You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

your husband or Riekje. The police team’s investigator is questioning them now.”

“Did they have any information about Karin?”

“What we know is that Karin is not with them,” he repeated. “Neither Karin nor any of the other missing persons from the Scout camping trip. If she ever was with them, she left before the raid. The forensics lab also got back to us. It appears to be blood on the shirt, but it is not hers. One of the adults at the camp was injured.”

“Thank God,” said Grace. “Oh, thank God.”

“But that still means she’s somewhere out there,” he said, dropping his voice to a lower register. “We were just looking in the wrong place, Grace.”

Grace turned to look at the wide expanse of the forest. Thousands of acres of land. Woods and sand drifts and valleys and miles of heath. There were wolves, and maybe other predators. Why had they wasted so much time here when she was somewhere out there? It had to be Martijn, didn’t it? Was it him, all this time?

Grace’s phone pinged, with a message from Rutger: Lotte says YES to blue hiking boots. She remembers that. That was all I got. The EMTs have taken her to the hospital now. Her parents are meeting her there.

Grace’s stomach sank. That confirmed it. Martijn.

She closed her eyes and saw all of it. The weeks, months, since they’d married and moved in together, all the ways he’d betrayed her trust. Since the first day the university student movers hauled her furniture and boxes into Martijn’s house. His hands on her. His hands clenching her wrists, holding her down on the bed as she cried out. His shove, against the bannister, so hard she was sure she would fall down the stairs, and didn’t only because he grabbed her again. His palm, smacking flat against her chest when she turned away from him during an argument, leaving an ugly bruise in the shape of a heart, of all things. And this morning’s thrust against the kitchen cabinets. All that she had been denying to herself.

These weren’t mishaps; they were cruelties. He said he loved her, but this was how he treated her. Of course he would treat others this way too.

Grace turned immediately to Detective van Dijk. “I need to tell you something,” she started. “I think my husband is involved.”

The detective, surprised by this information, gave her a once-over, maybe trying to figure out if she had held something back from him before.

“You said that in these kinds of cases, it is most often someone close to the child who is responsible,” she said. “Martijn. Karin’s stepfather. He was supposed to be a supervisor on the trip, but I don’t think he’s lost. I think he’s doing something…I don’t know what or why…I haven’t figured out what is going on, but I have good reason to believe that he is a dangerous man.”

“Okay,” Detective van Dijk answered. “I understand that you may have concerns, but let’s figure out if this is real or just nerves. Sometimes, when we’re afraid, our minds can play tricks on us. Let’s find a place to sit down for a moment and talk privately.” He added, “This way,” guiding Grace to his car, which was not an official police vehicle but an unmarked Opel two-door. She let him open the door for her and she got in while he went around to the other side and got into the driver’s seat. She understood why they needed this privacy—she was about to make a serious accusation.

“There’s a lot to tell, but I don’t want to waste any more time,” said Grace. “My husband was wearing his bright blue hiking boots this morning. Rutger just told me that the last thing Lotte saw after she was hit on the head was bright blue boots.”

“Okay, that’s concerning and I understand the urgency,” said the detective. “But it’s not conclusive. Please tell me: What reason do you have to suspect that he may have become violent toward the children or kidnapped your daughter?”

She found herself trying to articulate what had happened. “This morning my husband and I had a fight. The altercation reached a pitch. He can be very…emotional.” She was speaking a formal kind of language that sounded like police talk. “He became irrational, and I really didn’t understand what he was so upset about. He seemed to be blaming me. I told him that I didn’t know anything about what he was talking about. I suppose it was his frustration that made him turn aggressive.”

“Aggressive. Did he hurt you?”

“I don’t know if it was intentionally. He pushed me, very hard. I slammed against the kitchen cabinet and the door handle cut me.” She reached a hand to the shoulder in question and pressed the bruise there lightly to confirm to herself that it really had happened.

“I’d like to have a doctor look at you later,” the officer said calmly.

“We need to find Karin first,” she said.

“Of course. Has your husband done this before?”

“This specifically, no. But he has”—she paused, finding it hard to say the words—“pushed me.” Somehow she felt a need to clarify who he was to her. “Martijn is my second husband. My first husband was a photojournalist who was killed by a sniper in Syria.”

Detective van Dijk was examining her face, registering everything she’d said.

“That was your husband?” he said finally, nodding. “I read about that.”

An image of Karin, out there somewhere in the forest, in the company of Martijn, flashed through Grace’s mind like an electric bolt. They were wasting time talking. What if he really had taken her? What if he had her right now?

“When he left on this Scout dropping, I went back to our house, where we live together, and into his office, and I started snooping around, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Whether there was something I was missing. I found strange things—files on my husband from long before I married Martijn. I