Tessa Leoni: Crash And Burn Part 41

The wilderness likes to take back its own. In this case, it really should.

"What do you remember?" Thomas asks me quietly. We push forward, following the narrow path that's all that's left of the drive.

"When I first got out of the car . . ."

It's April, the sun is setting, I'm already feeling the chill. I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm scared. But I don't let these things show. Game face, fighting to be brave. Until I step out of the vehicle. Look up and see . . .

"It was beautiful," I whisper. "Like something out of a fairy tale. Especially for a city girl like me. I only knew cramped apartments, tenement housing. Then to come here, see this."

"It was already falling into disrepair," Thomas says. His voice is apologetic. He hefts the shovel in his left hand. "After my father's death, there wasn't enough money for upkeep. Even after my mother's . . . business idea . . . the house was never the same. I used to wonder. Maybe homes have souls. It's not enough to paint and repair. You have to refresh them. Love, laughter, life. I don't know. But after my father died, what my mom did to this house, in this house . . . I don't think it was ever the same."

We move deeper through the vegetation.

Once, there was a beautiful wraparound front porch. White-painted rails, gingerbread trim. If I close my eyes, I can still see it in my mind. But when I open them again, follow the beam of Thomas's flashlight, I'm startled to see nothing is as large as I remember. The porch is gone, of course. The house as well. All that remains is the foundation, a pile of enormous granite blocks such as the type favored back in the day . . .

Thomas was skilled only with fire. To destroy this foundation would've taken dynamite.

"When my mother first brought you home," he says now, "she claimed you were a new foster child. That was her big scheme after my father's death. We had a large house, so many empty rooms. She'd decided to take in foster kids. For the money, of course. She was never one to pretend to care."

"A car came to our building," I tell him now. "My mom told me to get in. Do whatever the woman said. It wasn't the first time."

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't expect to be taken away. Yet, when I first saw this place . . . It was so much nicer than anyplace I'd ever been. Better food, too."

"In the beginning, I believed her," Thomas said. "It made sense. State pays for foster kids and I knew we needed cash. It was all my mother talked about. My good-for-nothing father who'd promised her this and promised her that but had proved to be nothing but a loser who'd then gone and dropped dead . . ."

Thomas looks at me; his face is hard to read in the dark, but when he speaks next, his tone is flat, frank. "I hated her. Surely you must know that. She did this, all of this, purely out of greed. Because she was owed a life of luxury. When my father failed her, well, this was the next logical step. She took in 'foster kids,' all of whom were young, pretty girls. Then she started throwing lavish parties. Getting to know the neighbors, she told me. I was so young myself, it took me years to realize the party guests were only older, wealthy men. And none of them went home after dinner."

We are close enough now to climb onto the first enormous granite block. I don't want to peer down into the pit of what used to be the home's cellar, but I can't help myself. I swear I can smell smoke again, but any charred remains of wood are long gone. I see only thick green vegetation, vines and weeds that have overgrown the bones of this once grand house.

Heat, I think. If I close my eyes, I will feel it again on my cheeks.

I will hear her screams.

I backpedal sharply, slipping off the granite slab. Thomas reaches for me, but is too late. I go down hard, banging my shin against the hard rectangular slab. Blood. Pain.

Smoke. Fire.

Screams.

I can't help myself. I reach up my hand. I beg, I implore.

"Save her. For the love of G.o.d. Please!"

Thomas doesn't move. His face is set in a grim line as he stands there, flashlight in one hand, shovel in the other. He knows. What I'm asking. What I'm finally remembering.

But whereas I am crying, his eyes remain dry.

"I'm sorry," he says, but I'm not sure what he means. For what happened then, or for what must happen now.

"The first two girls who arrived," he tells me, stepping off the granite slab, "were older. Fifteen, sixteen. I was maybe five? I didn't think much of it. Mother said they had no families. We would host them. So we did.

"Looking back now, I think it started with them. Maybe they already were prost.i.tutes. Or simply girls who came from . . . situations." He glances at me. "My father might not have been the breadwinner my mother desired, but he still came from a long line of people who knew people. My mother mined those connections. Small, intimate dinners at first, inviting the neighbors, family acquaintances. Mother kept things simple. c.o.c.ktail hours, small cookouts to show off the house, introduce her new 'daughters.'

"Maybe she was trying to reposition herself, us, in the community, but I think from the very beginning she had a plan. She knew what older, bored, wealthy men really wanted. So she started with a couples event, then later, the husbands might 'drop by,' to see if my mother needed any help, maybe stay for a few hours. I didn't understand the full implications, but I still noted the new patterns. More and more male visitors. Two 'foster daughters' who spent most of their time giving male guests tours of the house, including long stays in their bedrooms. I don't even remember their names anymore, but those first two girls, that's when it all started."

I have pictures in my head. A middle-aged woman in elegant linen trousers escorting me out of her car. Leading me through a tired but obviously once grand home. Taking me up a long flight of stairs in the south-facing turret.

This will be your room. The tower bedroom. You can make yourself comfortable. I'll bring you clothes.

She closed the door. Was it locked? I'm not even sure anymore. Maybe, in the beginning. But it hardly mattered. Living out here, stuck in a mansion perched on a mountainside, thirty, forty miles from civilization. Where would I have gone? Where could any of us have run?

Madame Sade had not relied on armed guards or overt controls. She had a cold smile and indomitable will that served her just as well.

I look up now. I can't see it, but I feel like I should know where it is, the three-story, wood-shingled turret, rising against the night sky.

"I loved that room," I whisper.

"I spotted you in the window," Thomas says. "You were ten years old, the first young girl she brought-"

"Bought," I say bitterly.

He doesn't correct me. "Close to my age. I'd been out in the yard, mowing, because everyone, even me, had to earn their keep. I looked up. Saw your face pressed against the gla.s.s. Your expression was so serious. Then you held up your hand, as if reaching out to me . . .

"And I . . . I don't know how to explain it. I was only twelve myself, but I took one look at you and I was struck. I wanted to talk to you, become your friend. I wanted to know you, even though it wasn't allowed. The rules had already been established. Foster kids were separate. Mother managed you. Guests visited you. I, on the other hand, was never to mingle."

"You waved at me." For a moment, I'm ten again. Lonely and overwhelmed by this fancy house and well-dressed woman who already terrifies me. I'm in the prettiest bedroom I've ever seen, in an honest-to-goodness princess tower, but I already know nothing in life is free. This room will cost me. This house will cost me.

Then I look down. I see the boy. A flash of smile. A quick wave. He quickly tucks his hand behind his back, glancing around self-consciously. But I don't put my hand down. I keep it pressed against the window. I imagine, just for one moment, that I'm standing on the lawn with him. He's still smiling at me and I'm not so scared or lonely anymore.

Thomas was right: We hadn't been allowed to mingle or interact. But in his own way, he had become my lifeline, a point of interest in an otherwise monotonous existence of sitting in a gilded cage, waiting for nightfall. Madame Sade called the shots: First she isolated us in this mansion; then she extolled her own virtues. Look at this fancy house where I brought you to live; look at this new dress I found just for you. Aren't you so lucky to have me to take care of you, so fortunate to have this opportunity to get ahead in life.

She'd flash that cold smile, the one that never reached her eyes, and the smart girl did as she was told. The smart girl didn't dream of life beyond these walls.

Or Madame Sade would take away your food, shred your clothes, slash one of your new toys, maybe the one she'd just given you the day before. She'd twist your arm behind your back, so hard you could barely breathe, and she'd remind you of everything she'd bought and paid for. Oh yes, including you. So you'd better wise up, shut up and entertain that man over there, because it wasn't like anyone would miss you if you didn't show up one morning for breakfast. Lots of things disappeared in these deep, dark woods. Including ungrateful little girls.

I wised up. I shut up. I entertained that man over there.

But I also watched the boy out mowing the lawns. I studied him from beneath my lashes as he strode across the grounds. I caught his eye from time to time, as we pa.s.sed in the hall.

Vero had the magical queen and the lost princess from the secret realm.

I had entire fictional conversations with a young boy I'd never officially met. Until, of course, I lost my place in the tower bedroom.

Now I look back at the sky, to the blank s.p.a.ce on the horizon where there had once been the three-story turret. She's close, I think. Very close. No longer just a presence in my mind, but here in these overgrown ruins.

"Vero took my room," I hear myself say. "She arrived, and I was booted downstairs."

Thomas doesn't say anything.

"I hated her for that. I didn't have to. I could've felt bad for her. She was so young, just this poor little girl torn from her family. I could hear crying night after night, you know. But I didn't feel any pity. I hated her instead."

"Divide and conquer," Thomas provides gently. "My mother was no dummy."

I can't look up anymore. I smell smoke, and what's going to happen next . . . The real reason Thomas brought me here.

"I just wanted my room back," I murmur now. An apology? To him, to her, I don't know. "I wanted to pretend to be a princess. Because of course, I knew by then, I was nothing but a wh.o.r.e."

Thomas steps in front of me.

"It's not your fault. Don't you understand? That's why you need to remember, Nicky. Because in forgetting what happened, you're also forgetting the reason you're not to blame."

"No." I shake my head, then force myself to look at him, take a steadying breath. "You don't understand. Vero is my fault. I'm the one who killed her. From the first moment I started hiding the drugs, I knew she'd find them. I knew she'd take them. Worse, I loved her. By then she had become the little sister I'd never had, the closest thing to a best friend. She was family. My only family. And I killed her. Consciously, deliberately. I let her die, so I could live."

Thomas studies me. He stares and he stares. Then he says the most curious thing. He says: "And then what, Nicky? Vero took the drugs. But what happened next?"

Chapter 38.

NO CELL RECEPTION," Tessa reported, holding her phone closer to the pa.s.senger window, as if that might help. "d.a.m.n mountains."

"Do you know where we are?" Wyatt asked her. Because it felt to him like they'd already been driving forever, and Tessa had a point. So far, all he saw was dark, endless mountains.

"No, only where we've been."

"Gotta be getting close."

"Can I just say one thing? This road alone proves one of our theories. We've been driving forever without even a bear for company. If this is truly the location of the infamous dollhouse . . . no way Nicky Frank magically crawled off the grounds and hitched a ride to New Orleans all by her lonesome. She had to have help."

"Thomas isn't just her husband; he was her getaway," Wyatt agreed.

"Interesting basis for a marriage."

"And yet they've lasted twenty-two years."

"Until the past six months," Tessa grumbled. "When Nicky decided she wanted the truth about her past and immediately became expendable."

Wyatt didn't comment right away. He'd been the first to doubt Thomas. Any man whose wife had mysteriously suffered three accidents. Let alone that Nicky herself had placed him at the scene of the car accident. And yet, the video. Something about the video. The way Nicky still walked right up to him, placed her hand in his own.

Fear and love.

Wyatt was making an investigator's worst mistake and he knew it: He was contemplating two suspects, Nicky and Thomas Frank, and seeing himself and Tessa.

"Come on," Tessa prodded him now. "You're telling me you're suddenly a fan of Thomas Frank? At the very least, he met his distraught wife Wednesday night, handed her a pair of fake fingerprint gloves, then seat-belted her into her vehicle before pushing it down a ravine. Hardly the actions of an innocent man."

"Fan would be a big statement. Just gotta say, for the record, the vehicle in question was a new Audi Q5 with airbag this and safety feature that. Hardly a death trap. Plus, he put on her seat belt."

"Better to cover his tracks, make it look like an accident."

"Nicky was already drunk. She'd done that on her own. An investigating officer wouldn't have questioned the lack of seat belt."

"He's not an investigating officer."

"True. It's just that . . ."

She stared at him. "Spit it out."

"I don't know. The cop in me agrees with you. Clearly here's a man with plenty to hide. And yet, two decades of marriage later . . . You said it yourself. Just because he saved her that night didn't mean he had to marry her. And even if his job was to somehow keep tabs on her, watch her for Madame Sade. Twenty-two years later, how do you fake that kind of relationship? I don't know. I watched that video tonight, and . . . There's something there, some kind of dynamic we don't understand yet."

"You're a romantic," Tessa informed him.

"I prefer the term open-minded."

"The picture she drew of him. Thomas was at the dollhouse. The expression she sketched on his face. Thomas was not a happy kid. Meaning he was definitely part of what was going on back then. Nicky starts to remember everything, those memories put him at risk."

"He would've been young himself. Possibly a victim as well."

"The look in his eyes was hard."

"I thought he looked determined."

"Wyatt!"

"Tessa!

"You know I love you, right?" he said abruptly.

In the pa.s.senger's seat, Tessa stilled. He could tell his words had caught her off guard, and yet they hadn't. Love and fear, he thought again. Except not Nicky and Thomas's, but their own.

"I'm not good at this," Tessa murmured.

"Tessa, what's wrong?"

"Can't we just . . . solve this case? You like arresting people; I like arresting people. We'll be fine."

"Is it Sophie?" he asked steadily. "Because I can be patient, Tessa. I know she hasn't fully accepted me yet. That's okay. I'm in this for the long haul."

She didn't answer.

Sharp turn in the road. Forcing himself to focus.