Return (Coming Home #1) (17 page)

Elaine’s already made coffee. Great minds think alike.

Mark has pictures spread out on the table. I do a double-take when I see them. Five pictures. Five women.

Only one is Amy, but the other four could be her sisters. If she had them.

My hands begin to shake as I bring them to my mouth. “Oh, my God,” I mutter from behind my fingers.

Elaine gives me a sharp look.
“I know,” is all she says.

I’ve seen the news reports over the past week. Even when I lived in
Oklahoma City
last month, the third disappearance made national news. Once it became clear the women looked alike, it became cable newsworthy. I don’t look like Amy, but I know plenty of women who do.

Mark’s jaw is so tense it looks like he could snap a pine tree in half between
h
is teeth.

His phone
rings and he stands abruptly, letting
g
o of Minnie’s hand. “Paulson,” he snaps into the phone. His long legs take him out the back door with four steps, and as the screen door s
lam
s shut I hear him say, loudly, “What the fuck, Chase? I told you to keep Allie safe!”

Chase? Allie? Who are they?

Elaine pours a cup of coffee then adds cream and sugar. She moves to Minnie and sits down next to her,
gently placing the cup in Minnie’s hands, urging her to drink. Something about Mark’s agitation with his phone call sets the back of my neck to tingling. That’s not a work call.

And Mark’s not angry.

H
e’s
worried
.

“She looks like all these missing women,” Mark hisses. My heart begins to do jumping jacks in my chest. “You need to dye her hair or cut it or get her out of this area.”

I stand
as close as I can to the window near the deck where he’s pacing. Who is he talking about? Not Amy.

“You heard me. This has all the benchmarks of a brew home.” The last couple of words out of Mark’s mouth sound slurred. Weird. They sound like “a brew home” but that makes no sense. I must have heard him wrong. What the heck is a brew home?

“I’m sitting here, Chase, with the grieved mother of
a missing woman. We have all the pictures of the five who were taken spread out in front of us at her kitchen table.” Veins bulge in Mark’s neck. I’ve never seen him so commanding. Austere. Visceral.

“And you’re fucking arguing with me?” Mark continues. I can’t stop listening. I’m completely hypnotized. Sweet, warm, intense Mark has just flipped into being a man I don’t know. His words pop back
into my head:

“I’m not who you think I am.”

Mark stalks over to the back railing, but his voice is loud enough for me to hear his next words.

“...
and now I have to get Carrie out of this mess. She’s front and center. He’s coming for her next, even if she looks nothing like these other girls. But Allie does. You need to protect Allie and I need to get Carrie the fuck away from all this before
she finds herself in the middle of a mess that makes her
dad’s death look like a kid’s birthday party.”
 

All the air leaves my body. My legs become noodles and I grab the counter to avoid slipping down to the floor in a puddle of shock. What is Mark saying?

A loud rushing noise fills my ears.
I slip down to the ground.
My back is propped against the lower cabinets. I’m turned away from Elaine
and Minnie. They can’t see me. My vision fills with black and tears. My ears sound like I have white water rapids running through them. This is too much. This is all too much.

My dad is dead.

My best friend is missing.

My new boss may be the one who killed my dad.

My ex-boyfriend is kissing my new boss’s daughter.

And now
it turns out Mark knows who did this, but isn’t telling anyone.
 

The screen door slams open and Mark rushes in. He walks right past me and then halts. He turns around and bends to my eye level. His face is bright red and his eyes dart around the room, like he’s being preyed upon.

I know the feeling.

“Carrie? Why are you on the floor?” His voice is gruff.

I sniff and stand. “I, um, tripped.”

He glares at me, his body standing, chest whipping from facing Minnie
and Elaine then back to me. “I think I have all the information I need, Minnie,” he says in an official-sounding voice. “We don’t have any leads yet on who took Amy, but your information will really help us.”

My mind splits in two: one part screams “liar” while the other just watches, observing.

Observing Mark
lie
.

As Mark says goodbye to us all with a rushed set of glances and more fake promises to Minnie about how he’ll do his best to find
A
my, I feel like I’ve been gut-kicked by a horse.

Mark

Knows

Who

Did

This

I race after him, leaving Elaine sputtering my name. I throw open the front door and scream, “STOP!”

Mark continues his march to his car. Maybe he doesn’t hear me. I don’t
care. I run so fast I feel like I’m flying. He starts the police car engine and is backing up when I thump my hands o
n
the hood of his car, hard.

He looks up in confusion and on alert. His expression changes to irritated relief when he sees me. He rolls down the window.

“What?” he says impatiently. “I have to get back to the station.”

I’m breathing hard.
My hands are curled along the edge of
his lowered window. My chest feels like it will explode.
 

“You. That call. Who was that?” I gasp.

His eyes change instantly, the golden brown becoming something ominous. “Police business. Nothing you need to know about.”

“You’re acting
weird
,” I blurt out. A newscaster within a few yards from us tilts her head like she’s listening. I see her motion to her cameraman. Great. The last thing I
need is for this to be caught on camera. I have enough problems already.

“Weird? Jesus fucking Christ, Carrie, I’m the lead investigator in a kidnapping case! What the hell is wrong wit
h
you?”

“THAT MISSING PERSON IS MY BEST FRIEND!” I bellow. All hope that Mark is the same good, sweet guy I loved years ago is gone. Gone, gone, gone. Gone like my dad. Gone like my dreams.

Gone like Amy.

Now the newscasters openly begin pulling cords and equipment toward us. “Officer Paulson!” one of them calls out. I hear one of them murmur my last name.

Damn.

“This is not the place for you to freak out on me, Carrie,” Mark says through gritted teeth. He peels my fingers off his window, one by one. He keeps his head down and won’t even look at me. “She’s your best friend. You’re hysterical.
You’re becoming unhinged and—”

“Who’s Allie?” I ask through my own gritted teeth.

He flinche
s
, then gives me his eyes. “
You were eavesdropping,” he growls. “Did you hear everything?”
 

I jut my chin up in the air, defiant. “I heard enough.”

He shakes his head and lets out a long sigh, but says nothing.

“
And what’s ‘a brew home’?” I add.
 

H
is eyes widen, then narrow, and the look of murderous
rage on his face makes me take a step back. The force of that look could stop my heart. Mark
floors the accelerator of the police cruiser, spraying gravel up on my shins as the newscasters shout his name and a thousand other words I don’t care about.

By the time the dust settles I jog back to the house where Elaine stands at the door. She ushers me in, hands me a fresh cup of coffee, and goes
back to Minnie.
As I try to reach up and catch the thousands of thoughts and feelings that fly around my head like I’m in the middle of a blender, my eyes roam to a big calendar on the front of the fridge.
 

It’s Friday.

Euchre night. Except it’s not nighttime. It’s
eight
a.m. and I’m due at work in an hour. The dean let me stay home yesterday, with a lovely, heartfelt expression of sympathy,
but rules are rules. Human Resources said it was an exception.

Life goes on, even when it’s turned upside down.

Time to get ready for work.

* * *

There’s a handwritten note on my desk. I recognize the dean’s handwriting:

Carrie,

I’m so sorry. I’ll be at a conference all day at the medical school campus. Please update the student advising files.
I
t is routine work and should help to keep
your mind occupied. May your friend be safe and well, and come out of this better than before.

Ig

“Better than before”? “Ig”?

A shiver makes its way through the full length of my spine. There is something very, very wrong with that man. I can’t put my finger on it.
This is day five on the job and I’ve barely interacted with him. He gives me the creeps. His eyes are like the ones in old
paintings.
 

Always following me.

I know he knows I think he had something to do with my dad’s arrest. Politeness stops him from saying a word. When dad was arrested Brian told my dad and me that Professor Landau was the one who masterminded everything. Dad had no idea the chemicals he was asked to order were for a big meth operation.

And then Brian went silent. He never testified in
D
ad’s favor.
The lawyers never called him. I remember Dad trying over and over to get Brian to tell him what was going on. I remember asking Elaine and Brian and getting nothing but shrugs and nervous looks.

There’s nothing nervous about Professor—now
Dean
—Landau.

He’s so smooth he might as well be an oil factory. Thank God he’s gone all day on the other side of town. That’s one less source of stress for
me. Hopefully, Claudia’s not around, either. She and Eric are going dancing tonight, right?

Tonight.

The last day and a half have been a blur. A true blur. I had no dreams last night. My mind wouldn’t shut off, and I expected nightmares. Instead, all I got was racing thoughts and horrible imaginings of Amy.

My mind made up so many awful things.

At least, I hope they’re made up.

She could
be beaten. Tortured. Raped. Killed. All of those and more. I keep imagining the moment between regular life and the change. How an instant can make everything you know become different—forever.

Amy was walking off that elevator toward her car like no big deal. She was probably thinking about what to eat for dinner. Whether her pantyhose had a snag. How she could cover her student loan payment
and take a fun weekend trip to the mountains.

And then—BAM! She’s kidnapped. Abducted. All the normal thoughts of life gone.

Gone.

I stare stupidly at my desk and reach for my coffee mug. Dean Landau gave it to me on my second day.
I
t’s huge and ceramic, with a rubber top to keep the coffee hot.

It says YATES UNIVERSITY in block letters on it. Of course it does.

I walk over to the coffee
station and sure enough, someone left a smoldering pot of coffee with an inch of liquid in it. I can’t call it “coffee” because while it once was coffee, now it looks like dirty radiator fluid. I shake my head. The other administrative assistants always—
always
—rinse the coffee pots out and start a fresh pot.

The last person to have coffee must have been a professor.

Or a dean.

I start a new
pot and wish they did have those little Keurig machines. That would make the stale smell of burnt coffee a thing of the past. I loop over to the department mailboxes and grab the dean’s mail, delivering it to his desk. There’s nothing but flyers and ads for me. By the time I come back, the coffee is hot and done. I fill my mug and pour a lot of cream in it. I remember I’m the one in charge of keeping
the real cream in the little fridge at the coffee station.

Dean Landau says the powdered creamer reminds him of ground up bones. I’m authorized to spen
d
three bucks a week on real cream. “We’re worth it,” he joked when
he
told me all this.

I walk back to my desk and sit down, turning on my computer. The familiar little jingle grounds me. The past few days wash over me. Mark. The no-kill shelter.
Amy’s disappearance. Minnie’s breakdown.

Funny how I thought I was coming home to solve one mystery. Now I find myself embroiled in a completely different one.

Someone clears their throat pointedly and I look up, surprised.
I
t’s Effie.
Her hair is a strange shade of greyish-bluish-white and she’s wearing coral lipstick that perfectly matches a set of beads around her neck. I look down.
 

A
nd bright bows on the toes of her shoes.

“Good morning!” I say a little too brightly.

She scowls. “Aren’t you chipper for someone whose best friend was stolen two days ago? Cut the crap, kiddo. You don’t need to be fake with me.”

If I’d been holding my coffee in my hands I’d have spi
l
led it all over myself.

“What?” I gasp.

She gives me a hard look. “I know you’ve been babysitting Minnie and
taking turns with Elaine. I heard you and Officer Paulson had a screaming match on Minnie’s lawn.”

“Gossip is faster than Internet around here,” I mutter, dropping my eyes.

“More reliable, too,” she shoots back. Her face softens. “You have a lot on your plate.”

I laugh bitterly. “That’s one way to put it.”

She shifts a large folder from one arm to the other, cradling it in her thin elbows.
“Maybe you don’t need to add more today.”

I arch one eyebrow and take a sip of my coffee. My tongue instantly tingles with a nasty burn. Ah, well. At least I’m feeling something.

“Go ahead. Throw more work at me. I’d rather keep busy than sit around wondering whether Amy’s being—” I choke on my own words. I can’t think like this. I can’t.

“Oh, honey,” Effie says, her eyes going sad. She reaches
down and pats my shoulder. “They’ll find her.”