“Their names are Dana Phelps and Martha Paquet.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
She had expected this answer. Once Kat put together that she was the one who said, “It’s Kat” first, the rest had fallen into place.
“Do you have a laptop?” she asked.
“Uh, sure, why?”
“Could you get it, please?”
“I still don’t—”
“Just get it, Jeff. Okay?”
He nodded. When he went inside, Kat actually dropped to her knees and felt her entire body give out. She wanted to sink to the ground and forget about these women, just lie on the earth and let go and cry and wonder about all the what-ifs that this stupid life brings us.
She managed to get back up a few seconds before he returned. He turned on the laptop and handed it to her. She sat at a picnic table. Jeff sat across from her.
“Kat?”
She could hear the pain in his voice too. “Not now. Please. Let me just get through this, okay?”
She got to the YouAreJustMyType page and brought up his profile.
It was gone.
Someone was closing ranks. She quickly opened up her old e-mail and found the link Brandon had sent her with Jeff’s inactive Facebook page. She brought it up and spun the laptop toward him.
“You were on Facebook?”
Jeff squinted at the page. “That’s how you found me?”
“It helped.”
“I deleted the account as soon as I found out about it.”
“Nothing online is ever deleted.”
“You saw my daughter this morning. When she was going to school.”
Kat nodded. So the daughter had called him after she made contact. Kat had figured as much.
“A few years ago, Melinda—that’s her name—she thought I was lonely. Her mother died years ago. I don’t date or anything, so she figured that the least I could do was have a Facebook page. To find old friends or meet someone. You know how it is.”
“So your daughter set up the page?”
“Yes. As a surprise to me.”
“Did she know you used to be Jeff Raynes?”
“She didn’t then, no. As soon as I saw it, I deleted it. That’s when I explained to her that I used to be someone else.”
Kat met his gaze. His eyes still pierced. “Why did you change your name?”
He shook his head. “You said something about missing women.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you’re here.”
“Right. Someone used you in a catfish scheme.”
“Catfish?”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s what they call it. Have you seen the movie or TV show?”
“No.”
“A catfish is a person who pretends to be someone they’re not online, especially in romantic relationships.” Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. She needed that now. She needed to just spout facts and figures and definitions and not feel a damn thing. “Someone took your pictures and created an online profile for you and put it on a singles site. Two women who fell for the catfish-you are missing.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Jeff said.
“Yeah, I know that now.”
“How did you get involved in all this?”
“I’m a cop.”
“So was this your case?” he asked. “Did someone else recognize me?”
“No. I joined YouAreJustMyType. Or a friend did for me. It doesn’t matter. I saw your profile and I contacted you.” She almost smiled. “I sent you that ‘Missing You’ video.”
He smiled. “John Waite.”
“Yeah.”
“I loved that video.” Something like hope lit up his eyes. “So you’re, uh, you’re single?”
“Yeah.”
“You never got—”
“No.”
Jeff’s eyes started to well up again. “I got Melinda’s mother pregnant in a drunken haze during a really self-destructive period for both of us. I managed to get out of the self-destruction. She didn’t. That’s my former father-in-law inside. The three of us have lived together since she died, when Melinda was eighteen months old.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I just wanted you to know.”
Kat tried to swallow. “It isn’t my business.”
“I guess not,” Jeff said. He looked to the left and blinked. “I wish I could help you with your missing women, but I don’t know anything.”
“I know that.”
“And yet you still came all this way to find me,” he said.
“It wasn’t all that far. And I had to make sure.”
Jeff turned back so that he was facing her. God, he was still so damn handsome. “Did you?” he asked.
The world was crashing around her. She felt dizzy. Seeing his face again, hearing his voice—Kat hadn’t really believed it would happen. The pain was more acute than she would have imagined. The rawness of how it all ended, the suddenness, was made all the worse by seeing his beautiful, troubled, haunting face.
She still loved him.
Goddamn it to hell. Goddamn it all and she hated herself for it and she felt weak and stupid and like a sucker.
She still loved him.
“Jeff?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you leave me?”
• • •
The first bullet hit the tree six inches from Dana’s head.
Bits of bark hit her left eye. Dana ducked and scampered away on all fours. The second and third bullets hit somewhere above her. She had no idea where.
“Dana?”
She had only one conscious thought: Keep as much distance between her and the juicehead as possible. He had been the one who locked her in that damn box. He had been the one who made her take off her clothes. And he had been the one to make her wear the jumpsuit with only socks.
No shoes or sneakers.
So here she was, running through these woods to escape from this psycho—in her stocking feet.
Dana didn’t care.
Even before the big juicehead had locked her underground, Dana Phelps had realized that she had been had. At first, the worst part of it wasn’t the pain or the fear but the humiliation and self-loathing for falling for a few photographs and well-turned phrases.
God, how pathetic was she?
But as the conditions worsened, that stuff flew out the window. Her only goal became survival. She knew that there was no point in fighting with the man who called himself Titus. He would do what he had to in order to get the information. She may not have been as broken as she pretended—she’d hoped it would make them let their guard down—but the sad truth was, she had been pretty badly cracked.
Dana had no idea how many days she had spent in the box. There was no sunrise or sunset, no clocks, no light, no dark even.
Just stone-cold blackness.
“Come out, Dana. There’s no need for this. We’re going to let you go, remember?”
Yeah, right.
She knew they were going to kill her and maybe, from the looks of what Juicehead had been up to, even worse. Titus had made a good sales pitch when he first met with her. He tried to give her hope, which in the end was probably crueler than anything in that box. But she knew. He had shown his face. So had the computer geek and Juicehead and the two guards she had spotted.
She had wondered, lying in the dark all those days and hours, how they intended to kill her. She had heard the sound of a bullet once. Would that be how they’d do it? Or would they just decide to leave her in that box and stop throwing down the handfuls of rice?
Did it even matter?
Now that Dana was aboveground, now that she was finally in the great, beautiful, spectacular outdoors, she felt free. If she died, she would at least die on her own terms.
Dana kept running. Yes, she had cooperated with Titus. What good would it do not to? When she was forced to call to confirm the bank transfers, she hoped that Martin Bork would hear something in her voice or that she could try to slip him some kind of subtle message. But Titus kept one finger on the hang-up button, the other on the trigger of a gun.
And then of course, there was Titus’s big threat. . . .
Juicehead shouted, “You don’t want to do this, Dana.”
He was in the woods now. She ran faster, knowing she could battle through the exhaustion. She was gaining ground on him, moving deftly through the foliage, ducking branches and trees, when she stepped on something and heard a sharp crack.