All the Little Raindrops(41)

“A few months? You don’t mean that!”

“I do. I do mean it. I need that. And so do you.”

“The girl has some sense. Let’s go, Evan,” his dad said. The girl. The way his father said it enraged him. She had been destroyed by the animals that had taken them too. She was the biggest part of why he was alive. Was his father so filled with hate that he couldn’t see that?

He turned back to Noelle again, and she’d already taken a step backward, away from him. His chest felt like it was caving in, and he was having trouble catching his breath. “Evan,” she said gently. “Both of us . . . our thoughts, our emotions, they’re tangled. Conflicted. We both have to remember what it’s like to live in the world again. To find new footing.”

He stared at her. What she was saying made some sense. Yet it also made him want to scream and claw the same way he did when he woke from those night terrors. Alone. It made him feel alone.

“Noelle—”

“Please, Evan,” she said. “I have to plan a service for my dad. I have to say goodbye. He deserves that.” She looked behind him at his father. “The police, they’ll find answers. I feel good knowing you’re working with them and focusing on that so I can . . . so I can grieve. Please, let me grieve.”

He felt like she was falling away from him, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, watching her disappear, not because he’d let her go, but because she wasn’t reaching back. “I—”

“Goodbye, Evan.” And with that, she turned and jogged back up the stairs, turning the corner out of sight.

Evan waited only a moment, his heart in his throat, before he turned in the opposite direction, joining his thin-lipped father and walking past Paula without looking at her.

Outside, the sun was a mere slip on the horizon. Night was coming, the place where nightmares waited.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


The Collector sipped his cup of tea and then placed it down on the saucer, enjoying the small clatter of porcelain against porcelain. The liquid was piping hot, dosed liberally with sugar and a slice of lemon. A man he’d once known long ago had drunk this exact tea prepared in just this way, and now he did too.

Not because he had revered the man. But because he had hated him. Because he sought to keep that hatred alive. In his heart. In his soul. Even in his mouth. He took another sip. Despite the sugar, this one tasted bitter.

Good.

The Collector clicked on the news article about Evan and Noelle. Their pictures were at the top of the page, the same ones that had been used in each article posted during the time they were missing. Their senior pictures. Evan in a suit and tie with a megawatt smile. Ah, the boardrooms he’d thought he’d command one day.

Not that he couldn’t still, if he chose to. But the Collector would bet his plans had shifted. Or they would.

Captivity changed a person, after all.

Priorities rotated.

And there was Noelle. His little rabbit. He felt a distant sort of flutter in his chest at the vision of her shy smile. If he didn’t know himself better, he might describe it as a form of love. But he had long since become incapable of that emotion.

By choice.

No, not love, then, but pride.

Yes, he was so proud of her.

She’d been so strong. She’d done just as he’d hoped she would.

And he felt a connection. The strongest connection he’d felt in a long, long time.

How could he not?

He ran a finger over the screen, tracing her dark hair. She’d curled it that day. It fell over her shoulders in long waves. He wondered what she’d thought about as she’d run that curling iron through her hair. Certainly not that in just a few short months she’d find herself bait in a cage, the innocent pawn in the twisted grip of a hundred psychopaths.

Life was unpredictable, though. It could be anyway, if you didn’t plan ahead for every possibility. And even then . . .

He opened a drawer, reached toward the back, and carefully removed a framed photograph. Celesse. His throat grew tight. He ran a finger over her delicate cheekbone, the same as he’d just done to Noelle’s image. How beautiful she’d been. He could still recall the fragrance of her hair. But it was growing fainter by the year. Someday soon, would he forget it altogether? The Collector seldom felt fear, but that thought distressed him greatly. He gazed at her shy smile. She’d rarely spoken to anyone but him. He’d been her voice then, and he’d be her voice now.

His finger traced her necklace and then moved to the jewel sitting in the hollow below her throat. A red diamond. He owned the matching ring. He didn’t wear it much anymore. It was too recognizable. “Schatje,” he whispered in his native Dutch before sliding the photograph back in the drawer. Little treasure.

He took a sip of tea. It had grown lukewarm as he’d sat and gazed at the photograph. He moved his mind back to Noelle as he again looked at the screen and began to scroll down through the article, but not because he wanted to read about the nightmare they’d survived. The press knew nothing, even if they thought they did. The police didn’t either. Nor did the FBI. They’d try. They’d find a few leads perhaps, but by the time they followed them, the game would have been moved, new codes sent out, deeper hallways built within the dark basement of the internet. These people had unlimited cash to spend, and there was always a dirty cop ready to be bribed somewhere.