Page 72 of The Girl Who Was Taken

“This was a few days ago?”

“Yeah.”

Livia handed the binder back to him. “We’ve got to run.”

Nate pointed to Megan. “I thought you said I’d get to ask her some questions.”

“Sorry. Some other time.”

Livia took Megan by the wrist and hurried back to the car. “What about signing my book?”

“Another time,” Livia said before pulling away. She took a hard right and stepped on the gas. “Sorry to put you through that. You okay?”

“I dealt with worse during my initial book tour. Who’s Paula D’Amato?”

“Another girl I think Casey took. I’m going to have to make a trip down to Georgia, see if I can meet with the medical examiner who did the autopsy. If the same findings are present that link you and Nancy Dee, you think we’ll be able to get your father on board?”

Megan nodded. “Probably. But I don’t understand. If you think this guy, the guy who was dating Nicole, was involved with these girls and had something to do with their disappearances, and mine . . . he’s dead, right? So what are we looking for?”

“If Paula D’Amato’s body was just found, I want to know when she died. If it was recently, Casey wasn’t alone. Someone else is still out there.”

CHAPTER 35

The thousand-watt twin adjustable LED lights brightened the forest as he dug. The earth was wet and the dig was easy, the shovel slicing effortlessly into the mud under the weight of his foot. The woods were quiet at night, its residents mostly tucked away under the cover of leaves or logs. Of course, the nocturnal hunters would be out—the owls and bats and coyote. But the lights by which he worked would hold them off, despite the lure of bitter odor her body gave off as it lay on the forest floor secured in black vinyl and waiting to be covered by the earth he was moving.

When he heard it, he stopped. With his foot on the shovel, he listened. Heard it again. He looked over at the black bag and then stumbled backward when he saw it move. Crinkling in the middle, the bag creased in a ninety-degree angle, as though she had sat up. He dropped the shovel and staggered away from her body until he fell into the shallow grave he had dug. He scrambled to get to his feet but his limbs were frozen with fear. She had unzipped the bag and her torso appeared above him. With unblinking eyes, she pickedup the shovel and dumped dirt onto his shoulders. He clawed and begged, managing for a moment to get to his knees, but she was relentless with her efforts. The weight of the earth was finally too great, and he collapsed onto his stomach as she shoveled more dirt over him. The burden of the soil became so great that his lungs could no longer expand under the pressure. He looked up at her just before a final pitch of ground covered his face and his vision went black.

* * *

He sat straight up in bed now, grasping at the covers the way he’d been clawing at the sides of the grave in his nightmare. Inhaling deeply, he savored the air that was missing from his dream. Night sweats had soaked his clothes and sheets.

“What’s the matter?” came the groggy voice next to him.

It was amazing how even her concern disgusted him. She did not love him, not any longer, and her feigned worry turned his stomach. Part of him blamed her for what he had become. Blamed her for the emptiness inside of him. The vacancy he tried so desperately to occupy with the girls he held captive and offered to love and care for.

“Nothing,” he said, out of breath.

“Bad dream?”

Without answering he climbed from bed and walked down to the kitchen for a cup of water. His T-shirt stuck to his chest and he peeled it away as he swallowed the water. The last year had gone wrong. So terribly wrong. Things had gotten far away from him, and he didn’t want to admit that it all might be falling apart.The debacle last year—with the bunker and escape, the hunt and the pressure and the media—should have been enough to stop him. To wake him up and bring to him the realization that things could not continue without great wreckage finding him. Yet he was helpless. He could no more convince himself to stop than he could convince the girls he loved to love him back. On this front, though, he was sure things were changing. He simply needed more time.

He knew, however, that he could not sustain this level of incompetence and expect to survive. His sloppiness since the bunker escape last year could not be ignored. He had spent his life on details, and warned his underlings against shoddy work. Taught those around him the need for precision and accuracy. The necessity of paying attention to every facet. Now he had fallen prey to the same careless errors he preached to avoid. The body turning up in the bay was a direct result of panic and inattention to detail. The knots securing the body to the cinder blocks were not closely considered; the consequences of this error were still unknown. The press had lost interest after the initial story broke, and the passing weeks had given him hope that he might be able to dodge the bullet. But more errors had followed. The careless application of the plywood that secured the cellar window had nearly allowed another escape. And his desire to make her comfortable by providing a frame for the box spring was an error so egregious he was sickened every time he thought of it. The quarrel that followed was unfortunate, and losing his temper was a sign of incompetence.

The sloppiness of his actions was dangerous, and hewas scared. His trepidation had caused him to run from the woods the other night, too afraid to dump her body into the grave he dug. And now, so soon after their time together ended, she had been found. They called her Paula, and it sickened him. Just like before, when the jogger and his dog had disturbed the resting place he’d created for his last love and the news anchors called her Nancy. The names insulted him. He was offended by how the media spoke of his loves as though they knew them, used foreign names to label them and displayed pictures of their faces for all to see. They pretended, sitting in their studios and staring into cameras, that they held a connection to his girls. The truth, he knew, was that the media had done nothing but forget these creatures existed.

He walked up the stairs and threw his soiled shirt into the laundry basket. Instead of climbing back into bed, he took his pillow to the couch and lay down. Things needed to change, but he wasn’t sure it was possible. Under the guilt and fear, beneath the ugly image of the latest one’s bloated face zipped and stashed in black vinyl, was something else. He tried to ignore it, but knew he couldn’t. However subtle at the moment, his thirst would grow. Unquenchable by the woman who lay upstairs, oblivious to his needs. It was a thirst for connection. For trust and dependency. He knew he would someday find it. Perhaps he already had.

And though the heavy burden of melancholy sat on his shoulders from the way things had ended with his last love, there was hope buried under those emotions. Hope and desire. He knew they were the dominantemotions that would prove victorious. For now, he would weather this latest storm and bide his time. Get through these missteps. Let things settle and calm. Then focus on what’s important.

He tossed on the couch as he fell asleep. Night sweats found him as the image returned. The black vinyl bag uneven with her remains.

CHAPTER 36

Saturday morning, Livia was on the road before dawn. She passed the occasional eighteen-wheeler making a long haul from the north, but otherwise the highway was hers. She considered Casey Delevan, Nancy Dee, Paula D’Amato, Megan McDonald, and whether she could convince the police that a connection existed between them all. She wondered if Nicole played into that connection, and whether the delusional grandeur of a demented club had anything to do with all these missing girls.

Livia’s mind returned to her fellowship interview, where she stored in her suppressed thoughts the idea that Nicole’s body could turn up the same way Nancy Dee’s and Paula D’Amato’s had. She thought of Nicole’s body being transported to her autopsy table, where it would silently beg Livia to find the answers it held and put to rest the many questions Livia and her parents still asked about the night Nicole disappeared. Instead though, Casey Delevan had arrived in her morgue. And in place of answers, the case had only caused morespeculation that sent Livia into bordering states searching for revelations about other missing girls.

As the sun crested the horizon behind her and stretched the shadow of her car into a thin black ghost along the road in front of her, Livia realized she was chasing more than the ghost of her lost sister. Maybe it had taken Casey Delevan’s decomposed body to force her into action. Maybe a year of denial and avoidance had finally run its course. Perhaps action was the only logical next step if forgetting about Nicole was the alternative. Whatever the reason, Livia knew she couldn’t stop until she possessed the answers she craved. And if those answers didn’t fully provide closure for herself, or quell the guilt about her fledging relationship with Nicole, perhaps finding a resolution for the Dee and D’Amato families would provide something else. A balm needed to heal wounds that would otherwise remain exposed and gaping.

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