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“I may be sitting in jail, but at least I’m still alive.”
Chapter Four
“How long have you two been protecting each other?” Her lawyer asked without looking up from the pad she was writing on.
“I’ve been trying to protect Elizabeth since Kate showed up with her when I was a senior in high school. She was waiting beside my car, with Elizabeth, and told me she was her daughter. I knew she wasn’t Kate’s biological daughter because of her age.
“Kate asked me to watch her while she went to a doctor appointment. After that, Kate would randomly show up, expecting me to watch Elizabeth whenever she needed a sitter. I’d usually take her to a restaurant or a movie.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her no?”
“Because I couldn’t imagine Kate being a mother. I wanted to find out from Elizabeth how she was with Kate. I didn’t want to accuse Kate of being guilty of mistreating Elizabeth if she was innocent. It had been a few years since I had seen Kate. She could have changed. Being responsible for a child could have softened her. I watched for every sign.” Even now, shesecond-guessed the decision not to have just disappeared with Elizabeth.
“You wanted to intervene, to get her away from Ms. Easton.” Mrs. Bates sympathetic gaze wasn’t the judgmental one she had expected.
“Oh yes, but Elizabeth would never tell me anything I could use so I could go to the authorities. She would only say how happy she was, that she loved Kate.
“When I graduated from college and was able to find a job and move into an apartment, Kate would bring Elizabeth more often, and we grew even closer. She would spend two or three days at a time with me before Kate would come back. I would constantly ask Elizabeth if she had met Owen or if Kate would bring a man around her who looked like him, and she would tell me no. She was lying to me. I could see it in her eyes.
“I took another job and used the money to hire a private investigator so I could go to the police. Three days after I hired the investigator, he disappeared. I went to the police when I found out. I told them that I believed Kate and Owen were responsible. I begged the detective not to mention me and to look into Kate’s relationship with Elizabeth. The detective came to my work a week later to inform me that Owen was living in another state, and Kate hadn’t even known she was being investigated, nor had they found any proof that I had even hired the investigator. Kate stopped bringing Elizabeth after.”
Her lawyer stopped writing. “What did you do then?”
“I tried to hire another investigator to find Kate and Elizabeth. The next day, my foster mother was found dead at the bottom of her basement steps, and the investigator’s daughter died in a car wreck the next day. Before you ask, yes, I went back to the police. Both deaths were ruled to be accidents.” The responsibility she felt for those three deaths would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“But you don’t think they were?”
Alanna was at last seeing wariness enter her lawyer’s eyes.
Pushing the anguish aside, she answered Mrs. Bates’s question, “No, I think Owen was responsible for both. Neither Mrs. Fields’s husband, nor Sam, believed her death was an accident, either.
“I moved away when they tried to talk to me. I already had three deaths on my conscience; I wasn’t going to get them killed by telling them who I believed was responsible. I was beginning to think Kate was out of my life permanently, that I had moved far enough away it wouldn’t be worth her time to contact me again.”
“But she did.”
Alanna nodded. “Two years later, and she brought Elizabeth with her. This time, I tried to question Elizabeth, but she was even more secretive. I realized, to keep Elizabeth in my life, I was going to have keep my mouth shut and just be there when she asked me for help. The day she turned eighteen was when she asked me to help her get away from Kate. We left that afternoon and moved to another state after she promised me she would have no contact with Kate, and if she found us, she would tell me immediately.
“Elizabeth lived with me until she graduated from college and Arin hired her. She even moved out of our apartment when she found a place with roommates. I was surprised when she moved out. We got along well, and I was busy most of the time with work, but I could understand her wanting to go out on her own.”
Mrs. Bates looked up from writing her notes to frown. “You don’t think so now?”
“No, I think Kate found her, and she was trying to hide the fact from me. I had already started a new life in Ohio for her, and she didn’t want me to have to run again to protect her. Thenext thing I knew, Arin called to tell me Elizabeth had been kidnapped.”
“It would have been much simpler if, when Arin called you, you told her about Kate and Owen.”
Running her fingers through her hair, Alanna tried to explain, “I wasn’t sure they were the ones responsible. I was unaware Kate had found her.”
Closely watching her expression, the lawyer gave her a slight nod, showing she believed her. “How did you end up in the car with Hudson? Were you aware Elizabeth was in the trunk?”
“Two of the owners of empty homes that I sold complained about finding trash and unmade beds when they did their walk-throughs. One of them had cameras and had put up the video for me to watch. I recognized Owen and Elizabeth in them.”
“You should have immediately—”
Alanna put up a hand to stop what her lawyer was about to say. “I’ve told myself that a million times, but I didn’t. I was too afraid Owen would kill Elizabeth to prevent himself from getting charged with kidnapping. I went to each of the houses that I hadn’t been sold yet. Luckily, I caught sight of Owen pulling out of one of them and followed him. He must have noticed me and pulled over in a parking lot. When I confronted him and told him I wanted to know where Elizabeth was, he told me he would drive me to her. Stupidly, I got in the car, and instead of taking me to her, he wanted to know how I knew he had Elizabeth.”
“He wanted to know who else knew,” Mrs. Bates murmured under her breath.
“Yes, but I’d already learned that lesson—not to involve anyone else with him and Kate. I was still trying to convince him that I hadn’t told anyone when the car door opened, and I was dragged out by the trucker and his legion of friends.”
