Page 39 of The Hanging Dolls (Zoe Storm #1)

THIRTY-EIGHT

“My mother,” Zoe said. “That’s who I miss the most.”

“How do you deal with her not being around?” Aiden asked.

“She lives on through my sister and her kids.” Tears threatened to choke her, but she swallowed them.

“It’s always the small things that are left behind.

Like how she had a habit of pulling down the corners of the bed sheet before getting into bed.

Both Gina and I do that all the time without even realizing it. ”

She looked out the window at the snow carpeting the ground and the ice forming shapes against the window. Winter was Zoe’s favorite season because snow was festive and pure and happy.

“I know what you’re going through as I went through something similar myself,” Aiden said softly.

“Did you lose your mother when you were young too?”

He didn’t reply.

“Why?” Zoe blurted.

And then an inside voice chided her. Don’t scare him away .

“Because…” He cracked a forlorn smile. “Your mother saved my life a very long time ago. The least I can do is tell her daughter the truth.”

Her pulse fluttered in her throat as she waited for him to say the words she had been waiting for all these years.

She was almost not ready to hear it. She had lived with that void inside her for too long, spent her life digging through old memories, latching on to words, turning them over in her head, refusing to let anything fade.

Trying to salvage whatever pieces she had of her past to make sense. All to get to the truth.

That pesky thing that people took for granted. But it was the foundation for everything.

Her eyes glided over the ocean. The boats reminded her of herself—unmoored. But now everything was about to change.

Was she ready to hear it?

“Let’s walk?” she suggested in a small voice.

And so they did, side by side, along the docks in the misty morning. The chill cooled her scalp, but under the layer of jacket she was sweating.

“I met your mother in the summer of 1977.” He stared at his feet.

“I had gotten a job as an executive assistant to this very rich VP at some insurance company who had a penchant for collecting art. Rachel was the receptionist there. She was… one of the most stunning women I’d ever met.

There was this spark to her. She drew people in.

And she drew me in too. Soon we became friends, even though there was always something more between us. ”

Zoe could imagine it all play in her mind’s eye. Her heart refused to slow down. She was holding on to every word like it was treasure.

“Unfortunately, she was seeing someone at the time. So I didn’t do anything. And either way, I was there for another purpose. That man, like I said, collected art. That’s what I was after. An expensive painting he stored in his locker.” His eyes met Zoe’s, gauging her reaction.

“You were a thief?” she said.

“You can’t arrest me now. The statute of limitations has passed,” he added lightly.

“It was all part of my plan to eventually get to the safe, steal the painting, and disappear. But being around Rachel was too tempting.” He laughed.

“And a three-month-long plan stretched to five months. Enough was enough. I decided to head to Rachel’s and say goodbye to her.

The plan was to disappear once I’d taken the painting. ”

“And then?”

“Her entire apartment was a mess.” His eyes tapered at the memory. “Tables and chairs turned over, curtains ripped down, a vase shattered. I found her in the bedroom, huddled in a corner. She was catatonic and bruised. I was about to call 911 but she stopped me.”

Zoe didn’t believe it. “My mother stopped you? Why?”

He gestured her to sit on a bench, facing the calm waters. “She said she owed money to someone.”

Zoe tried to imagine Rachel in the colors that he was painting her in. She knew Rachel had a past, something murky. “Why didn’t she involve the police?”

His silver eyes bore into hers. “She said that whoever was after her was powerful. He had connections in the police. She didn’t trust anyone.”

“She never mentioned a name to you?”

A flurry of sounds took over—seagulls cowing overhead, a distant foghorn, waves slapping against the hulls of ships, and a bell signaling an arrival. Keith fidgeted, his gaze fixed on the flood of activities at the harbor, but his mind was somewhere else.

“You have no idea how many times I asked her.” His voice became heavy. “But she was scared. Missing work. Always looking over her shoulder. Unable to sleep. And then I told her we should go away.”

“What about your con?”

A dreamy look crossed his face. “I was in love. I didn’t care about that anymore.

I just wanted her to be happy again. And so we both quit and left for the west coast. Which is where that photo is from…

things were good for a while but they didn’t stay that way.

One night, I saw her sneak out. I followed her and saw her meeting some man. She was buying a gun.”

“A gun?” Zoe was still slotting together the information.

Rachel always seemed hassled and worried.

They never stayed in one place for too long so she never bothered to make friends.

She spent most of her time at home, taking care of Zoe and Gina, telling them stories and making her own clothes.

It was a lonely, quaint, and unglamorous existence of a woman on the run—but not a woman who bought a gun.

“She must have gotten really desperate.”

“That’s not what shocked me. It was the fact that she knew guns a little too well.”

Confusion muddled her mind. “What?”

“The man showed her a selection of guns and the way she handled them, to me it looked like she knew exactly what to do with them. She wasn’t the Rachel I knew that night with that man.

Gone was the terrified, demure woman. She was confident, the way she stood and walked.

It was like she was a different person.”

Her heart rose up her throat. “Did you confront her?”

“I did.” His face was stoic and unreadable.

“When she came back that night, she told me she was sick of living on the run and she had to confront her past. Again I tried to find out who she was running from, but she didn’t give me a name.

We decided to temporarily part ways. She needed a few months to sort out her shit.

We planned to meet again in a year at this café we liked.

I showed up, a year later, but she never did. And I never heard from her again.”

“Was the person after her that powerful?”

Keith said nothing.

“But I’m an FBI agent. I can help,” she insisted, sounding like a child. She was within reach of the complete picture. She could feel it in her fingertips, a relentless buzz as if that name was a physical object she could get her hands on.

Tears of frustration stabbed her eyes. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes.

The sight of finding Rachel’s body was seared in her brain.

But what crippled her was the aftermath.

How she had got out the mop and wiped away evidence of muddy footprints and water on the bathroom floor.

How she had closed the window to the fire escape.

How she had even scrubbed the ledge of the window and the bathtub, while Rachel lay there dead, her eyes open, staring into nothing.

Keith’s hand rested on her back. “She never gave me a name. She would often have these vivid nightmares and wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming that the Viper will get to her. She was so scared of him that she was seeing snakes in her dreams. I’m sorry, kid. I wish I could help you more.”

She nodded, her face still hidden in her hands. But she wasn’t giving up. She had gotten this far.

Viper.

“I have no idea what happened to her. She had two kids, so I’m sure she found some happiness and normalcy before she passed. A part of me feared that the man had gotten to her. I looked for her but I didn’t know enough to get anywhere.”

Normalcy . The word tasted bitter in her mouth. She took a shuddering breath and threw him a glance. He looked almost pained, like he was aching for a piece of Rachel.

So Zoe gave it to him. “We spent almost a decade in witness protection.”