Watching her mother like this filled her with excruciating pain. Haven’t we been through enough, Lord?
“Mom, you’re delusional!”
“No, you’re delusional,” Mom said. “You’ve been pretending you don’t know what’s going on for years.”
Clearing the boxes revealed a wood door at the bottom of the closet. Erin couldn’t believe her eyes. Shock rolled through her. Mom was right ... Erin was in denial. She had yet to process the newspaper articles she’d read with Mom’s picture—the missing woman had been presumed murdered by a gangster.
But no—she was very much alive.
Mom pulled the door open. “It’s small, but we can both fit.”
“In the crawl space?” No thank you.
Mom snorted a scoffing laugh. “What good would that do us now that we’ve been found? We needed an escape in case this day arrived.”
“This day?”
“Delmar dug the tunnel for me. It took him years to dig it, and he has kept it a secret this whole time.” She glanced at Erin. “That’s why we’re close. We’re friends. I keep him close. You understand?”
She swallowed. “No, Mom. I don’t understand any of this.” Deny. Deny. Deny like so many of those criminal minds she’d picked.
Denial didn’t change the facts.
A sound—someone kicking in the front door—startled her.
Mom yanked the shotgun out of Erin’s hands. “Get in. Go down there, and I’ll follow.” Mom turned her back to Erin and held the shotgun, ready to fire to protect them. “You need to hurry,” she whispered.
“Mom, it’s the cops. It’s help. I called for help.” Please, God, let it be the cops.
“You’re wrong. They’re here for us.” Mom glanced back at Erin and stared, her eyes clear. Everything about her seemed coherent except her words and actions. But she hadn’t hallucinated this opening in the floor.
A man appeared in the doorway and exchanged gunfire with Mom. Erin ducked and climbed down the ladder into the tunnel. Mom followed her, shut the door, and left them in darkness. Then she switched on a flashlight.
“More of them will follow.” She locked the tunnel doorway. “This will only deter them so long.”
Mom hopped to the ground of the small tunnel and picked up a duffel bag next to the ladder, lifting it over her shoulder. The bag had been sitting there, waiting for this day.
“Let’s go.”
But Erin couldn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t cooperate. “Tell me what this is about.”
Mom pressed her hands against Erin’s cheeks like she was a little girl. “Don’t you understand what’s happening? They found me. Oh, my baby, my darling, I never meant for this to happen.”
“Who found you?” The article was a blur in Erin’s mind. She didn’t want to accept the truth.
“We can talk while we keep moving.” Mom made her way down the tunnel, and Erin had no choice but to follow.
She forced her legs to move and put one foot in front of the other. “Who are you?”
“I’m your mother, Erin.”
“But I mean, who are you beyond that? You’re the missing woman in the articles that Dwayne wanted Newt to look into, aren’t you?”
“My father, your grandfather, was put in prison for a long time. He was the leader of a crime organization. The night before he was arrested, he killed someone and knew they would want retribution. They would want me. He told me to disappear. I had no choice if I wanted to live.”
“Are you in WITSEC?” If so, then why weren’t the US Marshals whisking them away to a new life?
Mom paused and turned back to look at Erin. “No. There was no time to negotiate with federal agencies. I had to leave, so I disappeared and started a new life in Wisconsin. Got married and had a child. I lived a happy and good life, and then your father died. You were only three and too young to remember him, but I stayed and we had a good life—that is, until Missy was taken. I knew we had to disappear again because someone had found us. They tried to take you to lure me in and get their retribution.”