MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

Was it the pressures of fatherhood that made him pursue Michelle? A need to prove that he was still attractive to a younger woman? He never meant for it to go on for months, or to lead to talk about a future and marriage and children. He had known he needed to break it off, but then she had been the one to end it. Nowadays, they’d call what she did “ghosting.” She simply disappeared. No return calls. No more yoga. And he certainly wasn’t going to pop into her workplace, given his wife’s regular presence there.

When she called him six months ago, she finally explained why she had cut him out of her life. She described how she had driven to his office to tell him the good news about the pregnancy, only to spot him with Roseanne, Bella, and his wedding band. Nearly eight years later, she contacted him out of the blue, after spending years as a drug addict. She swore up and down that she never told anyone the truth about the baby’s paternity—not even Daniel himself, as it turned out. It felt like she’d dropped a nuclear bomb on his world, so she could “find peace,” in her words.

Peace? Why did she deserve peace? Roseanne at least had a reason for taking his daughter away from him. His brain made him do things that scared her. But what Michelle had done was unforgiveable. His only crime was infidelity. He didn’t deserve to lose the right to know his son—to even know about his son—as punishment. “I need to see you in person,” he had pleaded. “To hear about his birth. You at least owe me that.”

Oh, in the end, she had found her peace all right. Thanks to the sedative he had slipped into her cranberry juice and club soda, she was sloppy and slurring as she rambled on about the nice Irish priest who found the perfect couple to steal his son. And then she flew high as a kite after he placed that needle in her arm. It hadn’t taken him long to make a mess out of her apartment. He knew from his brother that the cops would put two and two together: A former junkie, dead of an overdose. Case closed.

He hadn’t pumped the fatal dose of heroin into her vein until he had the information he needed. Even after he pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot her in the head, Michelle refused to tell him where the baby was. Instead, she had begged him to leave the child— his child—alone. “I swear to you, I would not have given him up unless I knew he was going to a good home. He’s a happy little boy. I see pictures on the mom’s Facebook page. He has two adorable little sisters—twins. His father’s a successful lawyer—his uncle just got named a federal judge. He’ll have every opportunity. Please , just let him have his life without the two of us to mess it up.”

She died trying to protect her son, but ended up giving Daniel what he knew would be enough information to identify the family. How many new federal judges could there be?

Now he patted Danny Junior on the top of his head. “Good job on the puzzle, buddy. Do you know what this place right here is?” He pointed to the District of Columbia.

“That’s Washington, D.C.,” Danny said.

“Is that where you live?”

He searched his son’s eyes as he mulled over the right answer.

“No, Daddy. That’s where that other family lives. I live here with you. Are we in New York?”

Daniel’s heart soared with happiness. This was his second chance at fatherhood, and it was working. That’s why those hallucinations of Roseanne and Bella had stopped after he killed Michelle, or at least, he had thought so until today.

“No, Danny. Our house is right here,” he said, dropping a finger a couple inches to the right. “In a state called Delaware.”

His mind raced with a blend of triumph and hope. He had finally won his boy over.

He was also proud. His plan had required a level of patience and planning that he had wondered if he still possessed. He waited a full five months after Michelle’s death, wanting to be certain that no one connected the boy’s eventual disappearance with his biological mother’s tragic demise. Then, a month ago, he tucked a miniature GPS tracker beneath the bumper of the Buckley family’s minivan after following Danny’s fake mother to a Costco parking lot. He watched the car’s movements for patterns, hoping to find the perfect opportunity to bring Danny back home where he belonged. In the end, he hadn’t needed the tracker at all. He made his move after seeing the woman’s Facebook post about going to the Hamptons for a family vacation, assuming an abduction outside the D.C. area would deflect any possible suspicion from him.

An alert sounded from his cell phone. It was the latest update from the GPS tracker. He had decided to leave the tracker in place rather than risk being seen retrieving it. According to the spy gadget’s manufacturer, the device was untraceable, but out of caution, Daniel had routed the alerts through three different layers of forwarded, anonymous accounts.

Daniel began to blink rapidly as he felt a vein pulse against his right temple. According to the tracker, the minivan was moving south on Coastal Highway, only eleven miles from his house.

He placed his fingertips against the side of his head, trying to stop the throbbing. “Go to your room, Danny. Daddy needs to think.”

Chapter 60

Marcy flinched at the sound of her cell phone. According to the screen, it was Andrew. “Hey, are you close?” she asked.

“Still forty minutes out. Any word from Laurie and Leo?”

“No. And not from the FBI or Detective Langland yet, either. I’m jumping out of my skin, knowing that Johnny might be a few miles from here.”

“Did you find a good meet-up place?”

“Remember that outlet mall on Highway 1 as you’re coming into town?” It had been a couple of years since they had visited Rehoboth Beach, but Andrew had a good memory.

“Right side of the street?”

“Exactly. It’s a crowded lot, and I’m parked at the back. Seemed like a safe enough place to wait for now.”

“Sounds perfect. I’ll meet you there. Make sure you’re sharing your location with me, so I can find you in the actual parking lot once I arrive.”

“Good idea.” A beep sounded in her ear as another call came into her phone. The screen said it was a blocked caller. “There’s another call. I better get it in case it’s the FBI.”

“Okay, hang in there, babe. This is going to be over soon. I can feel it. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” She hit a button on her phone to accept the new call. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Buckley?”

“Yes.”

“This is Detective Eddie Miller calling from Long Island about your son, Johnny. My colleague Detective Langland wanted me to check in since she’s got her hands full right now with Johnny’s case.”

“Did she get hold of the FBI yet in Delaware? I’m at the edge of town now. Are they coming?”

“Yes, they have a couple of agents on-site now, in fact.”

“Already? I got the impression she was wading through a maze of red tape.”

“She was, but once she got the right person on the phone, the pieces fell into place quickly.”

“So they’re at Turner’s house? Now?”

“No, no. Not yet. They’re nearby, though, making plans for your son’s extraction. Where exactly are you? They want to make sure you’re there when it goes down. It’ll be a comfort for little Johnny to see his mother immediately.”

Her eyes watered at the thought of holding her son again. “I’m at the outlet mall on Highway 1.”

“Okay, if I give you an address, can you find it?”

“Yes, as long as my phone GPS can pull it up.” She foraged in her purse for a piece of scrap paper and jotted down the address.

“You’ll actually need to go north away from Rehoboth Beach. The town name is Lewes: L-E-W-E-S.”