Page 93 of Stay Away from Him

“Away from Kendall? Honey, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“Just do it!” Melissa shouted.

She heard rustling on the end of the line as Lawrence moved through the house to the back. The sound of a sliding door opening.

“Lawrence?” Melissa asked, willing him to answer. To tell her Bradley was safe.

“They’re not here,” Lawrence said. “I’m so sorry, Melissa, I don’t know where they could have—”

Melissa ended the call. Spun around to face Amelia and Rhiannon.

“She has him,” she said, her voice pitching up, growing loud and shrill with panic. “She has my son. She’s going to kill him. She’s going to…”

Melissa couldn’t breathe. Amelia advanced toward her, hands out. She met her in the center of the room, grabbed onto her arms just above the elbows. Melissa fell halfway against her, let her shoulder some of the crushing fear that had come down on her shoulders—but there was little relief in it, in leaning against someone else. Melissa was still imagining her boy out there somewhere with Kendall. Or dead already, the life bleeding out of him in a ditch. Too late to save.

“We’ll find him,” Amelia said. “It’s going to be okay.”

“How?” Melissa demanded. “Where?”

“I know,” another voice came. The two of them, Melissa and Amelia, turned together. Rhiannon had risen from the couch, whatever brokenness that had been in her face gone and replaced by something else, something hard as stone. Certainty. Grim determination.

“She took him into the woods.”

Chapter 22

Amelia called 911 and told the police to hurry, told the dispatcher that a boy had been kidnapped and his life was at stake—but Melissa couldn’t wait. Minutes could be the difference between saving her son and finding him already dead.

“I want you to take me,” she said to Rhiannon. “Right now.”

“But that’s whatshewants,” Rhiannon answered. “Kendall knows the place better than you do. Better than I do too. She wants you to come. She’s luring you. So she can kill you.”

Melissa nodded. “I know. And I don’t care.” She’d never felt so certain of something in her life. She wasn’t afraid for herself. She’d do anything to protect Bradley. Even if it meant dying herself. If her last sight was of her son safe and sound, she could die happy.

Rhiannon nodded and walked to get her coat.

Amelia’s gaze followed Rhiannon, then snapped back to Melissa, her eyes fierce and frenzied. “I’m coming too.”

Melissa shook her head. “No. You have to be here when the police come. You have to tell them where to find us.” The cops would have to run a gauntlet to get to them—pushing through the press and the crowds to even get to the house. If, after that,they found the house empty, there was a risk they’d just leave, and Kendall would get away. Or worse.

Amelia’s mouth thinned, and she let out a breath through her teeth. But then she nodded.

“Come on,” Rhiannon said. “Let’s go.”

Melissa zipped up her coat, then felt a squeeze on her elbow. She looked back up and met Amelia’s eyes.

“Be careful.”

Melissa nodded, and then she and Rhiannon left out the back without another word.

***

The din of the press and the crowd at the street was muted in the backyard, blunted by the hulk of the house. If Melissa didn’t know better, she might have thought there was a flock of birds milling about on the front lawn. A phalanx of noisy geese, pausing on their way south for winter.

She followed Rhiannon to the edge of the grass. The girl lifted her feet to step over some knee-high undergrowth and into the trees. Melissa followed, low-hanging branches pulling at her coat, her socks already clumping with burrs.

“Where are we going?”

“Kendall has a place she likes to go,” Rhiannon said. “In the middle of the woods.”

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