The buzz of the phone filled the car, but no one answered.
Clara’s voicemail picked up.
Nineteen
“Can you hear me?”
Delilah thought she had to be dreaming. The faint, disembodied voice drifted into the room seemingly from nowhere. It sounded high-pitched, young and feminine. She thought about responding, but stopped. The man could be behind it. He said she had to prove that he could trust her. Maybe the voice was a test.
She hadn’t been able to put out of her mind what he said earlier, when he saw that she’d managed to push her blindfold off: “I haven’t had any of them do that before.”
Any of them? Other girls? Girls he locked up in the house before her?
The man hadn’t told her not to talk to anyone, but she instinctively knew he wouldn’t like it. Although he’d fed her maybe an hour earlier, her stomach growled near empty. Delilah stared at the stain on the mattress and wondered whose blood it was. She thought about the voice and the woman who helped her. Could she be another prisoner?
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m—” When she heard the voice the second time, Delilah began to answer but abruptly stopped. She longed for someone to talk to, but was it worth taking the risk? What if it was some kind of sick trick?
“Say something if you can hear me.”
The third time she heard the voice, Delilah thought about what she had to lose if she responded and the man heard her. She’d asked him to unlock the chains that pinched her wrists and ankles, the bonds that kept her from moving about the room, of stretching out to sleep. To use the bucket he gave her for a toilet, she had to inch over, her legs cramping beneath her. Her arms throbbed every time she nudged up her skirt.
As meager a victory as it would be, the ability to walk around the room shined like a beacon.
Then she heard it again.
“It’s me. The girl who was in your room. Answer me.”
Delilah knelt and looked about the room, searching. Her eyes settled on a heating vent cut into the baseboard where the floor met the wall, to the right of the boarded-up window. That must be where the voice came from. Delilah stared at the vent, waiting to hear the voice again. She decided that the next time, she would take a chance. She would answer.
Minutes passed. Hours ticked by.
Only silence.
Twenty
As I hung up with Samantha at the youth center, my phone vibrated and I clicked onto voicemail. Max’s voice came over the SUV’s speaker. “Clara, I’m sorry the meeting didn’t go better this morning, but I want to make it clear that I agree with the chief. It seems that I’ve brought you here for nothing. I never should have called you. It’s time for you to go home to Dallas. I’ll keep you posted if anything develops.”
In the passenger seat, Hannah turned toward me. “What’s Max talking about? Did they tell you to go home?”
There were a few things I hadn’t mentioned to Hannah. No reason to make her worry. “The men agreed that I need to leave,” I said. “I disagreed.”
Hannah gave me a knowing frown. “So we’re all alone in this?”
“It looks like it,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for dragging you into it.”
At first, Hannah appeared apprehensive, but she said, “No, it’s okay. I understand how worried you are about Delilah. And I was the one who told you about Eliza and Jayme. But Clara, this isn’t what I do. I’m not a cop. Do you have a plan?”
“Sure,” I said, only partially lying. “While I wait for Samantha to get back to me, we’re going to the shelter. I know you need to get back there, and I have things to do on my laptop. I’m curious about someone. I want to know more about him.”
“Who?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Hannah’s frown grew deeper, but she didn’t press for more information. “I’m surprised Max sided with the others. It doesn’t seem like him.”
“At the meeting, he took my side at one point. I don’t think he’s convinced that Delilah is safe,” I said. “The old Max, the boy I knew when we were kids, would have backed me up all the way, but he’s changed.”
Hannah looked hesitant, like she wasn’t sure she should respond, but then said, “Clara, I’ve always suspected that Max never got over you. He’s asked me about you often in the year or so since he moved back, wanted to know if I’d heard from you. When he asked you to come back, I wondered if it was only about Delilah – I thought maybe there was still a spark there. You two were close. It’s not impossible that you two would…”
My nerves kicked up full throttle, an automatic reflex when anyone suggested anything could happen between me and a man. I focused on the road. Until the previous day, we hadn’t seen each other in years, but Hannah apparently still had the ability to decipher my body language. “You know, there are a lot of good men out there,” she said, her voice soft, coaxing.
“Absolutely.”
“But you’re…?”
“Looking for Delilah,” I said. I shot her a glance that said I didn’t want advice. “This is what I do. I’m a cop. And to me, this makes sense. Things get personal… my experience is that if you let anyone get too close, they disappoint you.”
“You’re really talking about men,” Hannah said.
We turned the corner and drove along the diminishing cornfield, row after row harvested and chopped down. “There have been times when I’ve felt like one of those cornstalks,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“The only things of value I had were taken from me, like the cobs torn from their stems. Then my life was cut down and mowed under.”
A look of incredible sadness washed over Hannah. “Clara, all men aren’t the enemy.”
“I know, but
