Page 119 of Keep This Promise
“It’s hard, isn’t it? To watch the people we love die? As I told you before, I know the pain of losing a child. It’s like nothing else in the world. One day, you’re imagining a life for them that is filled with happiness and possibilities, and the next, you’re lowering a casket into the ground.” Her eyes fill with unshed tears, but then they retreat. “I know it seems like you’ll never recover, but with therapy, you’ll find a way through losing them. The good thing is, you didn’t even know Sophie and Eden existed a few months ago, so it shouldn’t take long for you to return to life as normal.”
“If you take them from me, I’ll never be normal, and I’ll never stop hunting you. If you take them from me, Kate, I swear to God, you’ll regret it.” The gunman pushes forward, forcing me to move deeper into the room.
“Don’t threaten me.”
“Well, it seems you need something from me, so if I were you, I wouldn’t piss me off.”
She looks down at the floor where Sophie lies listless. I move toward her, but the man behind me presses the gun deeper into my skull.
“You want to help her? Then find the money her husband took. I had everything, including millions of dollars set aside that would allow me to become a ghost, but then Ryan got arrested, and he knows way too much. So, I got rid of the rest of the people I needed to ensure my safety.”
“You mean Dr. Frasher?”
“He’s one. I guess that’s where I fucked up. I didn’t know that as soon as I made the first move, I’d lose it all. That my money would drain from my account without any way to stop it.”
Now I see what she did wrong. She didn’t know about a failsafe. “You killed Dr. Frasher’s family because you thought Ryan would talk, but you didn’t know they would take it all . . .”
“They?” she asks with a shake of her head. “I knew Theo had something. It’s why I stayed away from Sophie and Eden, but I didn’t know Theo and Frasher were in on it together.”
“So . . . now you have nothing to lose, and why not destroy them all?”
She puts the needle down. “Of course you blame me for this and not Theo. You fail to blame the doctor who put this into motion. He is who did this to you.”
“They didn’t do this. You did. You lost your money, which you never should’ve had anyway, and then abducted my daughter and drugged Sophie to get it back.”
“Abducted is such an ugly word. I like to think of it as acquiring my collateral, but yes. Then, when I realized you two didn’t actually know where it was? Well, then I decided I’d make sure she was taken care of while you worked on finding it.”
“Kate, we don’t know where it is. We’ve been frantically trying to find it, but so far we’ve come up with nothing.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. There’s an account in Eden’s name, and you and Sophie are her parents, therefore, you can access it. All my accountants have been able to tell me is that it’s in Singapore.”
Fuck. The account Jackson mentioned. I refuse to tell her, though. Not when so many have died because of it. If she thinks I will help her, maybe she won’t make this worse, and I can save Sophie.
“How? We don’t have an account number or a bank or anything. I don’t understand how you can do this? How the fuck you can be such a . . .” The person behind me shoves the gun harder against my skull, and the force of it causes me to stumble forward a step.
“Watch what you say. It’s not like I enjoy this,” Kate says with her brows raised. “I didn’t want it to go this far. I was hoping you’d find the damn money, wire it like we asked, and get your daughter back. Instead, I had to get involved, have people killed, move bodies all over the place, and now I have to kill you.”
I keep waiting for Jackson to enter, but he doesn’t, so I just keep her talking for as long as I possibly can. “Killing us for what? Haven’t you lost enough people in your life? Is this what your daughter would want?”
She rolls her eyes. “I know exactly what you’re doing, but for one more second, I’ll play along. My daughter ran away, just like those girls, and they sold themselves for drugs and sex and food, just as she did. When we found her, she had tracks up and down her arms. She was nothing but skin and bones, and do you know what she said when I found her?”
“No.” I keep my voice even.
“She said, ‘Please get me more drugs.’ Not, Mommy, I need help. Not, I’m sorry I ran away because you wouldn’t let my loser boyfriend take me to Cancun. No. She wanted drugs.”
“And what happened then?” I ask, hoping her need to tell this story is enough to keep her from trying to kill my daughter.
“She died. She overdosed, and her heart gave out. After I found her, I died with her. All the hopes I had were gone with her. My husband left. He found a new girlfriend who didn’t cry every night or spend hours trying to retrace her daughter’s footsteps. I lost everything, and I never wanted another parent to go through the same thing. We started small, helping locally, and . . . it grew.”
“So, you’rehim? The guy Ryan warned us about?”
“Yes, I am . . .him. So ridiculous that I had to use my husband’s name when I was dealing with people, but alas, women and men have gender bias issues.”
What I don’t understand still is how she went from helping runaways to this. When did it become about more? “Kate, all of this is horrible, but what you did isn’t better than letting them die on the streets. You were selling these girls.”
She shakes her head. “No, we were giving them a roof over their heads and letting them do what they were doing before. Our organization offers options. They can get clean and work hard at a new life, or keep taking the drugs. Guess what they always choose . . .”
Of all the people in the world, she should be more aware of why that is their choice. She knows what happens when someone is addicted to drugs. It’s not a choice. It feels like a life sentence to them, and it’s our job to help them see otherwise. Still, right now, debating that won’t change anything, and I just need to help Sophie.
