Friend Me (28 page)

She closed her eyes, barely willing to face what would come next.

His betrayal had been so great. He had allowed that woman into their house, and . . . The tears came again,
two people she had trusted had humiliated her
.

Was she going to have to spend the rest of her life wondering if he was telling the truth, wondering if he was with someone else? Trust had to be built on more than wishes.

Pastor Feldner's voice came to her now. Slow, cadenced. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” He wanted her to understand that Scott could not earn her forgiveness. She just had to give it.

I'll do it, Lord. Because you say it. Not because I feel it
.

Rachel pushed the tray away, laid her head back on her pillow, tried to prepare herself. She feared to forgive Scott. She was frightened to trust him again, so soon.

“Done with that breakfast?”

The orderly picked up the tray, and Rachel thumbed the button for a nurse to come. She hoped Scott would be a long time arriving. She needed time to get ready. Time to be believable.

“How can I help you?” The nurse that had cleaned her up the first time was back. “You're sure looking better.”

Rachel's smile was weak. “My husband will probably be coming by today. It's all right if he comes in now.”

“Are you sure, honey? If you need some space . . .”

“No, it's okay. I want to see him.”

“I'll go get him if you're ready.”

“What? How will you get him?”

“Sweetheart, he's been in the waiting room all night.”

She whispered, “Okay,” then turned to look out the window again. The leaves moved in the light breeze. What would she say to him? Back and forth they moved.

“Rachel?”

She took her eyes from the tree outside, turned her head to see Scott in the door.

“I love you, Rachel.”

And I love you
.

She put her arms out and let him come into her embrace.

Plans

T
he buckle snapped as Rachel cinched the seat belt tightly around herself. Her face was drawn, but the color was returning. Scott closed her car door, went around to the driver's side, and settled down behind the wheel. The windshield was dusty, the result of three days in the hospital parking lot.

The Andersons were at the house and the children were safe. Scott had scarcely left Rachel's side.

He was weary, but elated at the same time. He was bringing his wife home.

It was time to make everything new again and time to defend their family.

“It's almost like going to someone else's house, isn't it?” he asked.

She dipped her head. “Yes, but not for long. Just as soon as I get everything wiped down I'll be okay again. I've got to get every trace of that woman out of my house.”

It was an odd feeling, going back to his home, treating it like
a hazardous materials cleanup. An invader had been inside and like any kind of dangerous predator had left its mark. Animals always left a trail.

He sensed his mind focusing on their situation. Clarity was returning. Rachel was safe and the children would be all right. That was good for now, but the threat remained.

Scott tightened his grip on the wheel as he accelerated onto the highway. “The most important thing we've got to do is get the kids somewhere safe. Now that your dad's here, he and your mom can take them both back home with them until we figure out what we have to do. It may not take long to track Melissa down, whoever she is.”

“Agreed. I don't think they'll have any problem with that. Dad already told me that they would do whatever we asked to help make us safe again.”

“I know. Thank God for them.” Scott reached for Rachel's hand, found it, and held it tightly. “We'll do whatever it takes and we'll do it together.”

Rachel's hand was smaller than Scott's, but she gripped his firmly. “Together. The way God intended.”

•  •  •

ANDY ANDERSON
put his arm around Scott's shoulder and steered him toward the empty laundry room. “You haven't told us much, and that's okay. I just want to hear from you that our daughter's going to be safe. Promise me that?”

Andy's eyes locked on Scott's, who met his gaze and returned the same intensity.

He took the older man's hand in his own, gripped his forearm with the other. “I promise you she'll be okay. That we'll all
be safe soon. There're some things we don't know yet, but we're going to learn all we need to.”

Scott paused, breathed out. “And I'm going to make my family safe.”

“That's good enough for me, son. We'll be praying for you constantly. We love you both. I'm trusting you completely.”

The two men embraced, then returned to help their wives finish packing up the car.

•  •  •

“YOU CALL US WHEN
you get there, okay? Don't forget.” Rachel waved to her mother as she closed the door on her father's Chrysler sedan. Angela and Scotty waved back from the big rear seat. Ruff bounced across the seat and pressed his wet nose against the window, leaving a smeared splotch.

“They'll be fine.” Scott wrapped his arm around Rachel's shoulders. “They couldn't be with better people than your mom and dad.”

She nodded and leaned close to Scott as they watched the big car leave the driveway and move onto the road. When the car was out of sight they turned and went back into the house.

Scott laid two yellow notepads on the dining room table, one for each of them. He put his laptop computer on the table and flipped up the lid, powering it on. By the time the coffee had dripped through and been poured into two large, heavy mugs they were ready to work.

“Let's review what we know,” said Scott. “We probably know more than we think we do. Number one, we both got fooled.
Alicia
is real. Not fake.”

“And I think that must mean she works for the website
somehow,” said Rachel. “Otherwise, how could she have done all she did?”

“I think then that the first thing we're going to want to do is check out the company.” On the laptop, he keyed in http://www.VirtualFriendMe.com. From the website menu he chose “About.” A brief history of the company appeared and the company's corporate address on the northeast side of Indianapolis.

“See this?” He pointed to the address. “I know where that is.”

Rachel brought her head close to Scott's. He felt her warm breath on his cheek. It felt good to him, good to be close to her again.

“I know that place too. What else is there? Look at all the documents.”

Scott said, “Look here, they have a press release from their big Go-Live.”

“What's a Go-Live?”

“That's when a company officially tells the world their website is running. They had theirs here.”

He clicked on the hyperlink and a PDF file expanded onto the display. “I'll print it out.”

“Let me look while you check that.” She clicked other links while Scott turned to pluck the papers coming out of the printer.

He was quiet until she heard a low whistle escape his lips.

“And what do you know? Wonder if it's her.” He pointed to a name.

Rachel took the sheet, studied the document. “Melissa Montalvo. That's the right first name. I guess it could be. Let's see what it says about her.”

He put his finger back on the spot and followed along the
line. “It says she's the chief software scientist. She probably has access to everything. Let's find out what else we can learn about her.”

The website revealed nothing else about the person they had found. Most important, there was no picture.

“Check Google images. See if she's there.”

Scott tried the image search, came up dry. “This is really strange. Can you imagine how hard you'd have to work to keep Google from having any picture at all of you?”

“Way weird. Okay, this isn't working. You know what we're going to have to do, don't you?” asked Rachel.

Scott nodded, as his stomach took a turn. The last time he'd seen her he'd been weak. That wasn't going to happen again. She'd tried to kill Rachel.

“We're going to go there and see if she shows up. We have to find out if it's her or not. And if it is, then we're going to dig deeper.”

“Do you think the sheriff will ever come up with anything?”

“Maybe. They seem interested enough. For all I know they're still looking at me. I don't blame them. I'm sure they thought I did something to you. So much weird stuff goes on today. They don't know anything about me.”

“It had to be when she was babysitting that she put that poison in the bottle, though, don't you think?” asked Rachel.

“Probably. But for all we know, she even knew the code to the garage door opener, or copied one of your keys when you were at Hugest Losers. We just don't know. One thing we do know is that we can't depend on other people to do this for us, police or not. God gave us our family and it's up to us to protect it.”

Rachel tapped her index finger on the tabletop. “What is that website for professional networking? Linked Up, or something like that? Maybe she has an entry there.”

A quick search of the website brought up eight different matches on the name spread all across the country. Two had pictures and were eliminated, but one matched.

“She's got a listing, but there's just a blank avatar where a picture should be. Not unusual; I don't have my picture there either.”

“We're just going to spin our wheels doing all these web searches. Tomorrow morning we'll go to their office, park the car, and watch everyone that comes or goes. If she shows up for work, we'll know it.”

“What if we don't see her? Then what do we do?”

“Whether we see her or not, I think the next step has to be the same. We find out what we can about her. We know about how old she is and we know what she looks like. We know her name's Melissa, and we're almost as sure that her last name is Montalvo. That makes pretty good sense so far.

“We can ask questions. Play dumb. I doubt that anyone else in that company has any idea what has happened. Think about it—they're in business to make a profit, not mess with people's lives. No, I think this must have been purely the work of one person.”

“Why did she come after us, Scott? I still can't figure that out. Why did she go after you? Do you think we'll ever know?”

“We'll probably only know that if she tells us. And who knows? She might do just that. Time will tell.”

“How do we stop her, then? Let's say that she works there and we find her. Let's even assume we find out where she lives
and some personal information on her. What do we do then? Give all that to the police?”

“I don't know if the sheriff will be able to do any more than they have already. They didn't have a name, they didn't have anyone they could place at our home, nothing. Only your fingerprints were on the pill bottle. They did the basic things. They checked the references at Hugest Losers. That was all fake. I think that as far as they're concerned, they've done what they can. Unless something else happens, of course.”

“Unless she gives us some kind of confession, which I really doubt, all we can do is confront her and threaten to expose her. Maybe her job is important enough to her that she'll back off. In any case she'll know she isn't going to get any farther with us.”

Rachel wagged her head back and forth. “But we have to remember the children. We can't assume anything. The woman's a nutcase, and dangerous. She's already shown she can get close to them.”

Scott smiled grimly, blinked. “You're right about that. Okay, so maybe we don't know everything right now. Not even what step three is going to look like. I say we don't waste any more time, though. We take step one, and go to the company in the morning. No matter what we find, we take step two, and ask around. Find out what we can about her. When we've done all that, we regroup, see where we stand.”

“Scott, there's something important you've got to do. I can't do it.” Rachel shivered, crossed her arms.

“What? Just tell me.”

She picked her cell phone off the desktop and put it in his hand.

“Her pictures are in there, when she's holding Angela. I can't look at them. I want them gone.”

He scrolled to the first picture, nearly pressed the delete button, then stopped. “I'd better forward them to my phone. We may need them someday.”

Rachel raised one eyebrow. “Why would we want them?”

“Not us. The sheriff may want them. Who knows? But I'm getting them off your phone.”

“There's something else we'd better do too. We'd better pray and ask God to help us with this. Keep us from being stupid. Lead us. We need His help.”

Scott nodded and bowed his head. “Lord God, we are weak people. Needy people. Father, we're Your children and we need Your help. Our own wisdom and strength are not enough for the job we've got before us. Please lead us, help us, bless us. You said, every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth. We're asking. We're seeking. We wait upon you, Lord.”

After the prayer, Scott said, “I haven't told Pastor Feldner about this, not in detail. He knows that I did something wrong, but I didn't tell him everything. Do you think I should? I really want a solid Christian like him praying with us.”

“You'd have to tell him to keep it absolutely secret. I think most of this has to be between us and the Lord. But yes, I think you should.”

“Okay. I will. There's something else, something really obvious, we ought to do. Do you know what I mean?” He shot Rachel a questioning look.

Looking away, she said, “I know. I've been avoiding it. I think I'm a little scared. Not scared like something might happen
to us, but scared like I might do something dumb that will give our plans away.”