You Don't Know Me (28 page)

Whatever Jason and Harper were up to, it had Jason on the defensive.

Which meant it couldn’t be anything good.

Nathan watched as Colleen held the phone to her ear, pulled away, and stared at it. She pressed a button, listened again.

Nathan could almost see her face transform, see it whiten, and his own chest tightened as her mouth opened.

Then she screamed.

She stood, dropped the phone, and screamed.

The ball landed in the middle of the Huskies’ court as every player turned, watching Colleen run out into the middle of the game. Across the gym, toward—

“Daddy! Daddy—I think he took her! That man took Mom!”

Nathan was on his feet—he knew that much—but beyond that, nothing made sense. He made it down the bleachers to the floor and caught Colleen by her arms. “What are you talking about?”

Tears flushed her reddened face. “Tucker called. He just saw Mom driving out of town, and . . . The man—he had . . . he had a . . . a snake—” She lifted her trembling hand to her neck, her voice hiccuping out, unraveling. “And he took me today from the school parking lot . . .”

“Someone
took
you. Today?”

Nathan vaguely sensed the crowd hushing around him, barely sensed his hands tightening on Colleen’s arms. “Did he hurt you?”

Only then did he see the bruise on her cheek, the swelling around her eyes.

Oh. He couldn’t breathe. “What happened?”

“He told me that if I didn’t go to the game or if I told Mom or you, he’d go to our house and kill everybody.”

He cupped her face, kept his voice low, unsure how he was going to ask this—or if he could bear the answer. “Did he . . . ?” He swallowed. “Did he . . . ?”

“No, Daddy.” She shook her head, and he wanted to weep with relief. He crushed his daughter to himself.
Thank You, God. Oh, thank You.

“He just hit me because . . . because he said terrible things about Mom, and I called him a liar. He was waiting for her to come to the volleyball game and told me that if I told anyone, he’d kill us all.”

Nathan closed his eyes.

“Nathan, are you okay?”

He turned to find Seb Brewster behind him, concern in his eyes.

Nathan’s mouth had dried, his heart in his throat. No, he wasn’t okay. Might never be okay. “I think someone has kidnapped my wife.”

His voice might have echoed into Canada. The stands went still.

Seb stared at him. “What?”

Nathan looked at the crowd. Eli Hueston, Deep Haven’s former sheriff, was on his feet, heading down the bleachers. With Pastor Dan and his wife, Ellie, behind him.

Jason had stood up in the top row.

Here it was, their family and all their secrets, about to be laid open in front of all of Deep Haven. He could hear the murmur growing.

But his wife was out there, maybe already dead. “My family is in trouble.”

The murmur died.

“My wife is not who you believe her to be.” He reached down, took Colleen’s hand, and held it tight. “Annalise has been living here under an assumed name, in the protection of the Witness Security Program, for twenty years. She did it because she testified against a man who still wants to kill her. A man who I think has tracked her down.” Nathan’s chest webbed, stealing his words. “Who has taken her. I pray he hasn’t . . .” He looked away, swallowed, his voice turning puny. “I have to find her.”

Silence.

He heard the quiet and knew the faces of Deep Haven even without looking at them. He knew almost all of them, knew their fathers, their children, where they lived. He’d gone to school with half of them, helped most of them buy their homes. And they knew him, too.

Knew him as the son of a reckless, murdering drunk.

And now as the husband of a woman who’d betrayed them.

And suddenly he didn’t care in the least.

“Annalise might not be the person you thought she was. But she’s my wife and I love her.”

Colleen held up her cell phone. “Tucker’s not answering, and I don’t know where he saw her. I’ll keep trying, but maybe we can track his GPS.”

Oh, the brilliant children of this generation. “Good idea.”

“Kyle!” Eli signaled to his son, off duty and sitting with his girlfriend, Emma, in the stands. “Get on the horn to your office. Tell them to meet us at the school.”

“Nathan!”

The voice made him turn.

Frank.

And to his shock, Colleen launched herself at the man, wrapping her arms around him. “Uncle Frank! Something’s happened to Mom!”

Frank appeared as if he’d aged ten years since Nathan saw him eight hours ago. He seemed unsure what to do about Colleen’s affection, slowly lifting his arms to hold her.

Personally Nathan wanted to grab him by the throat. “What happened? I thought you had him!”

Frank unlatched Colleen’s arms from around his neck. Smiled at her a moment, something of sadness in his expression before he turned to Nathan. “I did too. The body wasn’t Garcia.”

Colleen backed away from him. “You’re not my uncle, are you?”

He pursed his lips as if not wanting to admit it before shaking his head. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love your mom like my own daughter. I’ll find her, Colleen. I promise.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Did you say that Tucker called you? What is his number?”

Around him, Nathan heard the buzz of the crowd. Men had begun to flood off the bleachers.

Pastor Dan came up to him first. “We’ll find her. He couldn’t have taken her far.” He clamped Nathan on the shoulder. “I’m headed to the station to call the volunteers.”

Nathan stared after him. Really? But it seemed . . . yes. Seb had a circle of men around him, already mapping out the town. Eli had joined in a huddle with Kyle over by the radio booth.

“Wait—I don’t want anyone to get hurt!” Nathan said.

Seb was pulling on his jacket as he moved past him. “It’s not up to you anymore. You live in community, Nathan. When one is in trouble, we’re all in trouble.”

Frank had turned, following a group of men out the door. Nathan ran to catch up.

“Dad!”

He turned, and Jason had Colleen by the hand.

“Go back to the house!” Or . . . “Wait!” Nathan pulled out his phone, dialed. He wanted to weep when his mother answered. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. There’s a deputy sitting at the table right now. But . . . are you? Frank called here almost an hour ago looking for Annalise. Is she with you? Is she okay?”

He looked at Jason. Colleen. They were watching him. And he was sick of lying. Sick of secrets.

“I don’t know. Is Henry with you?”

“Yes, he’s here and fine. Scared. We all are.”

Him too. “Pray, Mom,” he said. “Just pray.” He hung up and turned to Jason. “Go home. I’m going to call John and see if he’ll come down—”

“Dad, I’m eighteen. I’m not a child—”

“Really? Because I’m not so sure about that. I’m not an idiot, Jason. I finally figured out why you couldn’t look me in the eye last night after I caught you with Harper. And I did catch you, didn’t I? Maybe Tucker’s a better guy than we thought—maybe it’s my own son who needs to figure out how to grow up and be a gentleman.”

Jason’s face reddened.

“Go home, and wait for me. And pray that we find your mother.”

Nathan gave Colleen a hard kiss on the forehead. Then he ran to the front door. The cruisers had already lined up, their lights flashing.

Frank huddled in an alcove near the building, a hand pressed to his free ear, barking into the phone.

Nathan jogged over to him. Frank held up his hand. “Yep. Got it.” He hung up. “I got a GPS location of Tucker’s call. He was down on the highway, just out of town. That gives us a place to start.”

He signaled to Eli, who came over. Frank gave him the information.

“There’s a lot of country outside of town,” Eli said.

Nathan was still holding his phone and looked at it now. “Annalise called me.”

Nathan punched the speed dial for his voice mail. He listened to the message, pressing his other hand to his frozen ear. Muffled voices . . . Wait . . .

Yes, she’d called him. Annalise had called him when Garcia took her.

He wanted to cry when he made out her voice. “Maybe while you’re in Deep Haven, you should visit . . .”

No.

He closed his eyes. His heart stopped on her scream.

Oh, God, please . . .
“I know where she is.”

Frank and Eli turned to him. Nathan tasted a bullet, tinny and thick, in his throat. “I think she drove into Cutaway Creek.”

“Let’s go,” Frank said. He jogged to another man, a dark-haired cop type standing by his rental, probably his partner.

Nathan stayed on his heels, grabbed for the back door.

“There’s no use in my saying you should stay here, is there?” Frank said, yanking his door open. His partner got in on the driver’s side.

Nathan shook his head.

“Get in.”

Nathan never realized how far the creek was from town, how many heartbeats it took to get there.

Please, God.
He didn’t want to lose his wife in the icy waters of Cutaway Creek.

They rounded the curve, and he saw it first—the broken jaws of the guardrail where a car had broken through. Nathan had the door open before they stopped. A line of police cruisers and headlights piled up behind him, but he didn’t stop for traffic, just ran out to the edge.

“Here! We’re down here.”

Flashlights swung toward the voice.

Tucker. Sitting on a boulder beside an overturned car, his foot braced on the frame, the water up to his shoulders.

He held Nathan’s limp wife in his arms, her head in his lap. “Hurry!”

Nathan didn’t wait for the EMTs, didn’t care about the voices or the nightmares or the feel of the cresting water that could pull him under. He scrambled down the rocky wall and spilled into the water.

The frigid cold seared away his breath, but he didn’t care as he launched himself toward Tucker.

“I’m sorry. I tried to keep her awake, tried to keep her talking—”

Tucker seemed nearly frantic but Nathan couldn’t deal with him, not right now. Instead, he pulled Annalise into his lap.

No. This wasn’t Annalise. This woman had the countenance of a specter—gray skin, eyes closed, stringy hair around her face.

This couldn’t be his Annalise. Bright and beautiful, strong, full of life and hope. The grace of God.

No, this wasn’t his wife. Because this woman was dead.

It was a beautiful day to die.

Deep Haven stilled under its last snowfall, and grace in the form of a million different flakes covered the rocks, the trees, the craggy ledges. Lacy blankets of frost climbed up the windows, and locals captured their words in the air. Winter in Deep Haven had slowed to a crawl, settled everyone in slumber, in a pocket of quiet.

A pocket of safety.

A place where Frank had sent her to die. Or . . . perhaps to be reborn.

She’d stood on the shoreline, hands in her pockets, breathing in the scent of spring. He’d told her that rebirth would be hard, like the coming of spring, with the runoffs from the hills swelling the rivers, the icy roads breaking through to mud, the black ice freezing in the morning. He told her to take her time waking, to tend her wounds from winter.

But he’d promised that, like summer, she would someday be whole again.

And she wanted to believe it. Wanted to wake from the nightmare. But it felt like punching through ice, this waking. She could hear voices, but she so easily settled back into the cold. More voices, calling her forth again to smells and sounds.

Yet the pocket of silence, the winter, called.

And pain waited in the light. There wasn’t enough grace there for her to start over. To begin again. Dying felt so much easier.

“Annalise?”

She took a breath, felt it stiff and cold in her lungs.

“Honey, please wake up.”

She felt the hand now, tight in hers. Annalise? But her name was Deidre.

Except she understood Annalise, too. Like a melody, deep in her heart.

“Mom.”

This name she knew. Her eyes opened. And this face, so familiar. Blue eyes. Freckles on the cute, pert nose. Blonde hair long around her face. “Colleen.”

Annalise spoke, but she could barely hear herself. She wore a mask over her nose, the air cold and bright, forced into her. She lifted her hand to move it and it pinched.

“Sweetie, you were in an accident.”

Nathan. She knew him, too—his name a song, something she’d always sung. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days, his white T-shirt rumpled, his hair a broom on one side.

Jason stood at the foot of the bed, looking younger somehow, a little beaten.

And then it rushed back to her.

She inhaled a quick breath. Moved the oxygen mask to one side. “Garcia—”

“Luis Garcia is dead,” Nathan said. “He drowned. And you broke your foot. Do you remember what happened?”

A hospital. She recognized it now—the pink hanging curtain, the square television, flowers on the table, and . . . and get-well cards. They plastered the walls around her bed and hung pinned to the curtain. Pictures drawn by the hands of children papered the window, overflowed in a basket on the windowsill. So many cards.

“I was in an accident.”

“A car accident, that’s right. You went off the bridge.”

No—no, that wasn’t right. “I drove off the bridge,” she said, her voice raspy.

Nathan gasped. “You
drove
off the bridge?”

“I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to stun him, to get away. We went over. I thought I was going to die.”

“You did die. Your heart stopped twice. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for three days while they rewarmed you.” Nathan’s mouth tightened to a grim line. “We could have lost you.”

“How did you find me?” She accepted the straw of water from Nathan, let it soothe her parched throat.

“You called me,” Nathan said. He smiled, something soft and sweet in his expression.

She smiled back. “That’s right, I did.”

“Mom! You’re awake!” Henry bounded into the room and kissed her nose. “Oops, it’s still cold.”

“She’ll warm up, Son,” Nathan said. But she didn’t miss the way he whisked his hand across his cheek.

Helen came in behind Henry, wearing a hat, a leather coat, her cheeks rosy. Her eyes warmed when she looked at Annalise. “Don’t you scare us like that again. Ever.” She squeezed Annalise’s hand and gave her a smile, forgiveness in it.

Then, right behind her . . . “Frank?”

He looked younger, less angry, dressed in a flannel shirt, a pair of jeans. His eyes were soft. “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “I was pretty worried.”

He was? “You didn’t have to stay.”

Was that a blush? He glanced at Helen, who smiled at him. “I was thinking of maybe sticking around if that’s okay.”

“Uncle Frank is in love with Grandma!” Henry said.

Frank lifted a shoulder. “I like it here. I found this great house outside of town with fixer-upper potential.” He glanced at Nathan. “For a guy with a fresh vision.”

Really? Frank was staying?

Helen slipped her hand into his. “A house big enough for guests and family.”

Frank looked at her and smiled, so much affection in it that Annalise almost didn’t recognize him. “Yes. For family.”

Maybe she
had
died, gone to a different, happier place.

No, this was the right place. The place she’d always known. A place she wanted to stay.

“How’s Tucker?” She remembered him, too. How he’d apologized and kept her talking to try to keep her awake as the cold turned her body stiff, slowed her heartbeat. He told her about his dreams of being a snowboarder, his family, the loss of his brother.

How he cared for Colleen and just wanted to fit into her world.

Annalise looked at her daughter. “Please tell me he’s okay.”

Colleen’s eyes glistened. “Yeah. He’s okay. He has a broken leg, though. He probably won’t be able to snowboard this season.”

“Then he’ll need some company. Maybe we can teach him how the Deckers play Monopoly.”

Her daughter’s mouth opened, a smile in her eyes. “Really?”

“I’m sorry I was so ‘judgy.’ You’re right. I had to get to know him. I . . . I just didn’t want to lose you, Colleen. Not yet.”

“You’re not going to lose me, Mom,” Colleen said softly. She took her hand, squeezed. “Ever.”

“And you’re not going to lose me.” Annalise looked at her family. “I’m sorry for not telling you who I really was.”

“Oh, Mom,” Jason said. “We’ve always known exactly who you are.”

Really—how—?

“You’re our mom!” Henry said and bounced on the bed.

“Henry, dude, take a chill there,” Jason said, pulling Henry off the bed.

Nathan leaned closer. “And for better or worse, Deidre or Annalise, or whatever you want to call yourself, you’re my wife.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m not real partial to the name Esmeralda, however. Or Penelope. But I could learn to live with it.”

She cupped her hand against his face, brushing the whiskers there. “Annalise Decker will do.”

He sat on the bed, caught her hand, and pulled it to his chest, meeting her eyes. Just like he had that first time when she’d arrived, springtime in the wind, reborn and new, and walked into his life.

“My whole class made you cards,” Henry said, pointing to a row of pictures.

“Beth Iverson sent cookies from the soccer team, but we ate them,” Jason said. “Sorry.”

“The PTA sent flowers, and the volleyball team sent cards, and the church sent a wreath, and the rest are from your Deep Haven fans. Apparently you could run for mayor in this town,” Nathan said.

She held his gaze. “And you?”

He shook his head. “I think I have my hands full keeping you out of trouble.” He smiled, nothing of guile in it. “Seb Brewster will make a wonderful mayor. Besides, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone but you.”

“I’m sorry, Nathan.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve had enough excitement for the rest of our lives. Please, give me boring.”

Oh, boring would be the last thing she’d have with this man. “No more secrets, I promise. I never meant to bring so much trouble here. I just wanted a place to hide.”

“Lise, you might have thought you were hiding out in Deep Haven,” Nathan said as he leaned down, his lips close to her ear, “but really . . . you were just coming home.”