Never Tear Us Apart (Never Tear Us Apart #1)

  Tonight, I thought of him for the first time in . . . forever. And when I refer to him, I’m not thinking of the big, bad, awful, monstrous him.

  I’m thinking of the other him. The son. William.

  Will.

  During the interview, Lisa brought him up first, asking if I’d ever had contact with him after everything that happened. I said no.

  I lied.

  He reached out to me first, right after everything happened. A handwritten letter in a barely legible scrawl, quick, hard slashes across the lined paper. Words of sorrow and pain, wishes that I was better, hope that I would be okay, and an apology.

  A long, heartfelt apology he had no reason to offer. He did right by me. He saved me. He also included a gift with his letter—a bracelet with a guardian angel charm.

  I wore that bracelet for a long time, the only thing that kept me feeling safe, kept me going. We wrote each other letters once a week at first, then a couple of times a month. Occasionally emailing, even getting brave enough to exchange texts when I finally got my own cellphone. But ultimately my mother found out about our correspondence and I was forbidden from ever talking to Will again.

  She banished him from my life and I allowed it, too afraid to defy her.

  I hadn’t worn the bracelet Will gave me in years, keeping it safely tucked away in an old jewelry box. But the night of the interview, after it aired, I dug through that box and slipped the bracelet on, my fingers sliding over the charm again and again, wishing for strength. Wishing for courage.

  Lisa sent me a skeptical look when I offered up my answer about Will, but I didn’t budge. I didn’t so much as blink. After a long, quiet moment she informed me she didn’t know what happened to him either. Could only assume he’d changed his name, created a new identity, a new life, and moved on.

  I hoped that was the case. I didn’t like thinking of the alternative. What if he turned to a life of crime like his father? What if he couldn’t shake the burden and guilt of being that horrible man’s son? What if . . . what if he took his own life and he’s no longer alive? I know I’d been tempted over the years. Suicidal thoughts ran rampant in my brain, especially when I was younger and didn’t know how to cope.

  But I soldiered on. And came out on the other side. Did Will? Was he able to soldier on?

  Lisa barely mentioned him during the interview. A few references here and there—and he deserved more than that. He’s the only reason I’m still alive. She didn’t include the clip where we talked about him in the televised interview, either. That made me inexplicably sad.

  Will wasn’t my enemy. He helped me. I don’t care about the many news accounts that implied he was a part of his father’s evil plan. He was questioned so much about why he didn’t take me to the police sooner. I, too, was questioned over and over again about Will’s role in all of this.

  Did he molest you?

  No.

  Did he make you touch him?

  No.

  Did he have sex with you?

  No.

  Did he force himself on you? Become violent with you?

  No and no.

  The police never seemed fully satisfied with my answers.

  Didn’t they realize he’d been just a kid, like me? I was almost thirteen when it happened. He’d been fifteen. Close enough to an adult, one of the cops muttered under his breath during my initial questioning. We’ve thrown murderers into prison that were younger.

  It wasn’t true, what they were implying. He was my hero.

  My angel.

  My response to his letter and gift was a card full of gratitude, written in girlish script. I sent him a small gift as well, the only thing I could manage considering I was still a child and I knew without a doubt my parents would be furious if they found out I was corresponding with my kidnapper’s son. It didn’t matter that he saved me. In their eyes, Will was the enemy.

  Halfway through the interview, I gave up watching and was on my laptop using Google. My search results came up empty. I think Lisa was right. He must have changed his name, his identity, and moved far away.

  The interview is over but I’m still searching and when I finally sit up straight, my back aches, as do my shoulders. I glance around, see the late-night talk show host smiling and cracking jokes, and I turn off the TV, unable to take the cued laughter coming from the audience.

  Fake. Everything feels fake. Unreal. I hold my hand out in front of me and curl my fingers, stretch them back out, my knuckles popping, and I notice that my fingers . . .

  They’re trembling.

  Slamming my laptop shut, I leap from my chair and roam through my tiny house, restless. Mom texted me after the interview was over, asking if I was okay, and I reassured her that I was fine. And I am fine. Watching myself on TV is . . . weird, but hearing myself retell the story was cathartic. I’d been holding those words in for so long, it’s rather liberating, knowing my story is out there now.

  My shame is there for everyone to see.

  It’s late and I’m tired. I need to go to bed, so I go through the motions. Wash my face, brush my teeth, brush my hair and pull it into a messy bun on top of my head. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, my plain features, my washed-out blond hair, pale blue eyes. I feel . . . empty.

  Bland.

  Blank.

  I change into a T-shirt and sweatpants and toss my clothes into the laundry basket. My routine is the same every night. I never deviate. I like routine. It makes me feel in control.

  Safe.

  Slipping in between the covers, I climb into bed, plug my phone in to charge, then turn off the lamp on the bedside table. The house is quiet, eerily so, and usually I like that. I live at the end of the street on a cul-de-sac; the backyard ends where the forest begins. Mom thought I was crazy, wanting to live in a house that butts up against a forest.

  She’s afraid someone will lurk in the shadows, Brenna had told me, trying to make a joke of it though I know she was serious.

  They’re all lurking in the shadows, I’d replied. It doesn’t matter where we are, what we do. If they’re out there, they’ll find a way to get us.

  Brenna told me I was morbid. She’s right. I am morbid. When you’ve already faced your death once, what do you have left to fear? I tell myself that I should be living balls out. Not hiding away in my safe little house with my safe little routine and my bland, blank existence.

  It’s not that easy, though. Not being afraid. Believing that you’re brave. I admire those who can move through life without a care in the world. Who do whatever they want whenever they want to.

  I can’t do that. I won’t allow myself. I’m too scared.

  For now, I stay here. My house, the quiet, the neighborhood, old Mrs. Anderson who lives next door and can be a bit of a busybody sometimes though I know she means well—it all reassures me.

  Just like my routine.

  As I lie here in the darkness, letting my thoughts wander, my mind fills with images of a fifteen-year-old, terrified Will. I never took the bracelet off and I rub my thumb over the charm again and again.

  Sleep finally comes, but fitfully. I wake up almost every hour, the red numbers on my old alarm clock—the one I’ve owned since before, when I was just normal Katie—mocking me in the dark. Some things I can never get rid of. The stupid alarm clock is one of them.

  My fears are another.

  I imagine leaving. Running away like Will did. I envy him his freedom. Of being able to shed his skin and pretend to be something else. Someone else. Even if I did run away and came up with a new name, a new life, I know the remnants from my old one would cling to me. The worry. The fear. The sadness.

  They’re hard to get rid of.

  Even harder to live with.

  I stood outside the storage shed, my entire body trembling as I paused in front of the door. I’d left her in there. I found her last night and walked away. I couldn’t begin to explain why. What I did . . . was wrong. She begged me not to go.

 
Begged me.

  And I left her anyway.

  My stomach churned and I closed my eyes, breathing deep. I had to go inside. She could still be in there, scared out of her mind and needing me to take care of her.

  But what if she’s not in there? What if she’s gone? What if he . . .

  No. I shook my head once, banished the thought. She’d be there. She had to be.

  With shaking hands, I turned the combination on the lock and yanked it open, then slowly pulled open the door. The hinges creaked, the sound loud in the otherwise quiet of the mid-afternoon, and I stepped forward, blinking against the darkness from within.

  My nose wrinkled, I entered the storage shed, ducking my head since the ceiling was so low. It stunk inside. Bugs buzzed around me and I swatted at them, my eyes slowly readjusting so I could make out various shapes within. Stacks of boxes, a jumble of old furniture.

  A dirty old mattress on the ground with a girl curled up on top of it.

  I stopped in my tracks, my breaths so harsh my throat felt raw, my head spinning. I’d almost hoped I dreamed the entire thing, but she was real. Chained to the wall, shackles around her ankles. The blindfold was gone, duct tape stretched across her mouth in its place. She was in the fetal position, her head tilted downward, her matted blond hair a mess about her head.

  Fuck, I thought I was going to be sick. My head swam, as did my stomach, and I stumbled over something unknown, causing her to sit straight up, her eyes opening and then squinting as she tried to decipher who I was.

  A muffled scream came from beneath the duct tape and I crouched in front of her, reaching out to touch her hair, snatching my hand back when she recoiled from me. Her eyes filled with tears, streaking her dirty face as they fell, and she screamed again, the duct tape preventing the sound from carrying.

  “I want to help you,” I whispered as I fell to my knees on the filthy mattress. She scurried away from me, retreating to the wall, the chains clanking against the wood floor. “Please.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was a prisoner being held mere feet away from my house. A girl—I knew she was younger than me, she didn’t even have boobs, so I pegged her around eleven, twelve. No older than thirteen.

  And my father was holding her captive. I could hardly wrap my head around the thought.

  “I need you to trust me.” I took a deep breath, as my brain tried to come up with the right thing to say. How could I earn her trust when I left her here once already? “Let me take the tape off.”

  She screamed again, the sound louder this time, and she shook her head furiously, her hair going everywhere. Her arm lifted and she pointed an accusatory finger at me and it was like she stabbed me in the heart.

  Blame. That’s what I felt. She blamed me for leaving her.

  I couldn’t hold it against her. I had left her. But what was I going to do? I’d freaked out. I almost didn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “Let me make it up to you,” I whispered as I scooted closer to her. She eyed me warily, the tears still spilling down her cheeks, the stretch of tape covering her mouth, the entire lower half of her face. “I’ll take the tape off. We can talk.”

  First time I found her, I’d barely spoken to her. I’d panicked, not knowing what to do.

  Now, tonight, I planned on doing the right thing.

  I approached her like she was a wild animal and I wanted to tame her, moving slowly, an inch at a time. I never let up on talking to her, trying my best to soothe her with a low voice and reassuring words. She never took her gaze off me as she sat trembling against the wall.

  Until finally I was right next to her and I reached out, touching the tape with my fingers. She flinched but didn’t jerk away, and I took that as a good sign. “This is going to hurt,” I murmured. “I’m going to rip it off. Better that way.”

  Before she could give me any sort of sign that she approved or protested, I tore the tape off her face with one vicious tug. A sob escaped her the moment the tape was gone, the sound startlingly loud in the storage shed, and she toppled toward me, her wrists wrapped in the same chain that circled her ankle. I caught hold of her, her face in mine as she started to babble.

  “Take me away from here, please. I need to find my mom and dad. My sister. My friend. Please take me somewhere safe. Please. Please, I’ll do anything. They’ll pay you. I promise.” She started to cry and I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her close, patting her back awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to do, how else to comfort her, but she never said a word. Just cried on my shoulder, her tears soaking through my shirt, her painful sobs hurting me, too. My chest ached. My throat and eyes burned.

  I’d never seen such an outpouring of emotion and fear. Never had someone affected me this way. I felt her sobs, muffled by my shoulder, wrack her thin, trembling body.

  What had my father done to her?

  I couldn’t begin to imagine.

  “We’ll leave,” I whispered as I tentatively rested my hand on her hair. Anything I could do to reassure her. “Later tonight.”

  She leaned away from me, the horrified expression on her face one I’d never be able to forget. “What do you mean, later?” She shook her head. “I can’t wait. I have to get out of here now.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I said firmly.

  “He’ll come back,” she countered. “Ev-every time he comes back, it’s worse. I don’t know if I can—if I can stand it.”

  I took a deep breath, pushing all thoughts of what he might have done to her firmly from my brain. “It can’t be helped. I have to prepare first.”

  “Prepare what?” she practically shouted. She pulled out of my embrace, pressing herself against the wall, like she couldn’t stand to be near me. The chains clanked against the floor, reminding me that she was a fucking prisoner, and disgust filled my stomach, making me nauseated. It took everything within me not to turn my head and puke my guts out. “Do you have the key?”

  I frowned. “Key to what?”

  “To these?” She lifted up her bound wrists, then her foot, showing the tiny lock that held the chain onto her ankle. “I need these chains off.”

  I shook my head, feeling unprepared. How was I going to get that damn chain off of her? “I need to find bolt cutters.”

  “You need to get me out of here is what you need to do. Now.” She stressed the last word, her tears all dried up, determination written all over her face. Her blue eyes shone, still damp with tears, and I was suddenly taken with the realization of how pretty she was. “He’s going to kill me, you know.”

  My mouth went dry. How could she be so composed, so calm, while she said that? “No he won’t.”

  She started to laugh but it sounded crazy. Like maybe she was losing her mind. “He will. I’ve seen the look in his eyes. He’s—he put his hands around my neck, like he wanted to choke me to death.” She was crying again, though I don’t know if she realized it. “He can’t let me go. He has to kill me. I’ve seen his face. I’ve seen his everything.”

  She turned away from me, pressing her face into the wall, like she couldn’t stand looking at me any longer, and I kneeled there on the disgusting mattress, feeling helpless. Hopeless. Then anger surged through me, making my blood spark with fiery heat, and I clutched my hands into fists. “I won’t let him touch you ever again.”

  She didn’t bother looking at me. “Go away.”

  Her words shocked me. Didn’t she want my help? Or had she already given up? “Tell me your name,” I demanded rather than asked. I wanted to tell her mine, to give us a connection.

  “No.” She glared at me from over her shoulder, her hair flopping over one eye. “Leave me alone. You don’t really want to help me. You’re too scared you’ll get caught.”

  I could hardly begin to comprehend what she said to me. She couldn’t mean it. Was she willing to give up everything, her entire life, so she could . . . what?

  Die at the hands of my father?

  Screw that.
Fuck that. I refused to let that happen. I was going to save her. I had to. It was the only choice.

  “I’ll be back,” I told her as I stood and brushed off the front of my jeans. She still wouldn’t look at me, her face mashed into the wall, her shoulders gently shaking, as if she was still crying.

  Seeing that, hearing her quiet sobs . . . it broke my unbreakable heart.

  I found her.

  My pursuit of one Katherine “Katie” Watts was relentless. After watching her interview with Lisa Swanson, I spent almost a week scouring the Web for any bit of information I could unearth. Every news article I could find about the crime and her discovery, I read; some of it I’d seen before, after it first happened. Every crime documentary created about her, I watched on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix . . . all of them. Again and again. Over and over. Some I’d seen but many were new, coming out after I forced myself to let her go, pushing her and what happened between us out of my brain.

  Now I was looking for a clue. A glimmer of truth, a bit of information I might’ve missed before.

  It helped. After some slightly unethical searching on the Web, I discovered where she lived growing up, where she went to elementary school, and who her best friend was, the one that accompanied her the day she was taken. Her name had been withheld on the media but I scoured the court documents until I discovered it on the witness list.

  Sarah Ellis was easy to find. Her Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts popped up with ease, even with all the other Sarah Ellises out there. But it didn’t look like she was in contact with Katie anymore, so there was no point in pursuing her.

  I finally stumbled upon some pertinent information by accident. Legally, too—during a civil search, I found the documents for the purchase of Katie’s house.

  Meaning . . . I had her address.

  I pulled up her house on Google Maps and studied it. Older. Small. Tiny front yard, rosebushes line the white fence. There’s a little porch with a swing on it. It looks like a safe neighborhood, quiet, that borderlines a grove of towering pine trees.