AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The air leaves my lungs. “Can you text me a picture of it?”
She does. When I click on the photo to enlarge it, I find Sienna and me stepping out of our apartment sometime in the fall because the ground is dry, orange and brown leaves losing their grip on the trees, building on the sidewalk and street.
The picture isn’t of both of us, not really, but it’s of Sienna. It’s zoomed in close on her face while I’m an afterthought in the corner, my body turned away from the lens, pulling the door closed, just enough of my face visible for Penelope to recognize me, but not much more.
I imagine Luke standing on the street opposite our apartment, hiding behind a parked car or one of the L’s steel structural beams, taking pictures of Sienna without us knowing.
He was always so kind to ask about her, how she was doing, how school was going, if she had a boyfriend.
I never thought of it as anything more than him being thoughtful.
The blood drains from my face, remembering.
Sienna is home alone—which Luke knows because I just told him.
Twenty-Eight
I call Sienna first. She doesn’t answer and so I call 911 as I push past people in the crowded bar to get out. I tell the dispatcher that Luke Albrecht, the man the police think is responsible for attacking those women in the city, may be on the way to hurt my child. “The police have a warrant for his arrest. My daughter is home alone. She’s not answering her phone. Please,” I say, panting, winded as I make it outside, turn and race gracelessly down the street, “hurry.”
“What is the address, ma’am?” she asks, and I tell her. “How old is your daughter?”
“Sixteen.”
I run the whole way home, not bothering to stop for red lights, but dodging traffic instead, cars blaring their horns at me as I snake between moving vehicles, forcing them to step hard on their brakes. It’s only a couple blocks from the bar home, and so I get there before the police do, tearing up the steps outside the building, taking them two at a time to the front door. I cast around in my bag for my keys, uttering profanities because I can’t find them at first, but when I finally do, I unlock and pull open the door, and then I sprint inside, bumbling, tripping, falling once to my knees on the maroon carpeting, though I force myself up and keeping going.
When I get to the third floor, I come through the apartment door, clipping a shoulder on the way in. I run from room to room, screaming, “Sienna! Sienna!” praying to God that she’ll appear like magic from her room, asking, What? when she sees me, put off by my urgency and the shrill, unmistakable panic in my voice.
She doesn’t.
Sienna’s bedroom light is on. I go in, bracing myself for what I’ll find. Her laptop is on her bed, the comforter pulled back, a movie paused—as if time stood still the minute Luke arrived—and I picture her under the covers, watching a movie in bed when the front door buzzed. I see her getting out of bed, going to the intercom, looking out the bay window for the street, seeing Luke.
Her phone is on her bed, tucked partway beneath a pink throw. My heart stops and I reach for it, sliding it out, knowing that Sienna would never leave her phone behind, not on purpose, not if given the option. The only way is if someone forced her out of the apartment against her will. My hand goes to my mouth and my knees buckle beneath me so that I almost collapse, I almost fall to my knees, sobbing.
But I don’t have time to go to pieces. I have to find Sienna, except that without her phone, I have no way of tracking her location. The city is huge. She could be practically anywhere and I don’t have the advantage of Life360.
The police arrive and I let them into the apartment. Standing in the small living room, they ask questions. They want me to go over again what happened. They ask for pictures of Sienna and for what she was wearing, and by chance I remember what she had on hours ago when we were arguing—before she said I fucking hate you and You are a bitch, before slamming her bedroom door closed on me—though I wonder if she changed after I left, if she put on pajamas, which makes me wonder things like if Luke let her take her coat and shoes with her when she left or if, wherever she is, she is cold and barefoot. I can’t stand to think about it, about Sienna in something like the plaid, flannel boxer shorts and the boxy, cropped T-shirt she usually sleeps in, braless, midriff showing, painfully cold on this dark and bitter January night.
An AMBER alert is issued not only because Sienna is missing but because the police think she is in grave danger.
“What happens now?” I ask them.
“We’ll be looking for her and for Mr. Albrecht. But in the meantime, you need to stay here, in case your daughter comes home on her own,” the officer says, and I say okay, nodding through tears, but even as I do, I know it’s a lie. I won’t stay here. I can’t stay put while Sienna is out there somewhere and in trouble. She needs me.
When the police leave, I find Penelope’s number in my call history and call her back.
“He has my daughter, Penelope. He took her.”
“Oh my God. Meghan.” Her voice seeps with guilt and with shame. She apologizes, as if it’s her fault and maybe it is, maybe in some subconscious way she knew what he was doing. I think of all the times Luke said goodbye to me at the end of his shift. I picture him leaving work, stalking and then raping women before going home to Penelope.
I think of all that I know about this man, all that I heard on the news. How he would hide out in the shadows, waiting for women to open the door and let themselves into their own homes, and then he’d come at them from behind, threatening their lives.
I double over, moaning, thinking of Sienna alone with him.
“Meghan, are you okay?” she asks, and then, when I don’t respond because I can’t respond, “Meghan?”
I force myself upright, getting it together for Sienna’s sake. I wipe at my face with a shirtsleeve. “Can you think of anywhere he might have taken her, anywhere he might be?” I run over in my mind everything Luke has ever told me. I don’t know him as well as I thought.
Penelope thinks. “He runs sometimes on the 606. Or he’ll take the Lakefront Trail to Northerly Island,” she says, thinking aloud, running through every place Luke has ever been. “He proposed to me in the Art Institute’s South Garden.” But that’s not right, none of these are right, because they’re outdoor and they’re public places and Luke’s methodology, his blueprint, is to attack women in private, in their own homes and in secluded parts of apartment buildings, except that he couldn’t do anything to Sienna in ours because I would come home and find them.
