***
Rachel followed Tess up the back stairs to her old apartment. Her heart was racing and her imagination was working overtime. She crossed her fingers as Tess looked at where the magnetic box should have been.
“How would Bella have known where to look?”
“We talked about it when you came to The Bridesmaids Club with Bella. You told me not to leave it here.”
“Even if the box was there, Bella couldn’t have reached it,” Rachel said anxiously. “It’s too high.”
Tess pulled a metal key ring out of her pocket. She chose a silver key and put it in the lock. “It’s only too high if you’re standing on the landing. If the magnetic box was there when Bella tried the door handle, she could have climbed on the rail and reached it.”
Rachel looked over the edge of the landing at the parking lot below. It was a long way down. If Bella had climbed the rail, she could easily have slipped on the icy wood and fallen onto the ground. “She must have been desperate to get inside.”
“I suppose it depends on why she was up here in the first place.” Tess opened the door and walked inside. “I left the electricity on, but the heating is switched off.” She turned the lights on and started looking around the living room.
Rachel walked into the center of the apartment. “Bella? Are you here? It’s Rachel.” She waited before moving into Tess’ old bedroom. “Bella?” still no reply. She looked inside the empty closet, then opened the door to the bathroom. There was no sign that anyone had been here. Apart from the sound of Tess moving around in the next room, the apartment was clouded in a silence as eerie as the snow flurries outside.
She walked back into the living room and watched Tess open a cupboard along one of the walls. “I didn’t know you had extra storage in here.”
Tess knelt down and looked inside the small space. “I renovated the building a few years ago. Because of the slope of the ceiling, I ended up with a cavity running either side of the apartment. My builder suggested lining the space and turning it into storage areas. We hid the handles in the grooves of the wooden paneling.”
Rachel walked further along the wall and ran her hand along the same paneling that Tess had touched. Another cupboard opened. The height and width of the space was only about three foot, but it was big enough for an eight-year-old to hide in. They searched each cupboard, but they were completely empty.
Tess walked toward what used to be her spare bedroom. “I’ll look in this room, you take the other one.”
Rachel walked back into the bedroom she’d left only minutes before. With the fancy wood detailing, she hadn’t noticed the same grooves on the paneling in this room. “Bella?”
She opened the first door and sighed. The second cupboard was exactly the same. Empty.
“Rachel? You need to come here quickly.”
Rachel ran into the spare bedroom and stopped in the doorway.
Tess was kneeling in front of an open cupboard. Bella was lying inside the cavity, sound asleep. “She’s cold,” Tess whispered. “Do you think we should move her?”
Rachel unzipped her jacket and slipped it off her shoulders. “We need to get her warm. We can’t do that inside the cupboard. She knows us and it won’t be such a shock when she wakes up.”
Rachel gently shook Bella’s shoulder. “Bella, it’s Rachel. It’s time to wake up.”
Bella’s big brown eyes fluttered open, then closed again.
“Wake up, Bella.” Rachel nudged her arm again. She looked at the worried frown on Tess’ face. “I’ll lift her out of the cupboard. Can you hold her while I call for the police and an ambulance?”
Tess took off her own jacket and sat on the floor. “Of course I can. We could use my jacket as a blanket, too.” She held her arms out. “I’m ready.”
Rachel leaned down and carefully maneuvered Bella until her head and shoulders were out of the cupboard. “Here we go,” she said softly. Within minutes, Bella was sitting in Tess’ arms with two jackets wrapped around her cold body.
Rachel pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and called 9-1-1. Bella’s brown eyes opened slowly. As soon as she saw Rachel, she smiled, then closed her eyes and fell back asleep.
With the police and an ambulance on the way, Rachel had one other person to call. Her hands were shaking so much that she could hardly hold the phone to her ear.
John answered his cell phone on the first ring. “John? It’s Rachel. We’ve found Bella. She’s in Tess’ old apartment above the café.”
His gruff reply was instant. He was on his way.
Within minutes of her first call, Rachel heard sirens on the street below. She walked into the living room just as the first police officer came inside.
The small apartment quickly became full of police officers, paramedics, and John’s security guards. After making sure Bella wasn’t in any immediate danger, two paramedics gently lifted her onto a stretcher. They replaced Rachel and Tess’ jackets with a foil survival blanket and made sure she was comfortable.
Rachel heard a noise on the back stairs and walked into the living room. John burst through the door, looking frantically around the room for his daughter. She pointed toward Tess’ spare bedroom. “She’s in there.”
John looked as though he’d aged ten years since she’d last seen him. Deep creases lined either side of his mouth and his eyes were full of worry. He rushed into the bedroom and she heard the relief in his voice when he talked to Bella.
She walked past the police officers and guards, and stood in the doorway, watching John. The scene in front of her was heartbreaking. He held Bella’s hand as the paramedics finished strapping her into a stretcher. His eyes never left her face, never wavered as tears fell down Bella’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry, dad. I shouldn’t have run away. Please don’t be mad at Rachel and Tank. They told me to be careful and I wasn’t.”
John leaned down and kissed the top of Bella’s head. “As long as you’re okay, that’s all that matters.”
“Have you got Miss Snuggles?” she whispered.
John reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an old soft toy. It looked as though the stuffing had been squeezed out of it years ago. “Here she is.”
Bella’s chin wobbled as she cuddled her small blue cat.
One of the paramedics glanced at John. “Would you like to travel in the ambulance with us? We’re taking Bella to the hospital as a precautionary measure.”
John nodded and followed the paramedics out of the bedroom.
Rachel moved out of their way, stepping straight into the path of a police officer. He waited until Bella and John were at the back door before talking to her.
“I’ll take your statements at the police station. Are you and Mrs. Allen ready to come with me?”
John stopped in the doorway. He looked at the police officer standing beside Rachel, then down at her. “Will you be okay?”
Rachel couldn’t look John in the eye. She’d let him down, and she’d let Bella down. She doubted she’d ever be okay again. “Can I visit Bella after Tess and I have spoken to the police?”
“Of course you can. I’ll text you if we leave the hospital before you get there. Tanner will stay with you.”
“I don’t need Tanner. I can look after myself.”
“It wasn’t a question. Tanner stays.”
The paramedics wheeled Bella onto the landing. Two police officers helped lift her stretcher down the stairs. John looked at her once more before disappearing from sight.
Rachel took a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose.
Tess walked across the room and wrapped her arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “Are you really going to be okay?”
She shook her head and glanced at Tanner. He was leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, staring straight at her. “Bella could have died, John hates me, and Tank will never trust me again. My life is a mess.”
“It could have been a lot worse.”
“I don’t see how.”
Tess held both of Rachel’s hands in hers. “We don’t know why Bella hid in my apartment, but we do know that she’s alive. No one got hurt.”
“I don’t think John would agree with you.”
The police officer stepped forward. “Ma’am, we need to go.”
Rachel pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and wiped her eyes. “Okay. I just need to get my…”
“Jacket?” Tanner had moved silently across the room. He held her jacket toward her.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said with a grim smile. “We don’t know why Bella ran from the café. Until we do, you’re not going anywhere without me.”
Rachel followed Tess and the police officer out of the apartment. Tanner followed her down the stairs. He was so close that he could have been mistaken for her shadow. “Where’s Tank?”
“He’s working on some information we received.”
Rachel got halfway across the parking lot before a horrible thought crossed her mind. “He hasn’t been fired, has he? It wasn’t Tank’s fault that Bella left the car. It was mine. I should have locked the car door and kept her beside me.”
“With all due respect, you’re not employed as a security guard. It’s not your responsibility to look after Bella.”
Tess opened the rear door of the police car. “Come on, Rachel. The sooner we give our statements to the police, the sooner we can get to the hospital. Tank will be all right.”
Rachel wasn’t so sure about that. Just like she wasn’t sure she’d still have a job in the morning.
They drove down Main Street, passing vehicles with red noses attached to their front grills and reindeer ears attached to their windows. The boutique stores and restaurants were still open, happy to indulge the last minute shoppers. It all seemed so normal, so much part of what Rachel knew Christmas in Bozeman always was.
Except this year was different.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the police car’s window. Thanks to Tess’ quick thinking, Bella was safe. But if they hadn’t found her when they did, today could have ended in tragedy.