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“I know, but he never showed up himself. At least not that we could ever catch. If he was there, he was in the shadows. But it was like, while he knew he couldn’t be with me withoutfinding himself arrested, he didn’t want anyone else to be with me either.”
“That’s not unusual. He was trying to scare people into cutting you out of their lives, which would give you no one to turn to but him.”
“Yes. Exactly.” Raina pressed fingers to her temples. “My stepfather and mother were almost run off the road on the way to pick me up from the rehab center to take me home. Before that, three of my father’s best friends all received the threats or had terrible things happen. Trent’s wife was kidnapped, killed, and dumped in a ditch with a note pinned to her shirt saying to have nothing to do with me or next time it would be their daughter.” She shuddered. “Their daughter was four at the time, and I babysat for them fairly often. She’d be almost eighteen now.” She shook her head. “Everyone I ever mentioned in conversation, everyone he knew I was close to, he found and terrorized. Only, I didn’t find out about all of it until my parents came to pick me up at the rehab center. My stepfather had private security on my room at the hospital, then the rehab center.”
His eyes narrowed, looking thoughtful. “How long were you with him?”
“About eight months.” Eight months of his brainwashing, then the realization of what was happening, the confrontation—and the beating that put her in the hospital.
Her mind flipped back to Trent.
It’s too risky, one voice whispered.He said not to call again.
But he sounded so frightened and you really should ask Vince to check on him,the other countered.
“Raina?”
She drew in a deep breath. “Vince ... this is between you and me. I may share with the others one day, but for now, I don’t see any reason to.” Mostly because she hated talking about that time in her life and being reminded how gullible and ... blind ... she’d been. She refused to call herself stupid. She wasn’tstupid. She’d been deceived but had finally caught on and done something about it. She’d fought back and gotten out alive. That was more than some victims could claim.
Vince rubbed a hand over his lips and nodded. “All right. Of course. That’s your call. I just can’t help wondering why the fake name. I mean, obviously, he wanted to keep his identity from everyone, butwhy. If you knew that, it might be possible to track him down.”
His words pierced her. “Trust me, we all wondered that too. The only thing I—and everyone else—could come up with was that he had a criminal record or another family somewhere. He said he was in pharmaceutical sales and hedidtravel a lot, so it’s very possible he was deceiving someone else just like me.”
“Yeah. Another family was my first thought. I’m assuming they ran his prints.”
She nodded. “Of course. He wasn’t in the system, though, which ruled out the criminal past along with other things like certain occupations.”
“Or he just hadn’t been caught.”
“Or that.” She rubbed her eyes, then dropped her hand to her lap. “I worked with a sketch artist, but again, nothing came from that. I should have known something was weird when he refused to take pictures. He claimed it was because he was self-conscious about his looks, that when he was a kid, someone had posted a picture of him in the boys’ bathroom at school for everyone to make fun of. He said he’d never let anyone take a picture of him again.” She shrugged. “That story may very well be true, but obviously he had other reasons for not wanting his likeness anywhere.” And she’d been so head over heels, she’d believed him. Had felt sorry for him. Her hands fisted on a wave of regret at the way she’d ignored her own instincts. “I’m not that person anymore,” she whispered.
“What?”
She shuddered and looked up. “Nothing. The PI showed mepicture after picture of numerous Kevin Andersons, and none of them were him. He didn’t actually work at the pharmaceutical company he claimed to be employed with—surprise, surprise—and everything else the investigator tried led to a dead end. The man finally admitted defeat.” She took a deep breath. “At that point, I almost didn’t care. I was happy to be alive. I was glad Kevin—or whoever he was—was gone. I just wanted to forget him and get on with my life.”
Vince’s eyes narrowed. “But?”
It was scary how good he was getting at reading her. “But,” she said, “then I walked in the day I came home from rehab to find a bouquet of black roses on my parents’ table with a note that said, ‘You’ll always be mine’ and...” How she hated revisiting that moment in her life.
“And?”
“And that’s when we found Mrs. Atwater, our housekeeper, dead on my parents’ kitchen floor.”
“Again, Raina ... I’m so sorry.”
“I ... can’t even...” She stopped and grappled with the surge of emotions that she’d kept buried for so long. “I know it was him who killed her, but there was no proof, no evidence left behind, nothing. At least none that led to him. Anyway, Kevin got in the house somehow. We’re not even sure how. The cameras never picked up on him. Nevertheless, he did. But Mrs. Atwater wasn’t supposed to be there, and we think she surprised him. She lived around the corner in a house my stepfather built for her and her husband, so she usually walked to work, but she’d driven that day. Maybe because it was cold, maybe she just didn’t feel like walking while carrying a cake. Who knows?”
“So, he should have seen the car and known someone was there.”
“Exactly. And he didn’t care. Anyway, my stepfather told me everything that had happened with his friends and, of course, what I learned about mine when I was discharged, but afterMrs. Atwater and the attempt to run my parents off the road earlier that day and then the other incidents my stepfather’s friends reported...” She shrugged. “I told them I had to leave. That Iwasleaving and they couldn’t stop me. When they realized there was no talking me out of it, my stepfather called in a few favors, and I left that night after the cops were finished with me.” She met his gaze. “My stepfather had a US Marshal friend who helped me out.” And that was one of the last times she’d accepted help from anyone.
He straightened. “Who?”
“John Tate.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know him, but being on opposite sides of the country, that’s not surprising.”
“Well, John was a pilot as well. He picked me up at my parents’ home, took me to an airfield, and flew me to Arizona, where he gave me the paperwork for three different identities—just in case I had to run again. I landed in the care of some very kind people, and I stayed with them while I went to paramedic school, then got a job. I worked a lot, but one day, I ... felt watched. This happened several times, but each time, I could never spot anything ... or anyone ... out of the ordinary. Until...”
