Page 43 of A Future To Remember

I nodded.

“What details can you give me?”

I dropped my chin to stare at the sidewalk. “There were two of them.”

He didn’t say anything; he just waited me out.

“One of them beat me up, then the other one…” My voice fell away. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“Violated you,” Cash said softly.

I swallowed hard again and felt the prickle of tears, blurring my vision. “Yeah. He smelled like beer and cigarettes. And they kept me somewhere cold. Like really cold. I think I almost froze to death before I almost froze to death.”

I listened to the sound of Cash inhale deeply and then let it out on a sigh. “I’m so sorry, Maddy.”

I watched my own tear drop, then splatter on the pavement. “That’s all I remember.”

I felt his hand on my shoulder again. “We’ll find them,” he vowed. “I promise you that. We’ll find them and bring them to justice.”

I finally looked up at him and said the most truthful thing I knew, like it was a given fact. “No. I don’t think you will.”

CHAPTER 10

Him

At half-past four p.m., we arrived at the house of the woman who’d seen my wife and her abductor. There’d been a wreck on the highway, causing a traffic jam, and I’d barely resisted the urge to tell Oscar to drive on the shoulder and I’d deal with the consequences when we were flagged down. I’d managed to somehow hold in the road rage and say nothing as we inched forward for nearly an hour before we were finally underway again.

By the time we reached the small home listed as her last-known address, I was agitated and raw, so I made sure to control my breathing before even thinking about getting out of the truck.

“What’re you thinkin’?” Oscar asked as he pulled to the curb on the opposite side of the road from the house. We’d scope it out first before we approached, making sure not to spook Gwen—the sister of the server at the bar—or anyone else in the house by having a strange car pull up out front.

I took in the patchy-looking yard with its sagging front porch, peeling yellow paint, rusty wire fencing, and washed-out slide and plastic playhouse in the front yard, and thought about how tough it’d be to raise a couple of kids as a single mom with an addiction problem. I didn’t judge her; I knew what the pharmaceutical industry had done to create the opioid crisis we found ourselves in—and for that, fuck the Sackler family.

Before answering Oscar, however, I sighed. I was so over being patient. “I think we go knock on the door and see if anybody answers.”

Oscar put a hand on my shoulder and pointed to Eggy, who was poking his nose out of the sling. “I think he should take the lead. Answering the door to a guy holding a dog is a no-brainer. Answering it to a couple of detective-looking strangers is probably a hard pass.”

I grunted. He had a point.

We got out of the truck, and I carefully lifted Eggy out of the sling, setting him down on the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. He sniffed around, did his thing, then sat up on his back haunches, begging to be picked up.

He’d do that all the time with Abby, but this was the first time he’d ever done it with me, and swear to God, I needed a second to compose myself when I picked him up, keeping my back to Oscar while I took a few deep breaths and held Eggy close.

After clearing my throat, I said, “Let’s go.”

We crossed the street, and I carried Eggy in the crook of my arm. He laid limply along the length of my forearm, and I knew he was presenting his cutest self. It was like he was in on the jig to get Gwen to open the door.

Oscar stepped to the side as I went up to the door and knocked, holding Eggy high so that he’d be the first thing Gwen would see if she came to the door to check the peephole.

Sure enough, a couple of seconds later, the door opened, and there stood a sickly-looking, painfully thin woman with mouse-brown hair, deep-set eyes, a pronounced jaw, and clothes that were far too big for her. “That ain’t our dog,” she said, by way of hello.

“I know,” I said softly. “Hi, Gwen. I’m Dutch. The dog belongs to my wife, and I think you may have seen her.”

Her brow furrowed. I was relieved to see that she didn’t appear high, which actually meant nothing. Addicts can be sharp as tacks depending on the timing and the amount of the last dose they’d taken.

“I don’t get it,” she said, just as a little toddler in pigtails and sucking on a pacifier came up behind Gwen and wrapped her arms around her mother’s leg. The girl stared at Eggy with big, blue eyes, and I bent low so that she could see him up close. His tail wagged as he looked and sniffed at her, and a smile spread behind the pacifier.

“My wife’s name is Abigail Cooper. We were staying in a cabin north of here along the Blackhawk River in Lincoln when she went missing this past October.