’t know where I was taking him, but there was no way I was returning this monster to Patricia Mickler’s home.
CHAPTER 8
It was nearly ten o’clock when I jerked to a stop in my driveway.
And I still hadn’t figured out what to do with Harris Mickler.
I sat in the van, engine idling, knuckles white on the steering wheel as the garage door lifted on its track. The headlights reflected off the pegboard as I pulled inside, casting eerie shadows over the interior of my garage.
This was not okay.
The unconscious kraken on the floor of my minivan was not okay.
I should call Georgia and tell her everything. She would know what to do. And she probably wouldn’t let anyone put me in jail because then she’d be stuck watching my kids indefinitely.
I got out of the van, my body dimming the headlights as I navigated the tight space between the bumper and Steven’s workbench, the humming engine warming my legs as I brushed past. The night had grown cold, and the exhaust from my van billowed in thick white clouds down the driveway toward Mrs. Haggerty’s house. Her kitchenwindows were dark across the street, and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the neighborhood busybody had already gone to sleep.
I threw open the door to the kitchen. The room smelled like the wet waffle scraps on the piled dishes in the sink, and the cordless phone was still sticky with syrup, on the table exactly where I’d left it. I hit redial and pressed it to my ear, counting rings as I slid down the back side of the door in the dark, too afraid to turn on the light.
“Finn?” Zach wailed in the background. I pinched my forehead. My children’s cries were a language I’d learned to understand through years of trial and error and sleepless nights.
“Couldn’t get him to sleep, huh?”
“What am I doing wrong?” she asked, a little breathless. Georgia was cool in a hostage crisis, but a toddler meltdown was obviously more than she felt qualified to handle.
“Nothing. He’s just overtired,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. Funny how the sound of your child screaming could silence everything else in your mind.
“Then why won’t he sleep?”
“Because he’s two. Listen carefully to my instructions,” I said in my best hostage-negotiator voice in the hopes that it would calm my sister and keep her focused. “Do you have his blanket?”
Her shuffling was drowned out by his howls. “Yes, I have his blanket.”
“Wrap it over him and hold him against you. Then put his paci in his mouth. Press it in place with a finger while you pat his back.”
“I’m not an octopus.”
“Or you can let him scream until I get there.”
“How long until you get here?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
I rested my forehead on my knees. “How long will a grown man stay unconscious after taking a roofie?”
Georgia’s pause was punctuated by Zach’s pathetic whines. “You lost me.”
