Laurel kept playing with her pen. “Yes, you’re right. I’ve let this go too far.”
“Then do the right thing and come with me,” Lisa urged her. “We’ll pick up Purdue, we’ll drive to Minneapolis. We’ll find Will at the FBI, and you can tell him what happened. About Denis, Fiona, Nick Loudon, about what they tried to do to the boy. Look, I don’t know what influence Denis has over you, but I know how he controls and manipulates people. It’s time to make it stop. It’s time to fight back.”
She could see Laurel’s mind working fast. Laurel was smart. She’d always been smart. “Where do we pick up Purdue?” she asked. “Where is he, Lisa?”
Her friend said it so smoothly that Lisa almost trusted her again and walked right into the trap. She opened her mouth to say something, and then she snapped it shut again and closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “Oh, Laurel, why are you doing this?”
“I know you were at your parents’ house today,” Laurel went on. “Is that where you’re hiding the boy?”
Lisa’s eyes flew open, giving away the truth. “How do you know that?”
“You were seen, Lisa. You of all people should know that everyone recognizes you around here. You think you can come and go without the town knowing about it? Your next-door neighbor spotted you, and she called someone in her book club. As it happens, that was me.”
“When? How long ago?”
“Enough time to send people over there,” Laurel replied. “If he’s there, we’ll find him. That’s the way it has to be.”
Lisa’s voice was a low, angry hiss of despair. “You bitch. We’re talking about a ten-year-old boy.”
“Settle down, Lisa. Don’t upset yourself any further. Why don’t you let me get you that medication? You need to relax.”
But Lisa was already on her feet. She wasn’t going to wait to be taken in, and she wasn’t going to give up on a boy she’d sworn to rescue. She had to get home and see if Purdue had hidden in the crawl space. She needed to know if he was still there, or if the police had found him and taken him away from her.
Laurel stood up, too, blocking the way to the door.
“Stay here, Lisa. Please. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Get out of my way.”
When Laurel didn’t move, Lisa shoved her aside with a strength she didn’t even know she had. She yanked open the door to the hospital room and ran for the rear exit just a few feet away. The white world welcomed her back as she crashed through the door into the blizzard of snow. Driven by adrenaline, she sprinted for the Camaro. Inside the car, she fired the engine, making the tires screech as she sped through the slush.
Lisa reached the highway and turned north. When she glanced in her rearview mirror, she saw the red lights of a squad car arriving at the hospital parking lot. They were looking for her, but they were too late.
She left the hospital far behind as she drove into the night.
35
The ruts in the snow at her parents’ house told her the story.
The tire tracks were fresh. Lisa could see where the police car had parked, and she could see the boot marks where they’d gone to and from the doors in the front and back. She could see it all in her mind so clearly that she wished she could claw out her eyes. Deputy Garrett at the front door, Deputy Stoll at the back. The two of them storming into the house, hunting upstairs and downstairs, coming outside with a boy squirming in their grasp.
Tell me you made it to the basement, Purdue.
Tell me they didn’t find you.
Lisa didn’t bother hiding the Camaro this time. She parked at the curb and ran for the door. It was all darkness around her, no lights to be seen. She went inside the house, and she could smell the presence of strange men. The air was cold. Everything was still. Her eyes adjusted, and she could make out familiar shapes, things she’d known for decades. But nothing moved inside the house where she’d grown up. No one made a sound. No one was here. Even the ghosts of her family stayed away and left her alone.
“Purdue?” she called.
Her voice broke and grew plaintive. “Purdue, are you here?”
She knew where she had to go. The basement. If he was still here, that was where he would be. She didn’t even bother with the flashlight on her phone as she made her way in the dark. The house guided her by feel, by years of experience. She found the old basement door that never quite closed right, and it squealed as she opened it. There was a light switch by the stairs, but she left it off. She didn’t want light; she didn’t want anything that was white. Darkness was fine. She took the stairs one at a time, descending underground, feeling the air grow even icier around her. Down here, there was no light at all. None. It was a black box, a coffin, a grave where you could be buried forever.
She inched toward the foundation wall.
As she did, echoes of her childhood caught up with her. She could hear the whisper of Noah’s voice as they played the game and the heavy footsteps of their brothers upstairs, hunting for them.
“Where are we going, Lis?”
“I found a hiding place. It’s the best hiding place ever. They’ll never find us here.”
“But where is it?”
“In the crawl space. Behind Mom’s boxes.”
“No! I don’t like it there. It’s too dark.”
“Big baby, there’s nothing to be scared of in the dark.”
That had been a long time ago. Lisa had learned since then that there were plenty of things to be scared of in the dark.
“Purdue,” she called. “It’s me. It’s Lisa. I’m here — it’s safe to come out.”
No one answered.
“Purdue. Please. Answer me, my sweet. Tell me you’re here.”
The basement was silent. As silent as a tomb. She had no choice now; she had to turn on the flashlight and fill the walls with a harsh white light. She lit up an old wooden chair. She lit up plastic bins stuffed with old clothes. She lit up children’s games and books and broken fans and the dull steel of the furnace, and finally, she lit up the dirty concrete blocks of the foundation and the dark gap below the floorboards. She saw the boxes where Madeleine had written Noël.
She walked right up to the boxes and shined her light into the blackness. “Purdue?”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t there. She knew he wasn’t there, but she began to yank out the Christmas boxes anyway, ripping them from their places and dropping them on the floor, hearing the tinkle of glass as fragile ornaments broke. She was destroying her past, destroying what she had left of Madeleine, but she tore away every box until the crawl space was vacant. Until she could see the entire hiding place, where she’d huddled with Noah. The jutting nails in the floorboards that had ripped her clothes. The knots in the wood. The message scrawled in her childish hand on one of the boards in red marker: Lisa and Noah were here.
Empty.
The crawl space was empty. They’d taken him.
Lisa sank down onto the cold floor. She turned off the flashlight and sat in the total darkness. She couldn’t see anything, and all she could hear was the sound of her hopeless sobbing. She cried and cried. She’d failed Purdue. She’d made this boy a promise, and she’d gone back on her word. She’d sworn to keep him safe, and now he was gone forever.
She had no idea how long she sat there. Her skin was frozen to the touch. She cried until she ran out of tears. She had thought the Dark Star that took away her family was the deepest, loneliest galaxy she would ever visit, but somehow, this was even worse. She felt in a trance. And she knew where she had to go, what she had to do. It was as if, for the past two years, there had been a sharpshooter poised near her, taking out the people in her life one by one.