“Abbi and Kate looked at Ray’s pictures on social media together at night. Seeing his picture set her off, and it was enough of a pull for her to reach out to him. Then, once she heard his voice, it was over.”

We’d told Abbi so many times to stay away from social media on the case, but how could I be mad at her about it when I’d done the same thing? There was no way she’d considered how it might trigger Kate. I hoped she would never make the connection, for her sake.

“Because she saw a picture? That’s all it took?” Scott asked.

I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or hurt. Maybe a combination of both.

“It’s not that simple. You have to think of her as a domestic violence victim. Most women never leave their abusers, or if they do, it takes them an average of seven times before they’re successful,” Dean explained.

Scott didn’t look convinced. I shared his skepticism. She couldn’t leave her abuser, but she could plan her daughter’s kidnapping?

“So what happened?” I asked.

“She wanted to come back, but he refused to take her. She’d betrayed him by leaving, but Kate kept begging for his forgiveness and saying she was willing to do anything. That’s when everything turned. He started toying with her, asking her to do little things to prove herself to him, and she did.”

Scott interrupted again. “Like what kinds of things?”

For a brief second, embarrassment flashed across his expression before he quickly erased it.

“Things of a sexual nature and others of a punishing nature. She’s covered in self-inflicted wounds running down her legs that she’s been carving into herself as a form of penance. She’ll show them to you if you ask her. She’s quite proud of them.”

Scott gripped both sides of his chair. I was grateful we’d sat down. He looked almost as wrecked as he’d been the day we found out she had returned.

“Kate kept coming up with ways to prove her loyalty, and eventually they agreed she could come back, on the condition that she brought Abbi with her. We—”

“Why did you let them kidnap her?” Scott interrupted him. “If you knew that was what they were going to do, why’d you let them go through with it?”