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Daniel frowned. “I dress myself every day. I can tell what matches. Besides, I was the only one not afraid of the underwear drawer.”
Sam watched Mila’s lips press together, as if her mouth wanted to smile even if her head thought it shouldn’t.
“Okay,” Ben went on. “Let’s start with the note on the dog’s collar. The paper was standard notepaper, and the ink was common. There were no prints on the paper—no prints anywhere at the house, either—but we know he likes gloves. The paper came from a larger sheet; it had been folded and creased, then torn, and it was tied to the collar with a length of cotton twine you can buy everywhere in town. The message was ‘Next time I won’t go so easy on you.’”
Beside Sam, Mila tensed, nothing overt, just a quick tightening of her jaw, her shoulders. Daniel, seated across from her, said, “Obviously, that means something to you. Who’s told you that before?”
“I—I—” She sounded like she was starved for air but couldn’t even make the effort to breathe in. Her gaze, still directed down, darted side to side before she gulped ungracefully. “It just—just scared me. If he’d hurt Poppy, if he came back and took her again, I—I wouldn’t… I was…”
Jessica laid her hand on Mila’s arm, and Mila’s words stopped flowing instantly. After a long, tense moment, Jessica spoke with carefully controlled anger and scorn that sounded like tears were just a heartbeat away. “My son-in-law used to tell her that. He and my—my own daughter abused Mila. By the time I found out…”
Every part of Sam felt raw, like skin scraped roughly away, leaving an open mass of burning nerve endings. He’d suspected it, but suspecting it and hearing it confirmed… If there was any justice, people who hurt kids were punished ten times worse. He hoped to God her parents suffered for all eternity.
Everyone was watching Jessica now, with only brief glances at Mila. Sam could guess by the emptiness sliding across her features how much she hated having her secret known, how exposed she felt, how…please, God, not as if she’d deserved it. He couldn’t bear it if she blamed herself for some sick bastard’s violence.
His hand shaking, he reached across to take her uninjured hand. Her fingers remained limp for a moment, but then he felt the faintest clench.
“Could…” Daniel cleared his throat. “Could the man who attacked you yesterday—” He didn’t seem to know whether to talk to Mila, who looked as if she’d gone away and left nothing but a shell behind, so he turned his attention to Jessica. “Could it have been her father?”
“Oh, dear God, no. My daughter and her husband died fifteen years ago. I’d been searching for them for years, and I finally found them outside Phoenix. I went there. I stole my grandbaby away from them, and they chased us.” She abruptly dragged in a deep, unsteady breath. “They died in a horrific crash right before our eyes.”
Now the tears came. Sam knew Ben and Daniel were as uncomfortable as he was, but not Lois. She left her chair, moved behind Jessica’s seat and wrapped her arms around her, pressing her mouth near Jessica’s ear, murmuring softly.
After a couple long minutes, Ben asked, “Were their bodies positively identified?”
Mila raised her head and her gaze, meeting Ben’s. Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her make eye contact with anyone but Jessica and him. “There was nothing left to identify.” Her voice was chilled, flat and emotionless. “They hit a concrete abutment at speeds estimated in excess of a hundred miles per hour. The car exploded. There was barely enough left of it to identify. They found parts of bodies. That was all.”
Poppy trotted in from the hall, pushed in between her and Sam and laid her head on Mila’s thigh. She squeezed his hand a moment longer, then let go and buried her fingers in the dog’s fuzzy coat.
Sam had thought it a little sad before that she took such comfort from a dog. Now he was just damn glad she had the dog.
CHAPTER 9
It was more than twelve hours before we stopped running. Gramma checked in to a shabby motel, parking her car in the farthest corner, holding tightly to me as we sneaked into our room. She’d bought food at a drive-through, and we sat side by side on the bed and ate in silence.
