Page 76 of Her Dying Secret

“Rosie, listen to me.” Her eyes are super serious. “This is very important. I need you to really listen and do what I say. If you have a chance to leave here, I want you to do it. Get away. Run. Go to the police. They’re not the people your dad thinks they are. They will help you. I promise that they will. You need to tell them everything you know, no matter what.”

I nod and nod even though the things she’s saying are making my heart feel like it’s going too fast.

“Do you understand me?” she keeps going.

“Y-yes.”

“And this is really important, too. If you have to, leave me here. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, as long as you get away.”

“No, I can’t?—”

We are looking at each other so hard and talking about so many important things that neither of us hears him. This time, he pulls my hair.

“What did I tell you would happen if you went near her again?”

FIFTY-SIX

Josie stood at the edge of the lot in front of Furnished Finds, right where it met the road. The toes of her boots rested on the yellow line. She’d been out here for almost three hours now and still couldn’t get enough fresh air. Behind her, multiple emergency vehicles littered the gravel. Cruisers, Hummel’s mobile ERT unit, an ambulance, and Gretchen’s unmarked car. She had come as soon as she got word and was currently inside the building with Noah. Turner sat in the back of one of the ambulances, a large ice pack over his knee and gauze stuffed into both his nostrils.

The additional officers who had been called in had searched the entire building quickly and thoroughly before the ERT began to process the dank cell where April had spent the last year of her life.

Mira and Rosie Summers were not there.

A light breeze caressed Josie’s face. She closed her eyes momentarily, breathing it in.

“Hey.” Noah appeared behind her, resting a hand on her lower back. She resisted the very strong urge to melt against him. “Deirdre and Seth are being transported to holding cells. We couldn’t get anything out of either of them. Deirdre demanded an attorney pretty much from the moment I put the zip ties on her.”

“Not surprising,” Josie said. “She’s a lot shrewder than we gave her credit for. I think maybe…”

Noah’s hazel eyes appraised her. Gently, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You think what?”

“The things Seth said in the basement. He didn’t want this to happen, he didn’t know…he didn’t want April to suffer. He wasn’t the one who starved and tortured her. It was Deirdre.”

Noah said, “When we brought Seth out, we walked him past her. She gave him this look and he—he was afraid. You could see it in him. Right after that, he asked for an attorney as well.”

Josie massaged her sore shoulder. “Deirdre is calling the shots. I bet all the times he ‘disappeared’ over the years, from Mira, from his brother, he was here. She has some kind of hold on him. I don’t think they ever really broke up. Maybe he’s tried to escape her influence over the years. That’s how he ended up with Mira.”

“But Deirdre didn’t want to let him go,” Noah said. “He was hers first. You said that Deirdre wanted children, but Seth wouldn’t give them to her.”

“Yes. Then he went and had a child with another woman. I think Deirdre knew about Rosie all along. She was angry and hurt. She lost him to someone else. Maybe he never really wanted to stay with her, but he didn’t feel like he could cut ties completely. Seth was just a kid when they met. He could have been impressionable and easily manipulated by her to the point where he felt trapped or obligated to her somehow. I’m sure his delusions didn’t help matters. Oh shit.”

Josie paused as another thought struck her. Seth kept coming back to Deirdre. A different person would have left her and never looked back once he felt the relationship no longer served him. Most people would. Breakups happened all the time.

“What is it?” asked Noah.

“What if Deirdre’s been using Seth’s own delusions to control him? All she would need to do is play into them. Amplify his fears. What better way to manipulate him? Noah, what if she weaponized his disorder and she’s been wielding it against him and everyone he loves all this time?”

The strain on Noah’s face told her that he thought her theory had some merit. “I think you need to see what we found inside.”

Josie followed Noah back inside the store, through the showroom, past the sales desk to the hallway, which had been photographed. From the doorway that led to the basement, harsh bright light flared. The ERT had set up halogen lights down there to better document and process the scene. Josie suppressed a shiver. Not even the light from a thousand suns could drive away the darkness that stained that room. Near the back of the hall, Gretchen stood outside of a doorway. She stepped aside to let Josie pass.

Josie’s heart did a double tap.

“What the hell is this?”

The room was closer to the back of the building. A row of clerestory windows ran along the top of the back wall, making the large room seem even bigger and airier than it already was. Unlike the depressing browns and whites of the rest of Furnished Finds, this room was painted an array of bright colors. It was like a giant classroom. A desk sat before a dry erase board. Behind it was a carpet bearing the alphabet. A bookshelf teemed with children’s books.

Gretchen pointed to a standing partition at the far end. “On the other side of that is a bed. The comforter has pink unicorns on it.”

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