Shivers crawled up the back of her neck.
Kobi watched him leave, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop him from coming back. She walked back to her daughter and took Val’s small hand in hers.
“I’m sorry,” Val cried. “I never should have gone with him.”
“You and me both.”
Hayley sat on the couch, going through the videos from Bennett’s rental homes, while Tommy held the baby and made silly noises. Salma was in the kitchen, making a dish called Lahori beef karahi. It didn’t smell too good, but Hayley decided to keep that to herself. Although she had to admit she was a little worried that Lizzy might walk through the door, take one whiff, and then kick Salma and her baby right out of the house. Everything seemed to annoy Lizzy lately. Maybe she really was pregnant.
But if she were pregnant, why would she keep it a secret?
Or maybe she didn’t realize it herself.
Hayley did some quick math in her head. If Lizzy had conceived within a week or two before Jared was killed, she could or would be almost four months along.
But how could she not know?
Hayley minimized the video application so she could do a quick Internet search instead.
It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. The stats were insane: one in every 450 pregnant women didn’t know they were pregnant until week twenty. Approximately one in every seven thousand pregnancies was unknown to the mother until the moment she delivered her baby. And there seemed to be a lot of reasons for this: the position of the placenta, no morning sickness, denial, irregular periods, weight gain or weight loss, and stress.
But Lizzy Gardner wasn’t like most women. She would know. Hayley decided to drop the notion altogether. She looked at Tommy and said, “Could you stop that?”
“What’s the problem?”
“That noise you’ve been making with the kid for the past ten minutes is annoying as hell. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
She held back a smile. It was the first time he’d called her out. Ever. And for some reason, she liked it. The two of them had spent most of the day driving around looking for the Ghost. They were both tired. She clicked the video back on. After another five minutes, a room popped up. There was a couch and an end table with a lamp. Hayley sat upright as a woman appeared on the screen.
She fast-forwarded through the video, unable to believe what she was seeing. Once she got to the end, she hit Rewind until she was at the beginning and hit Pause. She looked over at Tommy and said, “We got the bastard.”
Tommy leaned over so he could watch.
Salma had stepped out of the kitchen to check on the baby, and now she hovered over them, too.
“We’ve got a hit,” Hayley said, “and it’s not pretty.” She moved the cursor to the arrow and started the video over.
There was no sound.
A young woman of about eighteen years of age, wearing a fuchsia dress and black heels, walked into the living area. She appeared to be alone. The camera had a full-bodied picture of her as she took a seat on the couch. She sat on its edge, her fingers entwined in her lap. She looked around the room. Her legs were drawn tightly together.
“She looks so nervous,” Salma said.
The girl looked to the right, to a place inside the house that they couldn’t see because of the angle of the camera. She smiled then, a nervous, tentative smile.
That’s when a man came into view. He was dressed in a dark fitted suit, and he stood directly in front of the girl, his back to the camera. He handed her a drink. They couldn’t see his face, but he had the same salt-and-pepper hair and big ears as Wayne Bennett. Turn around, Hayley thought to herself, and show us your face.
“Are they talking?” Salma asked.
“It’s hard to tell at this point,” Hayley said. “But I already scanned through the video. You’ll get the complete picture of what’s going on in a few minutes. You might not want to watch this.”
The man caught on tape walked out of the room, leaving the girl sitting alone on the couch once again.
“I’m going to fast-forward through part of this,” Hayley said. “The girl basically sips the drink as she looks around, her eyes darting from side to side. She definitely appears to be concerned about what’s happening. It won’t take long before you’ll see a change in her demeanor. I think it’s pretty clear she’s been drugged.”
Hayley moved the cursor on the bottom of the video, speeding through the video. When she stopped fast-forwarding, the young woman was slumped back onto the couch. The back of her hand went to her forehead. Her other hand grasped at the arm of the couch as if she was trying to pull herself upright.
The man with the salt-and-pepper hair entered the room again.
Only this time he was naked.
As he did the first time he’d entered the room, he came to stand directly in front of the woman. They appeared to be talking because you could see the woman using her hands as if she was explaining something to him. Her fingers then grasped the edge of the couch, and she again tried to raise herself to her feet. At that moment they had a clear shot of her face. She said the word no more than once and then tried to push him out of her way, but she looked confused and dizzy, clearly losing control of her motor skills.
The man placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down on the couch. He then used those same hands to grasp the back of her head and pull her to him.
“Oh, my God,” Salma said, “he’s not going to—”
The woman was struggling now, still trying to push him away. She used her fingernails to claw at the back of his thigh, drawing blood. His right hand curled into a fist, and he drew back and punched her in the face.
Salma gasped and then scooped her baby out of Tommy’s arms and hurried away.
The woman in the video was lying on the couch, crying. Wayne Bennett looked toward the kitchen, giving the camera a full view of his face. He wiped his brow, turned back to her, and proceeded to undress her.
Hayley stopped the video there. “I think we’ve seen enough. I need to call Lizzy.”
Kitally hung on tightly to the grab handle and prayed for her life.
Gus could drive about as well as he could walk. He’d already gone through two yellow lights and had been honked at by three drivers. By the time they pulled into the Shady Oaks parking lot, she was just glad to be alive.
Kitally climbed out of the car and waited for Gus to do the same.
The trunk popped open.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Get my walker.”
“Make up your mind,” she muttered.
“What’s that? Are you being difficult?”
She pulled out his walker, unfolded the metal legs, and made sure it was ready to go before she placed it in front of him. “I’m not being difficult, Mr. Valentine. I just think you need to decide whether you want help or you don’t want help.”
He grunted. “Right now I want help.”
“There you go.”
The way he shook made her wonder if he had the onset of Parkinson’s. Her phone vibrated. She pulled it from her pocket. There was a text from her mom asking Kitally to give her a call when she had time.
“Just what the world needs,” he said as he took short, gingerly steps.
“What are you talking about?”
“Those contraptions that young people hold so dear to them. Everyone is attached to machines all day long. Nobody wants to stop and enjoy the sun in their face or sit on a bench and just look around for a bit, maybe do a little people watching. People need to take a minute to breathe without worrying about that Internet nonsense.”