Tessa Leoni: Crash And Burn Part 39

MY CAR KEYS are gone," Tessa reported ten minutes later. She and Wyatt had snapped on the lights, giving the room a cursory glance, before tearing outside to the parking lot. With no sign of Nicky inside or out, they'd returned to the room and summarily ripped it apart. Senseless, really, given they were looking for a full-size female, which wasn't exactly something you could lose beneath a sofa cushion.

"She doesn't have wheels of her own," Wyatt commented.

"But where would she go? She doesn't have a house of her own either."

Wyatt nodded. He straightened, took in the wreck of the hotel room and finally exhaled in defeat. "All right. Time to regroup. We're reacting. This whole d.a.m.n case, frankly, has been one reaction after another, and it's not getting us anywhere. From the top, what do we know?"

"Nicky Frank is missing," Tessa supplied sourly. She'd stripped the covers from both beds. Now she was on her hands and knees, peering under the first, then the second, as if locating a missing witness was no different from finding a lost pair of shoes.

"Nicky Frank who is not Veronica Sellers," Wyatt emphasized, "the girl who went missing thirty years ago."

"Meaning she's probably not running to Marlene Bilek's house," Tessa muttered, still crawling on the floor. "Her only contact in the area remains her husband, Thomas."

"Who most likely engineered her car accident and set things up for her to be falsely identified as Vero."

Tessa finally paused, sat back on her heels. "Could they be in this together? A joint ruse to pa.s.s Nicky off as a missing girl? Maybe as part of that, Thomas and Nicky set a predetermined rendezvous point for if things got too dicey, and that's where Nicky's headed now?"

Wyatt grimaced. "Except what is this ruse? What could Nicky possibly gain as Marlene's long-lost daughter that would justify the risk of a major auto accident, let alone Thomas burning down their home?"

Tessa had to think about it: "Revenge? Marlene failed her daughter, maybe was even part of Vero's abduction? Nicky wants payback, and what better way to get it than masquerading as the lost child?"

"I think Thomas is behind it."

"Okay." Tessa resumed her search, slipping a hand beneath the box spring and top mattress of the bed closest to the door.

Wyatt ticked off on his fingers. "Nicky's concussions are real. Her memory loss certainly appears real. Then there's the multiple accidents, house fire, et cetera. In all those scenarios, Nicky's a victim, not a perpetrator. Given all this started when she decided to move to New Hampshire and search for answers, I think her desire for the truth upset the apple cart. Meaning Thomas is the one with something to hide."

"Hang on." Tessa paused. "What do we have here?" Her fingers worked between the mattresses; then she slowly withdrew an oversize piece of paper, top edge ragged where it had been torn from the sketch pad. Tessa eased it carefully from where it'd been stashed, between the mattresses on Nicky's bed.

Wyatt immediately crossed the room to study the black-and-white pencil sketch. "That's Thomas Frank."

"Little young, don't you think?"

"She must've drawn this earlier, when you had her working, because you're right; this isn't the Thomas Frank from present day. This is him, easily twenty years ago."

"The time of the dollhouse. My G.o.d, look at his face."

Wyatt understood her point. The Thomas he'd interviewed had been a stressed-out middle-aged male. Clearly tired, maybe a bit frayed from caring for his ailing wife, but not the kind of man you'd look at twice.

Whereas younger Thomas-teenage Thomas? He looked haggard. Haunted. Hard.

A kid who already had plenty to hide.

"Nicky never showed this to you?" Wyatt asked.

Tessa shook her head. "No. I left to take a call. Bet she stashed it then."

"She's sitting here. Candle's lit, the air smells like gra.s.s. She draws the house. She draws rooms in the house. She sketches Madame Sade, and then: this." Wyatt turned over the matter in his mind. "She didn't expect it. I bet that's why she hid it. Of all the details to start returning to her, that Thomas is part of the dollhouse, that she knew him before, better yet, he knew her from before, must've rattled her."

"He was part of it," Tessa whispered. "And judging by his expression, not a nice part of it either. You think she contacted him somehow, set up a meeting time? But how? She doesn't even have a phone."

Wyatt shrugged. "If she really wants answers, Thomas is the next place to start."

"Except . . ." Tessa's voice trailed off. "I don't think this boy"-she tapped the sketch-"has anything good to tell her."

Wyatt nodded. He was worried about the same. If even half of what Nicky had said about the dollhouse was true, then there were plenty of secrets worth killing to protect.

"We need to get eyes on your car. Immediately."

"s.h.i.t! We're idiots. It's my vehicle, dammit. And I have OnStar!"

TESSA MADE THE call. Once given the pa.s.sword, the operator of OnStar was more than happy to be of a.s.sistance. In fact, he pinpointed the location of her Lexus in less than thirty seconds as sitting in the hotel's parking lot.

"What the h.e.l.l?"

She and Wyatt walked out together, discovering Tessa's black SUV, sitting beneath an energy-efficient lamppost.

"Why take my keys if she wasn't going to take my car?" Tessa exploded. She sounded genuinely insulted.

"Slow us down, keep us from following her?" Wyatt reasoned. "She already hid Thomas's sketch. Clearly, she wants some privacy."

Wyatt took his hands out of his pockets, walked the s.p.a.ce. One A.M. Lot held four vehicles, which made for a quick inventory. Bushes, trees, shrubs, nothing.

"She didn't walk out of here," he stated. "We're too far away from civilization, let alone any major roads. So if she's not here, but your car is, then she found another mode of transportation."

"Maybe she didn't have to drive to meet Thomas. He met her here."

"She called him from the hotel room?" Wyatt tried on.

"Can't. I asked the hotel manager to block all incoming and outgoing calls. Containment issue. Plus, I have my cell. We didn't need anything else for making contact."

Wyatt was impressed. "You didn't trust her?"

"Hey, just because she's my client doesn't mean I'm stupid. Plenty of people ask for help, then maneuver around your back, which, of course, gets the savvy investigator in trouble. One form of contact means I always know what's going on. For example, she didn't call Thomas."

"Maybe he followed us from the sheriff's department to here," Wyatt theorized. "Or even tracked my vehicle while I was picking up Marlene Bilek. Easy enough to guess she'd want to meet with Nicky, given the story on the nightly news." Wyatt's voice trailed off. If Thomas had known Nicky was here, then the moment she walked out of the hotel into the darkened parking lot . . . They hadn't kept her safe at all, he realized. More like delivered her straight to the lion.

Wyatt glanced at his watch again. He needed to get on the radio, mobilize a fresh search. Except be on the lookout for what? They'd already been hunting for Thomas Frank for more than twenty-four hours. The man was a f.u.c.king ghost.

"We need cameras," Tessa muttered, as if reading his mind. "Search like this in Boston, we'd have toll records, traffic light cameras, business surveillance and/or ATM security on every block. One click of a video screen, and Thomas would be ours."

"Hang on. We might not be in a big city, but this hotel has a security system. Check it out." He pointed back at the hotel roofline, where at least one camera was clearly visible. He turned on his heels, already heading for the front office. "We might have some tricks up our sleeves just yet."

The nighttime hotel clerk identified herself as Brittany Kline. Blond, bubbly, and extremely excited to a.s.sist with an official police investigation. Yes, the hotel had an excellent security system, she informed them. Installed six months ago, great cameras, great imaging, tons of stored footage. She liked to peruse it herself on slow nights. You know, in order to augment her online cla.s.ses in criminology. She led them toward a back office, where she immediately proved herself to be adept at retrieving video from the system.With Brittany's a.s.sistance, they sorted out which security camera had the best view of the parking lot; then backtracked through the various video feeds in one-minute intervals. It took only four tries to get it right.

"There!" Tessa exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the screen, as Brittany manned the digital controls. "That's Nicky, walking toward the parked cars."

"And there's person number two, pushing away from the tree," Wyatt provided.

They watched the figure approach. Clearly a male, but his back was to the overhead lights, casting his face in shadow. Still, neither one had any doubt.

"Thomas," Wyatt stated.

"She doesn't seem afraid of him," Tessa commented.

"And yet, no welcoming hug."

"Can you zoom in?" Tessa asked Brittany. The night clerk did her best, but the resolution remained grainy. After a bit more playing around, they decided the footage was best in broad view. Brittany resumed normal screen size, hit replay.

Wyatt watched the screen. Thomas's rapid approach upon spotting his wife, followed almost immediately by an obvious hesitation. Nicky's instinctive lean toward her husband yet also drawing up short. Love and fear, he thought. Twin companions in any relationship.

Even his and Tessa's.

Thomas held out his hand to his wife.

Nicky stood there. Doubt? Wyatt wondered. Hostility? Wariness? Did she still see her husband of twenty-two years, a man who'd pledged to take care of her? Or did she see the grim-eyed youth from the dollhouse, a boy clearly conditioned to do what had to be done, regardless of the cost?

Another moment pa.s.sed. Two. Three.

Thomas stepped closer. Nicky tilted her face up. The lighting was wrong. Wyatt couldn't see her expression, and yet what she did next didn't totally surprise him.

She placed her fingers within her husband's grasp. She handed herself over to him.

Brittany sighed heavily, as if watching a romantic movie.

While Tessa exclaimed, "Oh my G.o.d, they're in this together!"

"Maybe," Wyatt murmured. But he wasn't thinking of joint criminal activity. Mostly he was thinking that love is like that.

Thomas led Nicky to the last vehicle in the row. Low-slung hatchback. Subaru, dark green. In a matter of seconds, he was backing it out of the parking s.p.a.ce. Heading toward the exit.

Standing behind a seated Brittany, Wyatt and Tessa both leaned forward, willing the parking lot light to illuminate the back license plate, give them what they were looking for.

"Come on," Wyatt whispered, grabbing a notebook and pen from his pocket. "Come on . . ."

One digit. Two, three . . .

He was hastily scribbling them down, when Tessa suddenly grabbed his arm.

"Stop!" she ordered Brittany. "Freeze that frame. Look. On the right. Another car is pulling out. Wyatt, someone is following them."

Chapter 35.

THOMAS AND I drive in silence. He has both hands on the wheel, his gaze ping-ponging from the front windshield to the rearview mirror. Checking for what, I'm not sure. But I can feel his tension.

Outside the car windows, the darkness rushes by. There are no streetlights out here. No road guards, traffic lights. We are in the mountains, carving our way up through vast wilderness. It should be raining, I think. Then it would be exactly as it was before.

"For the longest time," Thomas says at last, "I thought if we just stayed away, if you just had more time to heal. There were moments, you know, entire months, sometimes even a year, when you seemed to be better. I'd catch you smiling at a bird, a flower, a sunrise. Your face would brighten when I walked into a room. You'd even sleep at night."

I don't say anything.

"But then the wheels would come off. Abruptly. Without warning. I read book after book on the subject. Tried to identify the triggers. Some PTSD sufferers can't handle noise; for others it's a smell, a color, the feel of the walls closing in. For you . . . I couldn't figure it out. Ocean, desert, city, country. I tried it all. But no matter where we went, your nightmares found you again."

My husband turns to me. It's hard to see his expression in the dark, but I can feel the seriousness of his gaze. "I tried, Nicky. I tried everything. I believed for the longest time that I could be the one who saved you. But then . . ."

He pauses, returns his attention to the road.

"I fell down the stairs," I fill in.

"Vero," he states. He sounds bitter, though I understand, somewhere in the back of my head, that his feelings regarding her are as complex as mine. He found a way to move forward, however. I didn't, and therein lay the difference.

"Days on end," he says now, "you laid on the couch with that d.a.m.n quilt and whispered under your breath. Long, involved conversations with Vero. Vero flies. Vero cries. Vero only wants to be free. If I interrupted, you flew into a rage. If I tried to comfort you, you slapped my face and screamed at me it was all my fault. You hated me. Vero hated me. Go away."

I can picture it, exactly as he says. My need, my all-consuming need, to commune with the past. Thomas, walking into the room. Thomas, daring to interrupt. The sharp feel against my palm as I connected with his face.

It's all your fault, I screamed at him. I know what you did. She told me, you know. She tells me everything!

Thomas, not even bothering to argue. Thomas, walking away.

"The day you fell down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, when I returned from the workshop and couldn't find you . . . I ran around the house frantic. I thought you'd left me, Nicky. I thought, this was it. Given a choice between a future with me or a past with Vero . . . you'd left. The ghost girl had won."

I don't say anything.

"Then I finally discovered you sprawled on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor . . . You wouldn't respond to your name. Any of them. Trust me, I ran through the whole list. All the places we'd been, the names we'd initially tried on. Finally, I called you Vero. And you opened your eyes. You stared right at me. And so help me G.o.d, I almost walked away right there and then. You, her . . . I just can't do this anymore."

I can't help myself. I shiver slightly because I know he's right. There's a thin line in my mind, and it's been that way for a long time. "I am you," Vero tells me. But I wonder what she really means. As in, she's a piece of my subconscious, maybe even the voice of my guilty conscience? Or . . . something else entirely?

I would like to say I don't believe in ghosts, but I can't.

"I only ever wanted for you to be happy," Thomas says now, his hands gripping the wheel. "I fought a good fight for twenty-two years, thinking if we can just keep moving forward, once more time has pa.s.sed. But I'm wrong, aren't I, Nicky? You can't go forward. You have to go back. Given a choice between Vero and me, Vero has won."

I don't speak. I can't tell my husband what he wants to hear, which makes it easier to say nothing at all.

Instead, I study the dark night rushing behind him. I smell smoke. I feel flames. But I don't reach out my hand to him.