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She doesn’t say anything as I lay us both down on the small mattress. She’s exhausted—we both are—but I know we can’t go home yet. We need to get through more shit, but I refuse to have her go through more right now.
She curls her body against mine, her sobs dying down, but her breath still coming in pants. The sound breaks my fucking heart. My hands rub up and down her back soothingly. When I think she’s asleep, I look down at her still form, only to find her beautiful green eyes staring up at me.
“I tried so hard not to forget you,” she whispers croakily. “But the longer I was there, the more you went away. The things he did… no,” she interrupts my protest. “I need you to know. The things he did to me, they hurt, they hurt so much, but not as much as knowing I was forgetting something so very important.”
“Oh, Aislin. I’m so sorry I didn’t find you.” Her finger touches my lips, silencing me.
“No, Niko.” She shakes her head, more tears sliding down her face. “I knew you were looking for me. I knew you would do anything to find me, but after a while, your memory started to fade. Maybe it was my body’s way of protecting me, taking away the one thing that would have made it more unbearable, knowing you were out there looking. Maybe it was God’s way of making me stronger, making me fight on my own so I wasn’t given false hope if there was a chance it would have ended… differently.”
Her words tear me apart. Ending differently means ending with her dead. For months, that’s what I thought, that she was dead, and before that, I had no clue what had happened to her. There were endless possibilities, and I thought of them all, but it never crossed my mind that the sweet man from our bus was at the root of it all. The man we saw every day for years, the one who gave us candy in the morning, the one who smiled and wished us a good day, and the one who gave us cards on our birthdays. Even when his name showed up on the suspect list, I never, not once, believed it was him. I was a fucking idiot and should have known better. Over three-quarters of kidnappings are by family members or acquaintances of the family or child. I’m a detective; I fucking know the statistics. That’s what bothers me the most. We had the guy in our clutches, and he got away.
“You’re here now, and you’re safe,” I say through a thick throat. “And I swear to you, Aislin, no one will ever touch you again.”
“I believe you.”
Her words mean the world to me. She has no reason to trust me, no reason to believe a word I say, but she does. Her eyes tell me so.
I watch her eyes as I run my hand along her cheek. I see vulnerability and fear from my touch linger in her eyes, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she closes her eyes and leans into my hand. I brush the hair away from her face, my gaze taking in her scars. I push away the ever-present anger caused by seeing them. The tips of my fingers meet the raised birthmark below her ear, and I close my eyes. I keep my fingers there, lightly rubbing my thumb over her damp cheek.
“My North,” I whisper.
* * *
I’m notsure how much time passes, but sometime later, I feel another presence in the room. I look down at Aislin and find her asleep. I lift my gaze to the doorway and see Tavers standing there.
I kiss Aislin’s head before carefully lifting it and pulling my arm free. I don’t want to leave her, but I need to talk to Tavers. I take one last look at her before leaving her sleeping on the bed. I stop just outside the door, pulling it closed halfway so Tavers and I don’t wake her.
“We found journals,” he says, his jaw hard. “Years’ worth. There is some fucked-up shit in there, Niko. And it pretty much paints us a picture of everything that happened.”
I shove my clenched fists into my pockets. “Tell me,” I demand.
He takes a minute, his eyes moving to the partially closed door and then looking back at me.
“The journals start twenty-six years ago.” He stops and eyes me closely.
“Just fucking tell me, Tavers,” I growl.
He nods stiffly.
“They start with him telling a story about his mother molesting him. Every day for six months, there’s an entry. They’re graphic, giving minute-by-minute details. There’s a three-month gap between the next entries. When they start again, it’s about his mother being pregnant. He was excited and couldn’t wait to be a father. The abuse continues, but seven months later, on July 22, 1989, the entries stop again for a month.”
Fuck! That’s the day after Aislin’s birthday. A sick feeling churns in my stomach.
He pulls in a breath and looks down at his shoes. When he looks up again, his eyes are colder than I’ve ever seen them.
“When they start back up again, he’s angry. Angry with the mother for taking away his babies. He goes into detail about what he wants to do to them. His sick perversions, the same things his mother did to him.” I push past the bile rising in my throat. From Tavers’ expression, it looks like he’s doing the same thing.
“Wait. You said babies?” The look in his eyes tells me what I need to know. “Son of a bitch,” I mutter. “Fucking twins?”
He nods and continues. “When he was searching for the birth certificate, that’s how he found out she had twins. The mother’s name was on the certificate, but no father was listed. He talks about looking for them. The details of the abuse from the mother are still there, but the focus of each entry is about his obsession in finding his babies.”
“She couldn’t put the father’s name because it would implicate her as raping her child.”
Tavers nods and continues. “He was enraged at his mother for keeping that secret from him, from keeping both of his babies from him. He searched for them for two years when he realized he couldn’t find them on his own. He took to torturing his mom for answers. His mother sold one of the twins for cash, and the sister, Natalie, stole the other and moved away. He talks about finding his sister and how angry he was when she turned him away. Without Natalie’s knowledge, he visited the little girl often. Again, there were details on how he abused her and threatened the girl not to say anything. When she was ten, he took her. He had planned to wait until she was fourteen, the same age he was when his mother had the twins, he mentioned it being poetic, but moved up his plans when he found out his sister was leaving the country with the girl. It was the summer of ‘96 when he found Aislin.”
I yank my hands from my pockets and turn away from Tavers. Propping my hands on the doorframe, I hang my head, my chest heaving up and down. A year after she moved in next door. I think back to that time and remember the following school year was when Mr. C started driving my bus. Fucking shit.
I spin back around to Tavers.
