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Why would she just leave? And without Sarah?
I plucked my phone from my back pocket and called her. It kept ringing and ringing. The longer it rang, the more my lungs constricted. For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t get the next breath in my lungs.
When I called a second time, she finally picked up.
“Where are you?” I asked, beyond panicked.
“I’m going to get Mary.” She sounded out of breath as her sobs escalated, harder, faster.
I strained my ears to hear her.
“Who has her?” Because at this point, with the way Becky sounded out of her mind, I knew it was awhoand that she wasn’t just simply looking somewhere.
“My mother has her, Charles. My mom has Mary.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Her mom?I was so shocked that I couldn’t even say the words aloud.
I shook my head, flipped around, and locked eyes with Brad and Sarah. They were staring back at me expectantly.
I didn’t get a chance to ask my next question.
There was determination and anger and fear in Becky’s voice. “I promise I’ll get her back, Charles. If that’s the last thing I do.”
And then the line went dead.
Chapter 40
Becky
All my mother wanted was money. All she ever needed was money. It was her motivation. What drove her. It wasn’t love. There was no love in her heart.
If I’d been old enough to work, only then, maybe … just maybe, she would have kept me. Growing up, I’d only been a burden to her, a drain to her penniless situation, so she gave me up. It didn’t help that she’d been in and out of jail for petty crimes. She’d never fought to keep me, looked to find me—until now, and I knew why.
While I knew my mom to be a cunning, conniving person, she wasn’t violent. Not to me anyway. She could’ve changed in all her years, I wouldn’t know, but I thought—at least, I hoped and prayed with all my heart—that even though she had Mary, she wouldn’t hurt her. And I definitely knew she wouldn’t keep her. But what I didn’t know was whether she had a partner or if she was working alone. And if she had a partner, then all bets were off. I had no idea what I was going headlong into.
I swiped at my cheeks, driving faster toward a destination she had texted me. Guilt plagued my insides. If I hadn’t come here to nanny for the Briskens, Mary would be at home, safe in Charles’s arms.
The realization that I’d put them—an innocent family—in this situation had me shaking uncontrollably.
Please. Please. Please let Mary be okay.
I rubbed at my brow, biting my lip as I pulled into the parking lot. Nothing would calm my nerves. I couldn’t count anything out, not when it came to Mary’s safety. Desperation made people do stupid things. I should know. I’d lived half my existence watching my mother wreck her life into pieces.
There was only one car in the parking lot of the high school, and before I knew it, I was gunning toward the vehicle, not sure of what awaited me.
Automatically, I took the make and model of the car, and when I slowed to approach, I memorized the license plate. Then, she stepped out of the car, and I swallowed hard as my breaths came out in shallow puffs. It was her, my mother. She looked different now. Her hair was dyed a dark brown, her white roots showing like she’d been too lazy to redo it—or more likely, she couldn’t afford it. Her green eyes—the one thing I’d inherited from her that I didn’t hate—met my gaze with a coolness that chilled me to the bone.
My eyes flickered from her to the car, searching for my girl and any sign that she was in there. I was about to jump my mother if she didn’t tell me when, suddenly, sweet Mary waved at me from inside the car, her face pushing up against the window in the backseat, her smile bright and shining like the sun, as though it were a perfect day.
I couldn’t even describe what it felt like, seeing her in that moment. Like my world had shattered and come back together in one swift second.
“Mary …” My word whooshed out in one big rush.
I waved at her and approached slowly, assessing the situation to see if my mother had a gun on her. She’d carried firearms before, and I knew better than to think that she wouldn’t have one on her now.
As though she could read my mind, my mother tipped her chin down and nodded. I followed her gaze to see a bulge in the front pocket of her worn jeans. My whole world bottomed out because, now, she had leverage.
