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She faces me, the small cut on her lip now clean. It angers me beyond measure every time I look at it.
“I’m fine, Niko. He never…” She pulls in a breath. “He never touched me except for the one hit.”
I don’t like it. I want her looked over, but I hold my tongue for the time being.
My body tenses when Tavers and Captain walk into the conference room. The look on their faces tells me whatever they have to say won’t be good. Aislin stiffens beside me. She sees it as well. When Tavers eyes move to her, they soften with sympathy.
“There a few questions I want to ask… Aislin.” Captain says her name hesitantly as if it’s hard for him to get out. It’s hard for me to say her name too.
Her hand tightens in mine, and I’m about to tell Captain that it can wait, but her hushed voice stops me.
“What do you want to know?”
Captain’s eyes move to mine, and I look at Aislin. “Are you sure?”
Aislin hasn’t been questioned yet as to what she actually remembers. She’s told me she doesn’t remember everything, but she does remember the kidnapping and bits and pieces of her life before and during. I don’t want to add to her pain, but I need to know. I need to know every single detail she has to give of everything she went through. It’s going to kill me to hear it, but it’s nothing more than I deserve for not saving her in time, for not recognizing her from the moment she came back into my life.
We still don’t know if Clem Stewart had Aislin this whole time, and it’s eating up my nerves not having those answers. Captain and Tavers have been in there the past couple of hours interrogating him. The last I heard, the crime scene investigators are still combing his house.
“Just stay with me. Hold my hand and don’t let go,” she says softly.
“The hounds of hell couldn’t pull me away.”
I look back at Captain and nod. He sets a notepad down on the table and takes a seat. Tavers remains standing at the end of the table. I glance at him and see hard eyes staring back at me. It ratchets up my own anger.
“You need to stay calm, Niko,” Tavers says. “What you’re about to hear is going to be hard.”
I give him a tight nod and strengthen my fingers around Aislin’s.
“Do you know who took you?” Captain asks his first question, and I brace for the answer.
“I-I think I remember.” Her eyes narrow in thought. “It was Mr. C, wasn’t it?”
Captain frowns, looks at me, and then back at Aislin. “Mr. C? Who’s Mr. C, Aislin?”
It only takes a split second to recognize the name. I haven’t heard it in years, but I know Aislin’s file by heart. Mr. C. AKA Clay Campbell, our fucking bus driver. One of the six initial suspects who was cleared when his alibi came through.
“How in the fuck is that possible? That man in there is Clem Stewart.” I point toward the holding cell through the wall. “I ran his license myself,” I growl, my stiff body leaning into the table. It’s only Aislin’s hand that keeps me rooted in my spot and not going after the fucker.
Captain’s eyes flicker to me. “He changed his name six months after he took Aislin. Two months after that, once the school year was over and the name change was complete, he quit his job.”
I swear smoke must be coming from my ears. That’s how much rage I feel at the moment. This whole fucking time, it was our childhood bus driver. I think back to my memories of him. He had blond hair back then and weighed about fifty pounds more than he does now. He looks different, but his eyes… His eyes are the same.
“Do you remember what happened that day, Aislin?” Captain’s question pulls me back to the present.
She shudders beside me. “I w-was walking to school because the bus never came. Mr. C stopped and started talking to me. I remember thinking it was strange to see him in a car instead of the bus. He asked if I wanted a ride to school, and I told him no. He got out of the car, smiling, and said he wanted to show me something. Before I knew what happened, there was a pain in my head, and then everything went black.”
Captain’s lips are in a straight line as he writes down everything Aislin tells him. My own body vibrates with anger. I want nothing more than to storm into his cell and beat the man until he stops breathing. The one punch I got in back at his house wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy me. I want to destroy him, rip him apart piece by piece.
“Do you remember what color the car was?”
“I think it was white.”
“A white Honda Civic was found under a tarp behind his house.” Tavers’ quiet statement has me turning my head his direction. “Brown hair was found in the trunk. The samples have been sent to forensics, but I’m pretty confident they’ll come back as Aislin’s.”
I give a sharp nod in acknowledgment.
“Did he ever say anything to you? Tell you why he took you?”
