Spirit (Blackwood Security, #10.5) - Elise Noble Page 0,17
her a tissue. At least one of us had come prepared. And Bradley had finally cleared up the mess in the hall and made himself useful by taking Chay to the movie theatre at the back of the house. Valerie had been understandably nervous about letting her son out of her sight, but the kid had taken to Bradley for some unfathomable reason. Perhaps it was because Bradley had found an inflatable crocodile for him to play with in the swimming pool. Honestly, I’d never seen a kid so excited. He was ready to jump into the water in his clothes, but thankfully Bradley had dug out a pair of swim shorts that Carmen’s son had forgotten to take home and led Chay off to get changed first.
Which left Dan and me to deal with Valerie. Her tears were bad, but they were also good. She was starting to trust us. And if she trusted us, we could help her.
“Could you tell us more about what went on today? The staff at Crossroads said Spencer took you from the parking lot? What happened before that?”
Dan had asked around when she dropped by the centre, but Valerie had been staying there for less than a week and she’d barely spoken to anyone during that time. Shell-shocked, that was how the centre’s director described her. She’d mostly hidden in her room with Chay. Dan said that usually happened with the really bad cases.
“Spencer says that when I married him, I became his.” They were married? Well, shit. “And that he’s got a right to see his son. That a boy needs his father and I can’t keep Chay from him. And I tried to do as he wished. I tried because Spencer was a doting dad. They drove to the park every Saturday to play soccer, and they watched movies together, and Spencer was so proud of Chay. So proud. For years, I coped with the kicks and the punches and prayed I’d survive until Chay turned eighteen, but then one night…one night…”
“It’s okay,” Dan said, squeezing Valerie’s hand. “Spencer can’t get to you here.”
Valerie gave a shuddering sniffle. “One night, we had another fight, a bad one, and Chay woke up and came downstairs. Until then, Spencer had never laid a hand on him, but when Chay started crying, Spencer slapped him. And that was how it started with me too. One slap, and then the rest followed. We couldn’t stay any longer. We couldn’t.”
“You did the right thing, and that took a lot of guts. You were thinking of your son.”
“But I acted too late, don’t you see? Once we’d left, Chay told me Spencer had been snapping at him, pushing him around on those trips to the park. And I’d missed the signs. Now that I look back, I see he’d gotten quieter, tried to avoid being alone with Spencer, but I pushed him to go because if Spencer was at the park with Chay, then he wasn’t with me. I’m a terrible mother.”
Valerie burst into great racking sobs as Dan pulled her into a hug, and I sincerely wished that I’d driven the Cayenne right over Spencer earlier. Then reversed and flattened him again.
“Even now, I can’t keep us safe. Spencer has money. He’ll always catch up with us, wherever we run.”
“What does he do? Hire investigators?”
“This time, he did. I’m sure he did.” Valerie closed her eyes for a brief moment. “I made a mistake. A huge mistake. The organisers of the Roots conference asked me to present a session, and I really needed the money. Six months had gone by, and I thought… I hoped… I screwed up.”
“He showed up there? What’s the Roots conference? Something about plants?”
“Oh, no, not plants.” Valerie cracked a smile for the first time. “Genealogy. It’s the biggest genealogy conference in the eastern United States. For networking, for picking up new clients. I don’t think Spencer attended himself, at least I didn’t see him there, but when I was speaking, I got that prickly feeling on the back of my neck, you know? Like someone was a little too interested. And three days later, Spencer showed up at our new place. I tried to be so careful. The organisers didn’t put my name on the website, or in the program, nowhere. They just listed me as ‘guest speaker.’”
“Were all the other speakers listed by their names?” Dan asked.
“Yes. I think so, yes.” Valerie’s amber eyes widened in horror. “You think that