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The skin on my neck and shoulders heats with a rash. I pull back from him, taking a step away. His eyes are creased with concern, but there are no tears. There’s only anger and a hint of … satisfaction. It’s the same expression he has when he wins a hand at poker.
“The Redford family had nothing to do with this,” I choke out. “They are innocent, all of them.”
My father covers his mouth with a wrinkled hand, shaking his head. “You need to see a doctor, a therapist. You’re in shock. You’ve been traumatized, and you’re not thinking clearly.”
“Stockholm syndrome,” my aunt whispers.
I howl, my scream echoing through the big, empty house. “FUCK! I am not suffering from Stockholm syndrome! I love him! I am in love with him. He saved my fucking life!”
My aunt gasps, nearly spilling her wine as her hand shoots out to clap against her chest. My father’s face morphs into a reddened expression of rage. He rises to his full height, leaning toward me and jabbing his finger in my face.
“If he didn’t do this, then who did? Who hates us enough to hold your mother for weeks? To starve you nearly to death, feeding you one measly sandwich? That man blames me for having to go to prison even though he murdered your uncle in cold blood, spinning some story about Cain assaulting his sister and pointing a gun at him. Your judgment has been clouded by all the time you’ve spent over there and your ridiculous infatuation with all the Redford boys since you were a child.”
He straightens himself, adjusting the front of his sports coat as he looks down on me with disdain. My bottom lip begins trembling as the fear of what he might do to Holden seeps into my bones.
Would he really send him back to prison for this … something he is completely innocent for? Is my father that cruel?
My aunt steps toward me, shifting her body language to face my father as she wraps an arm around my waist. “How did you know she had one sandwich, Clay?”
A cold stream of ice shoots through my spine, straightening it. I stare my father down, searching his face for the truth, for an ounce of vulnerability, sorrow, anything to reveal the truth, to reveal that he had nothing to do with this.
But what I see instead is a trace of shame. His gaze shifts from my face to hers, a flash of fear crossing his features before he replaces it with a familiar, practiced look of stubborn pride. “I’m only assuming, with their cruelty, that she wasn’t properly fed. At any rate, I need to call Ethan and arrange for you to begin seeing a psychiatrist.” Ethan is my father’s personal assistant. “A doctor can prescribe you some medicine that will help with this ridiculous notion that you’re somehow in love with your captor.”
Without another glance in my direction or space for discussion, he turns around and exits the room.
38
HOLDEN
Warner paces against the back wall of the holding cell they’ve allowed us to meet in. I forgot how cold and boring being behind bars was. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t sleep a wink last night.
“Cash should be there now, and once he meets with Pike, we’ll have more answers. You’ll be getting out of here by end of day.”
I stare up at the ceiling as I lie on the cot, my mind trailing back to yesterday morning when the police nearly busted down the door of our hotel room.
Rosie turned me in. She called her father to come arrest me.
For some reason, that knowledge makes me feel cold from the inside.
“You’ve been doing great. Everything you’ve told them is exactly what you should say. Once we have the phone, the evidence of who the real kidnapper is should be more than enough to exonerate you. Nothing else was recovered at the scene to incriminate you. Whatever Rosie Dixon has to say is the only wild card. Sheri never saw the face of her kidnappers. You have plenty of alibis for the amount of time she was missing,” Warner continues.
The choice to fly to Portland and not to carry a handgun with me turned out to be incredibly vital.
“What do you think she’ll say?” he finally asks.
What an excellent question.
Rosie Dixon’s facial expression as she gave me head in the shower, followed by the way she clung to my shoulders while I plunged inside her during the middle of our last night together, flashes through my memory.
I chuckle, rising to a standing position. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Because right after that, while I was sleeping in her arms, she betrayed me. The ache in my chest throbs like a festering wound, one that’ll need a lifetime to heal—if it doesn’t kill me.
Warner’s phone starts to ring, the vibration filling the cell. He looks up at me as he answers it, rubbing his hand over his beard.
“Cash.”
I listen on the other side of the call, gathering that Jed’s cell records indicate his communication with a man named Ethan Harlen. Harlen’s texts revealed the payment method and timeline of the kidnapping plans, which dated back to the day after I was released from prison.
