Lisa Gardner - Hide

He waited. It didn't take long.

"Have you seen her missing photo, you know, the portrait they posted all over town?"

He shook his head.

"Come here." She crossed the space abruptly brushing by him, into the family room. He saw a small notebook computer buried under a pile of papers. She swept the papers to the floor, flipped open the lid, and the computer screen came to life. It took only a few clicks of the mouse on the Internet and Dori Petracelli's missing photo filled the screen. He still didn't get it. Annabelle had to point it out to him.

"Look around her neck. It's the locket. She's wearing my necklace."

Bobby squinted, bent closer. The photo was fuzzy, black and white, but upon closer inspection… He sighed. If he'd had any doubts before, this took care of them.

"According to the blurb on the website," Annabelle spoke up quietly, "that photo was taken a week before Dori disappeared. Most recent photo, you know." Her voice changed, grew an edge. "I bet he liked that. I bet it turned him on. Watching all the news stories, flashing her picture, showing that locket, begging for her safe return. UNSUBs like to follow their own cases, right? Like to know how clever they have been. Bastard."

She turned away from him, taking several jerky steps across the room.

Bobby straightened more slowly, keeping his gaze on her face. "What do you remember, Annabelle-"

"Don't call me that! You can't use real names. I go by Tanya. Call me Tanya."

"Why? It's been twenty-five years. What do you still have to fear?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? I've grown comfortable with the fact that my dad was dancing to the tune of a paranoid drummer. You're the one now saying his fears were genuine. What am I supposed to do with that? Some guy stalked me and I never even knew. Then I left and he… he snatched my best friend and he…"

She broke off, unable to continue. Her hand pressed hard over her mouth, her other arm curling protectively around her waist. From the dog bed, Bella looked up, wagged her tail, and whined.

"Sorry, girl," Annabelle whispered. "Sorry."

Bobby gave her a minute. She pulled it together. Chin coming up, shoulders squaring off. He didn't understand the father yet; he had a lot of questions about the father, actually But by all appearances, Russell Granger had raised his daughter right. Twenty-five years later, this girl was tough.

Then the buzzer for her apartment sounded and she jumped.

"What the…" she started nervously "I don't get many…" She crossed quickly to the bay windows overlooking the street, checking out who was ringing her unit. Bobby already had his hand tucked inside his jacket, fingers resting on the butt of his gun as he fed off her nervousness. Then just as quickly as the episode started, it ended. Annabelle looked out, spotted the UPS truck, and smiled self-consciously as her shoulders sagged in relief.

"Bella," she called, "it's your boyfriend."

Annabelle went to work on the door locks while Bella pawed frantically at the wood.

"Boyfriend?" Bobby asked.

"Ben, the UPS driver. He and Bella have a thing. I order, he delivers, she gets cookies. I know dogs are color-blind, but if Bella could see a rainbow, her favorite color would still be brown."

Annabelle had finally gotten the locks undone. She pushed open the door and nearly got mowed down by her dog.

"Be right back," Annabelle called over her shoulder to Bobby, then disappeared down the stairs in Bella's wake.

The interruption gave Bobby a moment to collect his thoughts. And add to his mental notes. He was getting a pretty good idea of the life Annabelle currently led. Isolated. Security conscious. Insular. Did her shopping by mail-order catalog or Internet. Best friend was her dog. Closest thing to human connection-signing for her daily delivery from the UPS man.

Perhaps her father had done his job a little too well.

Bella returned, panting hard, looking satisfied. Annabelle was a touch slower coming up the stairs. She wiggled through the doorway with a box roughly the size of her desk. Bobby tried to assist, but she waved him off, dropping the box on the kitchen floor.

"Fabric," she volunteered, kicking the large box ruefully "Occupational hazard, I'm afraid."

"For a client or 'just because'?"

"Both," she admitted. "It always starts as an order for a client, then next thing I know, I've added two bolts of 'just because.' Frankly, it's a good thing I don't live in a bigger space, or Lord only knows."

He nodded, watching as she crossed to the sink and poured her own glass of water. She seemed composed again. Fetching the delivery had allowed her a chance to regroup her defenses. Now or never, he decided.

"Summer of '82," he declared. "You're seven years old, your best friend is Dori Petracelli, and you're living with your mother and father in Arlington. What comes to mind?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. Everything. I was a kid. I remember kid stuff. Going to swim at the Y. Playing hopscotch on the driveway. I don't know. It was summer. Mostly, I remember having fun."

"The gifts?"

"SuperBall. I found it on the front porch, in a little box wrapped in the Sunday comics. The ball was yellow and bounced very high. I loved it."

"Did your father say anything? Take it away?"

"Nope. I lost it under the front porch."

"Other gifts?"

"Marble. Blue. Found a similar way, met a similar fate."

"But the locket…"

"The locket made my father angry," she conceded. "I do remember that. But in my mind, I never knew why I thought my father was being difficult, not protective."

"According to reports, after the second incident, your parents moved you into their bedroom to sleep at night. Does that ring any bells?"

She frowned, looking genuinely perplexed. "There was something wrong with my room," she said shortly, rubbing her forehead. "We needed to paint it? My father was going to fix… something? I don't really remember now. Just, something was wrong, needed to be done. So I slept on the floor in their bedroom for a bit. Family camping trip, my father said. He even painted stars on the ceiling. I thought it was really cool."

"Did you ever feel threatened, Annabelle? Like someone was watching you? Or did a stranger come up to you? Offer you gum or candy? Ask you to take a ride in his car? Or maybe the father of one of your school friends made you uncomfortable? A teacher who stood too close…"

"No," she said immediately, voice certain. "And I think I would remember that. Of course, that was before my father's version of safety boot camp, so if someone had approached me… I don't know. Maybe I would've taken the candy. Maybe I would've gotten in the car. Eighty-two was the good year, you know." She briskly rubbed her forearms, then added more flatly, "The days before it all went to hell."

Bobby watched her for a bit, waited to see if she would say more. She seemed done, though, memories mined out. He couldn't decide if he believed her or not. Kids were surprisingly perceptive. And yet she'd lived in the middle of a major neighborhood drama, uniformed officers called to her house three times in two months, and she never suspected a thing? Again, kudos to her father, who'd gone out of his way to protect his little girl? Or indication of something worse?

He waited until she finally looked up. The next question was the most important. He wanted her full attention.

"Annabelle," he asked shortly "Why did you leave Florida?"

"I don't know"

"And St. Louis and Nashville and Kansas City?"

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know" She threw up her hands, once again frustrated. "You think I haven't asked these questions? You think I haven't wondered? Every time we moved, I spent countless nights trying to figure out where I went wrong. What I did that was so bad. Or what threat I didn't see. I never got it. I never got it. By the time I was sixteen, in my best judgment, my father was simply paranoid. Some fathers watch too much football. Mine had a penchant for cash transactions and fake IDs."