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Mary Elise sunk back on her bottom. “I’ve messed up so bad.”
* * *
Mary Elise forced her hand to stay steady around the empty bottle, willed her teeth not to chatter. Still, the shaking swelled inside her. She’d tried so hard to weigh the options and make the right choices to keep the boys from being traumatized. Yet, once the cargo plane had become airborne, her life had spiraled out of control until every option absolutely stunk.
Even if little Austin hadn’t been frightened to the point of being immobilized and she could have run right away, Daniel would have been curious. Which would have led him—and therefore the boys—directly to Kent.
Except Kent had found her anyway.
She’d expected fear, and yes, fear stirred a storm within her. But she hadn’t anticipated the blind explosion of fury.
How dare he do this to her? To the family she’d grown to care about so much? Rhetorical questions that served no purpose. Kent dared anything. And now she had to tell Daniel. Surely he would understand he needed to stay near the boys, he needed to protect them. Once he heard the truth, he would realize the farther all three were from her now, the better.
A horrific notion took root. She knew Kent had planted the bottle, but when? Her mind echoed with the rustlings when she’d showered. “Danny, once you and the boys left for IHOP, did you come back to pick up anything?”
“No.” Impatience stamped his face. “The boys stopped to talk with Wren for a minute and then we left. What’s going on here?”
She flattened a hand to the carpet, slumping back against the couch. Nausea roiled. Bile burned. She dropped the bottle like a snake onto the glass-topped coffee table. “This isn’t mine. Someone broke into the condo and put it here.”
Kent, the man who dared anything and respected no boundaries, had placed it there while she was in the shower. Incredulity furrowed Daniel’s brow, feeding her worries that he wouldn’t believe her, either.
“What for? Regardless, though,” he reached for the cell on the chrome end table, “we need to call the cops, now.”
“Wait…” She lurched to the side, flinging her hands over the phone, the pinprick forgotten in a new panic.
He paused mid-reach. “The longer we wait, the farther away whoever it was will get.”
“I know who it was, and no way is he anywhere near here now. He’s left his message and will undoubtedly leave another, but not today.”
His hand fell back to his knee as he sank down beside her. “Run that by me again?”
“I know who planted it there. Or at least I know who was responsible.” And she prayed she hadn’t made a huge mistake in lingering at Danny’s this long.
“Want to share that nugget? Because I’m getting pretty torqued off thinking about someone slipping in here when the boys may have been around.”
“The boys are fine.” She would have never stayed at Danny’s for so much as one night if she’d thought for a second Kent would come near the boys. He’d always been precise in his sanctimonious anger. “It’s me he wants to rattle.”
“He?”
“My ex-husband.”
“Your ex did this? How can you be sure? You haven’t even let him know you’re here.” His eyes narrowed with a glint of…jealousy? “Have you?”
“No! Of course not. But somehow he must have found out.” She nudged the bottle beside a stack of junk mail on the table. “Only he would think to leave behind a medicine bottle with my name on it, used back when we were married.”
Medicines to increase fertility.
A bottle from one of her daily shots.
As much as she hated giving Daniel details, she had to convince him, for his own safety and the boys’. “Kent didn’t take our breakup well. He pulled stunts like this all the time right after I left him.”
“You still haven’t explained why you know this is from him.”
“I had difficulty conceiving. We tried…everything. I wanted to adopt. Kent wanted to keep trying for a biological child.” She couldn’t make herself tell him about the miscarriages. Her precious son born too early. But Daniel needed to know her suspicions, no matter how paranoid they sounded. “I think maybe this wasn’t the first time he’s attempted to rattle me since I returned to the States. There was a plant mixed in with your neighbor’s potted garden, a plant that’s supposed to promote fertility. I thought it was a coincidence, and now I’m not so sure. I’m so very sorry for not telling you then.”
Daniel’s hand fell to rest beside the bottle, inching over to straighten the stack of junk mail beside it with an odd precision. “Why not just contact you?”
Long-buried resentment clawed its way to the surface, having been denied light too long, due to her more basic survival needs of the past year. “Because he’s a sick individual who enjoys tormenting me. God, I could go on forever. Regardless, he’s a monster, Danny. And I’m so, so sorry for bringing him anywhere near the boys. I didn’t think there was any way he could know where I was. Even if he’d tracked me to Rubistan, it’s not like my leaving the country was exactly out in the open.”
