He pushed me from behind, nudging me down another hall to the back door. He unlocked it and opened it up, and we stepped onto a flagstone patio with a chipped porcelain birdbath. Wrapped around the base of it was a snoozing porcelain puppy.
The dog. The fucking dog.
“Nothing was gone but her purse that you could tell. No clothes?”
Fox shook his head. “Look, why don’t we—”
“What about the dog? That was still there too?”
He frowned. “Vey? Yeah, she wouldn’t take him.”
“Not him, dammit. The stuffed dog.”
“I didn’t see a dog. Where was it?”
Heart racing, I paced a circle around the crumbling patio. I needed to move, not just stand here and talk. I needed to find her and figure out what the hell that letter had meant. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. “A couple weeks ago, we went to the carnival. I won her a stuffed Dalmatian. She left it at my place, and I brought it to her Thursday night.”
“Thursday night when? She was home all Thursday night.”
“I sneaked in.” I held up a hand. “Save it. It’s not important now.”
“I’ll decide what’s important. You sneaked into my damn apartment for what, a booty call? Real freaking classy, man. I thought we were friends.”
“We were.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We are. I’m sorry about all of this. If you had any idea how sorry I was…” I shook my head. Now wasn’t the time. All that mattered was finding Carly. “I need to find out if the dog is still there.”
“I don’t get the significance of the damn stuffed dog.”
“She wouldn’t leave without it,” I insisted. “If it’s still there, then she didn’t leave on her own. Is your mom home? Can you call and ask her to check around for it? It’s hard to miss.”
He pressed his lips into a line and pulled out his phone. “For the record, I’m fucking furious at you right now, and I’m only calling about this dumb dog because my girl’s losing her mind and I don’t know what else to do.” He rubbed his jaw. For the first time I could recall, he hadn’t shaved that morning. “Mom, no sign of Carly? No. No, I didn’t think so. Yeah, the note was pretty clear, it just doesn’t make any sense. Look, I need you to look for something for me. Can you try to find a black and white spotted stuffed dog? Check the room you share with Carly first.”
“She can’t miss it, it’s huge. I left it on the fire escape.”
Fox glared at me. “Check the fire escape.” A moment later, he frowned. “It’s there? On the fire escape?” He looked at me and my hands went to fists. “It’s still there.”
I shut my eyes. Dread coiled inside me, making my gut clench. “She didn’t leave on her own.”
“But the note—”
“I don’t care what the goddamn note said, if she left that dog, she didn’t leave on her own.” I slammed a fist on the birdbath.
The little bluebird snapped off and landed in pieces on the ground.
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything, Mom. Thanks. Bye.”
He stepped right up to me. “I’m going to ask you once to tell me what happened from the beginning. I don’t want the storybook version, where you tell me this all was because of love. Because if it wasn’t for love, I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands, here and now.” His normally placid blue eyes burned with rage. “She’s my family. If you’re right that she didn’t leave on her own, you’re going to help me to figure out how to get her back.”
I flexed the jaw he’d hammered last night and welcomed the blast of pain. I deserved it and so much more. “If we don’t get her back, I won’t stop you.”
Twenty-Six
I didn’t know how long I’d been in the darkness. Too long. I was in a room with narrow rectangular windows near the ceiling, making me think I was underground. The light from those windows was almost nonexistent, especially yesterday when November’s gloom had been especially thick.
But today, there was sun.
I stared up at the windows, wiggling my fingers to get some circulation back into them. My wrists were bound behind my chair so tightly that my arms kept going to sleep. My ankles were tied together too, and my feet were bare. The frigid concrete beneath them had seeped into my bones, and I’d been shivering all night. It was cold and dank wherever they’d taken me, and I wore only jeans and a thin shirt and sweater.
And I was hungry. So hungry. I hadn’t eaten much the night before this happened, and now I regretted it. I should’ve chowed down. I didn’t think t