Stay With Me: A Brenna Spector Novel of Suspense Read online

  “Stop crying, Brenna. Maya can hear.”

  Brenna pulled the journal out of her bag, clutched it tight until the memory subsided and the electronic voice announced the stop at Fiftieth Street, and she got up and slipped out the door, blinking tears out of her eyes, remembering the bag and what was in it. Remembering only her sister.

  “Can you please ring Mr. Dufresne’s room?” Brenna asked the front desk clerk. As she’d expected, Plaza Garden Suites looked very much the same—that ice cube chandelier still in place, along with the long, lacquered front desk. But the rug was gone, the wide-planked floor now bare and polished, giving the place a slightly more upscale feel.

  “One moment, ma’am,” said the clerk, whose face was young and pleasant enough for her to get away with “ma’am.”

  Brenna’s gaze wandered around the lobby, landed on the small faux marble bar, on the man sitting on one of the stools, nursing a lager, staring directly at her.

  The clerk said, “May I have your name please?”

  “That’s okay. I think I might see him.”

  She turned and headed directly for the man at the bar, the man from the paternity testing lab. Mr. Friday Casual.

  “You remember me,” he said as she approached, his voice much lighter and more musical than his somber face let on. It was a salesman’s voice. Friendly.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled, the saucer eyes crinkling at the corners. “I figured you would. You know. Memory.”

  “You’re Alan Dufresne?”

  He nodded. “Your downstairs neighbor is quite a piece of work. I tried explaining to her that I needed to see you personally, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “You followed me to ClarkLabs?”

  He nodded. “I thought I could talk to you then,” he said. “I was going to do it while your friend was getting his test done, but . . . honestly you didn’t seem much in the mood for talking.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Was that Trent, by the way?”

  “Uh . . . Yes.”

  “Looks exactly like I thought he would.” He smiled. “I hope he’s okay.”

  Brenna peered at him, this complete stranger. A man she’d never seen in her life before that exchange of glances at ClarkLabs, and yet his whole attitude—the relaxed posture, the familiarity with which he said Trent’s name, the way he smiled so intently at her and lifted his glass—all of it said otherwise. “So good to see you.” That, too. He said it as though he knew her well enough to mean it.

  Who are you?

  Brenna’s heart pounded. She closed her eyes for a few moments, got her breathing back down to normal. She tried not to think of the bag in her hands, this twenty-eight-year-old bag, the faint mold-smell of the clothes inside, the feel of the paper, almost silky from age. She tried hard not to think of the long-expired driver’s license or what lay with it—the keepsakes of a young girl, Brenna’s sister, left for dead in a hotel room by a man who took her diary with him, nothing more. The purple plastic watch. The road map. These items, which, somehow, Alan Dufresne had come to own. Clea’s favorite jacket . . .

  She got all of that out of her mind and leveled her eyes at this smiling man and said something she’d never even thought about saying in the twenty-eight years she’d been hyperthymestic: “I’m sorry. Have we met before?”

  He frowned. “Pardon?”

  “I can tell you for a fact I’ve never seen your face before today.”

  “Well you haven’t. But still . . .”

  “Still, what?”

  “You’re Brenna Spector, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your sister Clea ran off when you were eleven years old.”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t seen or heard from her.”

  “Right. So?”

  “So . . .” He took a swallow of beer. “We know each other.”

  Brenna exhaled, hard.

  Obviously, he’d seen her on the news. He might have even seen her interview on Faith’s show, Sunrise Manhattan, last fall, during which she’d gone far afield of the Neff case to discuss everything from her relentless memory to her own self-perceived failings as a mother, to Clea, forever-missing Clea, the ghost by her side and in her mind and all over her life. Faith was a damn good interviewer, and for Brenna, that had been a bad thing.

  The e-mails she’d gotten. The phone calls . . .

  It made Brenna understand why real, full-time celebrities tend toward paranoia. All these people out there, these strangers in their casual Friday clothes with their thousand-yard stares, acting as though they know you intimately—not just acting but truly feeling that way. And you’ve got no one but yourself to blame. How foolhardy is it to share so much of yourself on a screen, in front of so many unseen strangers, even showing them your tears . . . Giving them that much power over you? How dumb is that?

  Brenna called the bartender over, ordered a beer, clinked bottles with Dufresne, and took a long, steadying swallow. She wanted to get up and leave him behind, but she couldn’t, not now. Just cut to the chase.

  “Why do you have my sister’s things?”

  He blinked at her. “You know why.”

  Nut job. Brenna brought the bottle to her lips again. “Why don’t you humor me a little?” she said. “Tell me the whole story. Like we’ve never met.”

  He gulped his beer. “Brenna, when you saw me in the lab, you had no idea who I was, did you?”

  “No.”

  “What did you think I was in there for?”

  “I . . . well I assumed . . .”

  “You thought I was at the lab for the same reason as your assistant.”

  “Well, yes. Who wouldn’t?”

  “You didn’t think it had anything to do with you.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Isn’t that strange?” he said. “You can look right at a person. You can look straight into their eyes, and yet still you have no idea what’s going on behind them. Windows on the soul . . . what a bunch of crap that is, huh?”

  He stared at her. She stared back.

  “I’m not sure I understand what that has to do with my sister’s things.”

  “My dad,” he said. “I thought I knew him.”

  “Your dad?”

  “My whole life, I looked up to him. I thought he was the most honest man I’d ever known. Turns out he was keeping secrets, right up until the day he died.”

  “What secrets?”

  His huge black eyes settled on her, marble-hard. “You’re messing with me now.”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Alan, but—”

  “The bag.”

  “My sister’s things?”

  “I never knew he had a storage space. I have no idea how he knew your sister and I never will, because he never mentioned her name to us, not once.”

  “But he had all of her things.”

  “For thirty years. Imagine, Brenna. Imagine me getting that delinquent payment notice, addressed to him, four months after he died. Imagining me going all the way there and busting open that lock and finding a girl’s clothing. A girl’s driver’s license.”

  Brenna watched his face, the dark eyes, brightening from pain. “Where was it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where was the storage space?”

  He blinked at her. “Utah.”

  “Pine City, Utah,” Brenna said, because it had to be Pine City. Pine City, Utah was the place where Clea’s diary ended. The place where, one month after leaving Bill and his blue car behind, Clea had met a boy on the road and fallen in love—only to be left for dead in a motel room.

  For a moment, Brenna could feel the diary in her hands again, the pages between her fingers as she flips to the very last page. Just three sentences, the ink strangely light on the paper, the pen b
arely touching it:

  Pine City is TOO SMALL. My hands keep shaking. I think I took too much.

  “Brenna?” he said slowly. “I understand you want to test me, make sure I’m the same Alan Dufresne. But this is kind of cruel.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why are you acting as if we haven’t ever spoken?”

  “We haven’t.”

  “Maybe not in the real world,” he said, that black gaze fixed on her face.

  Brenna’s jaw tightened. She felt her face going hot. “I’m getting tired of this.”

  “Tired of what?”

  “Cut the crap, Alan. You’re not crazy enough. I know those are my sister’s things. But you know and I know that we’ve never breathed the same air before today, and whatever you know or think you know about me on a personal level is a news-created fantasy.”

  His eyes narrowed. He set his beer down on the bar and stared at it. “The safe deposit box was in Provo,” he said, very quietly. “I told you that.”

  “When, Alan?” Brenna said, frustration rushing through her. “When did you tell me that?”

  “In my last e-mail.”

  “What?”

  “You’re the one who needs to cut the crap, Brenna,” he said. “We’ve been e-mailing for the past two weeks. You know it as well as I do.”

  4

  This wasn’t the Saturday that Faith Gordon-Rappaport had envisioned last night while falling asleep. Faith was used to that, of course. As much as she was a born planner, her job was, by nature, unpredictable—a fact that, over the years, she’d grown not only to appreciate but to love.

  Interviews came through and fell through, front-running politicians dived headfirst into career-ending scandals, children went missing and starlets went crazy and tragedy struck at times and places you could never expect or imagine, never in your worst nightmares . . . And Faith had to stay on top of it all. Not only did it sharpen her skills as a broadcast journalist, it made her heart beat that much faster, made her appreciate the here and now that much more, knowing that, in an instant, everything could go so horribly wrong.

  Back when she was a teen and doing pageants, Faith’s coach, Kathy, used to call her a “rehearsal addict.” “Most girls, I have to twist their arms trying to get them to practice,” Kathy used to say. “But you, honey, you’re just too prepared for your own good. How am I going to unlearn some spontaneity into you?”

  Kathy couldn’t, poor dear. Faith was by far the most overprepared, overrehearsed, boring piece of white bread ever to grace the pageant circuit, and she’d have been the first to admit it, even back then.

  But Faith’s job had succeeded where Coach Kathy had failed. It had taught Faith, once and for all, that a good eighty percent of life is beyond anyone’s control, that it never does what you expect it to, and that all those crappy clichés about the best-laid plans are clichés for good reason. It was a lesson Faith was grateful for every day of her life—the ability to just “roll with it” so much more important than any trick or twirl or judge-beguiling answer she’d rehearsed to death during her Miss Teen Georgia days.

  But still . . .

  Today, Faith had been hoping for some normalcy. It was Jim’s and her turn to have Maya for a few days, and she’d been looking forward to time alone with her stepdaughter at the handoff . . . Actually, she’d been counting on it.

  It had been so long since Faith and Maya had talked, really talked, and she could feel this part of her life—the one sweet, simple thing she’d always been able to count on—she could feel it turning as unpredictable as the rest.

  Last week, she’d twice caught Maya typing furiously on her laptop, only to switch screens and slam it shut when she realized Faith was in the room. Maya, who had never hidden anything from Faith before.

  Faith had asked Maya what she’d been typing, of course.

  And Maya had replied the way any teenager would: “Nothing.”

  “Nicolai,” Faith said to her cameraman as he took a light reading of her face. “Do you feel like you can tell your parents anything?”

  He put the cardboard down and gave her a look like she’d just spoken to him in ancient Sanskrit.

  “Are you serious?” he said.

  Nicolai’s peachy skin was half covered by unkempt dark beard and he wore glasses with thick black frames that Faith had always suspected were clear glass. He had an entire wardrobe of baggy flannel hunting shirts, wing-tip shoes and combat boots, mailman shorts, and brown UPS shirts and dress pants that were probably considered pathetically outré in the late seventies. Nicolai was a spoiled little boy who went to work in costume. Screw him.

  “Yes, Nicolai, I’m serious.”

  “I’m twenty-four years old,” he said, as though that was supposed to mean anything. Five years from now, he could date Maya, no one would bat an eye.

  Faith sighed. “Point well taken.”

  She supposed she should talk to Jim about this. But maybe not. What if Maya had been writing in a journal, or complaining about her parents to a friend from school? She was a thirteen-year-old girl who had never seriously misbehaved—and with a mother, bless Brenna’s heart, who remembered every misstep she ever made. Wasn’t Maya entitled to her secrets? Wasn’t everyone?

  The lights were hot on Faith’s skin. Not for the first time, she felt as though her on-camera makeup were pressing against her, smothering her. There were downsides to this job—the long hours, the pressure, the lack of privacy, which was, of course, ironic. As a nosy, privacy-invading TV journalist, Faith had more stalkers than she’d had as a beauty queen.

  None of it was conducive to family. Maybe it was time to rethink this job, take a little hiatus, dedicate herself to being a full-time stepmom . . .

  God, Maya would probably hate that, which was sad. Couple of years ago, it would’ve made her the happiest little girl in the world, which just goes to show, you can’t put things off when it comes to kids. If you don’t seize the moment and ride it for all it’s worth, they’ll outgrow you.

  They’ll leave you behind.

  Faith needed to focus. Here she was, thinking of family issues while sitting in the Bensonhurst home of Ashley Stanley, “get” of the year.

  Ashley Stanley, who had been held captive for ten years by husband-and-wife sadists Charles and Renee Lemaire. She’d been twenty-three when she was escaped a year ago, and unlike Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard, she never had the satisfaction of seeing her tormentors brought to justice. By the time Ashley had given the police directions to the home where she’d spent all of her teen years, often gagged and shackled under the bed while the couple entertained unwitting dinner guests, the Lemaires had escaped.

  Ashley lived alone. Her mother—her only family—had died four years ago, and with the Lemaires still at large, she’d imposed on herself a new type of captivity: doors triple-bolted, blocked ID on her phone, natural blonde hair dyed mud brown. She maintained no close friendships, didn’t do social media. She didn’t even have an e-mail address.

  And she had never given an interview. It had taken months for Faith and her producers to coax this poor, terrified girl out of hiding. In fact, Faith might not have had an interview with Ashley at all if, after seeing the sensitive way she’d treated Brenna on camera, Ashley hadn’t agreed to have lunch with Faith.

  A lunch that, sadly, had turned into yet another horror. Despite taking every precaution possible to keep it under wraps, the two women had been snapped three weeks ago at the Capitol Grille in midtown. The photo had appeared everywhere—and, figuring she had nothing to lose, sad, trembling Ashley had finally agreed to the interview. (“May as well,” she’d said.) And here, Faith was secretly angry she’d switched from tomorrow to today?

  How selfish could she be?

  From behind the camera, Nicolai said, “Makeup says Ashley will be ready in five to seven minutes.”
<
br />   Faith nodded. She thought of the thick scar down the left side of Ashley’s pretty face and wondered how makeup was doing with that.

  She looked around the living room of Ashley’s small, pine-scented apartment as if she were seeing it for the first time—blond-wood furniture, blue cloth couch, polished floors. No personal pictures, no artwork. A bookshelf that was bare, save for a few pastel candles in votives and an empty ceramic vase that looked as though it had been bought out of the same catalog as everything else, and at the same time, too. Everything simple and spotless and not in any way personal.

  Anyone could live here. Anyone at all.

  “Rosella says you have a call,” Nicolai said.

  Rosella, Faith’s assistant, was waiting outside with the rest of the crew. Ashley had wanted only Faith in the apartment for the interview, relenting only for Nicolai because someone had to work the camera.

  “Can she take a message?”

  Nicolai shrugged. “She says it’s one of Maya’s teachers.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  He shrugged again.

  Faith got up and smoothed her suit. She had an odd sensation, a fluttering in her stomach, a weakness in the knees as though the ground was shifting beneath her, something changing and she couldn’t stop it . . .

  Why was Maya’s teacher calling her at work? Of course Maya’s teacher would have no idea Faith was at work—it was just a cell phone number, pure and simple, on file with the school for when she couldn’t be reached on the landline.

  But . . . why?

  The image fluttered back into her mind: Maya, slamming her laptop shut. That look in her eyes . . .