Page 98 of I Would Die for You

But Cassie had been there. I’d seen it with my own two eyes.

“Still no luck in getting hold of Brad on the cell phone?” Hank asks, looking at me in the rearview mirror. I shake my head.

“Listen, I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” he says, attempting to assuage my agitation. “They may have taken the boat out and lost track of time.”

I nod, grateful for the reassurance.

Perhaps Cassie wasn’t in my house after all. Maybe that’s what I chose to see as the photo flashed up on Zoe’s phone, my levels of suspicion knowing no bounds. It looked like Hannah’s room; I was sure it was her bed that Cassie had been grinning sadistically from, but maybe I was wrong.

“I’m sorry to have called you out,” I say, hating that my paranoia has wasted his time.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” asks Hank.

I force a smile. “No, I’m fine. I’ll keep trying Brad, and if they’re not home by nightfall I’ll give you a call.”

The place that I’ve called home for the past twenty years doesn’t feel quite the same, knowing that Cassie may have infiltrated it. I walk from room to room, turning the lights on, but the warm glow leaves me cold.

“Where are you?” I say out loud to the photo of the three of us that hangs in the hall.

I’m suddenly blindsided by the memory of Brad’s threat to take Hannah to his parents’ and force myself to acknowledge that, if he has, it would only be because her safety is paramount. And despite myself, I can’t help but reason that it might be the best place for her right now. I take my phone from my pocket and call my in-laws.

“Betty, it’s Nicole,” I say, trying to sound as much like myself as I can. I wonder if Brad’s told her what’s been going on—I guess he would have had to, if he’s taken Hannah there.

“Oh, hey there,” she says, in her Southern drawl. “How y’all doing?”

Nothing about her suggests that she knows anything more about me than she did the last time we spoke, when she’d politely passedup my offer to make cornbread for the holidays. And nothing about her suggests that Brad and Hannah are there.

“We’re good. I just wanted to double-check whether you needed me to bring anything next week.” Now that I know she’s blissfully unaware, I don’t want to alarm her.

“Just your good selves,” she says, cheerily.

“OK, great,” I say, needing to move on to my next line of inquiry. “Actually, can I call you back? Hannah’s just got home.”

Tapping the side of my phone, I will myself to think rationally about where else they might be. Theymayhave gone out on the water, but it’s unlike Brad not to get back before sunset, especially given that one of the lights is out on the boat—but he bought a new one last weekend. Maybe they’ve gone to fit it and put it to the test.

I let myself into the garage, knowing that’s where he’d put it, hopeful that if it’s missing, there’s every chance that Hank might be right. I reach for the light switch and, as the fluorescent bulb flickers to attention, it takes me a moment longer than it should to realize that Brad’s truck is there.

He’d never go anywhere without it. He wouldn’t know how to.

I shudder as my eyes travel to the ceiling, wishing I could see into our bedroom above so that I don’t have to go up there.

I back out into the hall and look up the stairs, the gloom of the landing suddenly menacing. Bradcan’tbe up there; Hank would have found him. Yet his pickup can’t be here without him.

Despite several attempts, the landing light stays woefully idle, and my throat dries up as I contemplate the darkness that awaits. Every tread I take feels as if it’s lifting me toward somewhere I don’t want to go, even though it’s a journey I’ve happily made a million times before.

I let out the breath I’d been holding when our bedroom light turns on the first time. I scan the empty room, but the oppressive feeling of not being alone sits like a weight on my chest.

I want to call out, desperate to hear Brad answer back, but fear chokes me into staying silent.

As I gingerly make my way along the landing toward Hannah’s room, I trail my hand along the wall for support. Her curtains are open, and the moon’s muted glow radiates across her bed. It must be a trick of the light, but it looks like she’s actually in it, the shimmer rising and falling with the shadows.

“Hannah?” I half whisper, an irrational part of me not wanting to wake her if she’s asleep.

I take a step closer, my eyes adjusting to the familiar outlines in the room. My hand reaches out to touch what still looks like a Hannah-shaped mound in the bed, but just as my fingers meet the fabric of her duvet cover, there’s a dull thud from above me.

My pulse hammers in my ears, drowning out any remote possibility that I might have imagined the noise coming from the attic. As if on autopilot, I numbly put one foot in front of the other as I move toward the ceiling hatch on the landing. The window pole that we use to unhook it and pull the ladder down isn’t where it should be, so I revert to Plan B and drag a chair across the rug, snagging it on the corner. I pretend to inspect the hatch, but I’m just playing for time; delaying the inevitability of having to go up into a dark, confined space, knowing it would have been the one place Hank wouldn’t have looked.

I know I have to go up there, for no reason other than to free my tortured mind of the thought that Hannah is being held against her will—and that I’m close enough to save her.

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