Emma in the Night: The bestselling new gripping thriller from the author of All is Not Forgotten. Wendy Walker
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saw that Emma was in a room across a small courtyard. I didn’t know anything about the house that night, but of course I came to know it well. Every inch of it. There was a courtyard in the back and the house formed a U shape around it. So across the courtyard, I could see the bedrooms on the other side, and that night I could see Emma, Bill and Lucy in Emma’s room. They were talking and then they both hugged Emma. As soon as they left, I opened my window and called out. I tried to do it in a whisper, but she couldn’t hear me so I raised my voice until she did. She came to her window and leaned out the way I was. ‘Where are we?’ I asked. But she didn’t answer. She just looked back with this knowing smile, like she knew exactly what she was doing and like she was certain that what she was doing was the best thing anyone could ever do. She rubbed the silver angel on the necklace.
“I kept thinking that night that we were in a safe place. Once Rick left, there was only a large wooden rowboat at the dock and no cars anywhere. I knew we were on an island because the boat approached from the back and docked on the side, and from the front, where the house faced, you could see it was just water forever and ever. I was excited about this new place, but I barely slept because I was so worried about how I would get a ride home or find a phone to call you to come and get me. I went over the things I would say to Emma and Bill or maybe Lucy. I was already feeling bad because we had traveled far and getting home would be difficult. I knew Emma would be furious with me. I didn’t know then that she was pregnant.
“The next day was when she told me. I asked her who the father was and she said she couldn’t tell me that. She said Bill and Lucy were going to help her have the baby and start a new life. You have to believe me. I did plan to come home. But all of that changed in the morning when Emma pleaded with me. She said if I went home, you would make me tell you where she was and that she wouldn’t be able to have her baby, so I promised her I would stay. I’m so sorry! I know I caused a lot of problems. But I had to choose my sister.”
I looked at my mother then, and said it one more time so there would be no doubt.
“I had to choose Emma.”
They interviewed Cass Tanner for two hours after the forensics team left. She had given them more than enough to begin the search for the island where she and her sister had been held captive for nearly three years. She was physically and emotionally drained and had once again asked to rest.
Leo wanted her to go to the hospital for a thorough physical examination. Abby wanted to give her a comprehensive psychological examination. She had refused both, and because she confirmed there had been no sexual or physical abuse, because she had shown no signs of cognitive impairment, they let it go. For now.
Her parents had stood behind her on this and had already begun fighting over whose house she should be resting in. Abby and the agents agreed to return in a few hours so Cass could continue her story and work with a sketch artist on drawings of the Pratts, of the boatman, Rick, and of the man with the truck. It would take that long to get someone in from the city on a Sunday morning anyway. Still, a few hours would not pass quickly.
“It’s going to be in the details. In something she doesn’t even know is important,” Leo said.
They had retreated to his car to escape the swarm of agents and local cops—not to mention the Martins and Owen Tanner. A press conference was being planned, and after that, the house would be a circus.
The field offices in New Haven and Maine had already run searches through the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, and the DMV, turning up nothing on Bill and Lucy Pratt. No land records, deeds, birth certificates, tax filings. No social security numbers. They would move on to utilities, credit cards, cell phone carriers—but this road was narrowing fast.
“They’re off the grid. Or Pratt isn’t their real name. Maybe both.”
Abby looked at the house from the passenger-seat window. “Fits the story. If these people were taking in runaway teens, it makes sense they wouldn’t use their real names.”
Leo turned the ignition so he could roll down the windows. “Do you mind? It’s so damn hot. And I’m so damn old. Can’t stand the summers anymore.”
Abby didn’t answer him.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
She turned her gaze from the house to the dashboard. “We need to go back through the file. There’s no way this happened without a trace of anything—no calls or e-mails or text messages. Maybe there was some kind of code when she was making this plan. Maybe she told the father, whoever he is, and he was pressuring her. Maybe we’ll see it—now that we know what to look for.”
Leo shrugged. “I don’t know, Abigail. Or we could just spin wheels again.”
The story of the night the Tanner sisters disappeared had been shocking to hear. It explained everything—the shoes at the beach, the car. Why Cass left with nothing but also why nothing of hers was found at the beach or in the car with Emma’s. It explained the fight over the necklace and the car leaving late at night. And it explained why neither girl returned.
Still, the complete absence of any evidence of Emma’s pregnancy or her plan to leave home to have the baby was unsettling.
Cass had gone on from the story of that first night to explain why she didn’t try to leave, and why she didn’t know who the father was. Abby had hung on her every word, desperate to fill in the missing pieces after so many years of wondering. Everything had made sense while she was telling the story, but it had left Abby hungry for more.
“So Emma wouldn’t tell Cass who the father was or how she found the Pratts?” Leo asked, though the question was rhetorical. “That seems strange if they were so close.”
“It fits their relationship,” Abby answered. “Emma keeping secrets like ammunition. Cass treating Emma like an authority figure, like a mother. Not asking questions. Doing what she was told. Not demanding answers.”
She started to say more about this. How there is always the “chosen” child in families like this one, the one who becomes the target of the sick parent, leaving the other neglected sibling to turn to that chosen child for needs that should have been met by a grown caregiver. But all of this was tied to the theory of the case Abby had not been able to let go of—that Judy Martin was a narcissist, that her illness was somehow related to the girls’ disappearance. It was the theory that had caused the Martins to retreat and hide three years before. And the theory that had driven a wedge between Abby and Leo. None of that would be productive now. Still, Abby added it to her file.
Leo pulled out his phone. He had a sheepish look on his face. “I may have accidentally recorded the interview,” he said. It was against Bureau policy to record interviews with witnesses without their consent.
Abby smiled and pulled out hers. “I may have made the same mistake.”
Leo searched the recording of their session on his phone.
“Here it is,” he said, pressing play.
“She said if I ever left, I would tell the police who had helped her. And if she told me about the father, I would tell that, too, and then he would take the baby. She was scared. This wasn’t about her keeping secrets from me just to be mean, which she did a lot. And she was also right. If I had left the island, I would have told everything and anything I could to help find her and save her. And to punish the wicked people who wouldn’t let us leave. I’m doing that now. I’m telling you everything I can think of and I don’t care who gets in trouble.”
Leo stopped the recording. “She says later that she thinks the father was a boy Emma met in Paris that summer—at her summer program. The timing of that fits.”
“She had the baby in