“Then where is she?” she cried.
His jaw tightened. “I don’t know. If we have to seriously start considering this an abduction, though, we need to look at family first. You know that.”
It took a minute for the implications to sink in. “Me?”
“Of course not you!” he snapped.
“Then who? It’s only Jane and me.”
“What happened to your parents?”
She couldn’t not answer, but she also couldn’t look at him while she said any of this. Instead she fixed her gaze on the trees across the road. “My mother walked out on us,” she said, ignoring his close scrutiny. “I was eleven, Lissa eight, so it’s ancient history.” She did her best to sound matter-of-fact. “I have no idea if she’s even still alive. My father died when I was twenty.”
Maybe she was wrong in fearing that Clay heard things she wasn’t saying. After all, look what an insensitive jerk he’d turned out to be. But no matter what, she didn’t like telling him stuff that was so personal. She never talked about her childhood. If she had one desperate need in life, it was to be invulnerable. Why else had she gone into a male-dominated profession where she could hold the authority?
If she’d made him curious, he didn’t comment. “What about your brother-in-law’s side?”
“His parents are in Florida. They were out here for Christmas. They seem like nice people.” She shrugged. “Drew has a brother and a sister. They came, too, with their families. Um, I think the brother may work for Boeing. His dad did, too, before he retired. That’s where Drew grew up, near Seattle. The sister... I don’t remember where she lives, but not locally. She’s married and has kids, somewhere around the same ages as Bree and Alexis.”
“Your sister get along with his family?”
Lissa had bitched for weeks about having to host Drew’s whole damn family. That was how she’d put it. “The house is going to be stuffed, and we’ll be lucky if any of them even offer to pay for any groceries,” she had groused. “Or help with cooking and housework. They’ll probably be happy to have me providing maid service. And I can’t stand Kelsey. You know that.”
Jane did know. Lissa didn’t like Kelsey because she thought Drew’s parents did more for the baby of the family than they did for Drew and his brother. Kelsey’s husband taught English at the middle school level and they’d agreed that Kelsey wouldn’t work outside the home at least until their youngest reached first grade, so they did make a whole lot less money than Drew and Lissa. Or at least, than Drew and Lissa had at the time, when he’d still had a job. Drew’s parents had wanted Kelsey to have a safe vehicle to drive their grandchildren around in, so they’d bought her a Dodge Caravan at about the same time Lissa had insisted on trading in her four-year-old Rav4 for something newer. She had been bitterly resentful that they hadn’t even offered to help with the cost. “Our income doesn’t have anything to do with it!” she’d snapped, when Jane was unwise enough to try to reason with her.
“They didn’t see that much of them,” Jane said now. “Things seemed fine at Christmas.”
He looked at her thoughtfully, and she knew—knew—that he had noticed how uncomfortable she was.
“All right, Jane.” His phone rang and he answered it immediately. “Renner here.”
He’d half turned from her as if to shut her out, but he didn’t walk away, so she couldn’t help hearing his side of the conversation.
“No change?” Pause. “Uh-huh.” He frowned, listening. “Yeah, we’re out beating the bushes for the kid. We’re going to feel like idiots if it turns out she’s at the public swimming pool or, I don’t know what little girls do, a toenail-painting party.” A grunt. “Tell him to keep trying.” Whoever had called talked some more. “What about that last clerk at Rite Aid?” Clay asked. Something changed on his face at the answer and he turned to look at Jane. “Okay. Let me know.” He returned his phone to his belt.
She didn’t like his expression. “What?”
“We’ve now talked to everyone working at Rite Aid today, including the pharmacists. Not one of them remember seeing your sister or the girl. It’s looking a lot like they never went there at all.”
“But—” Jane stuttered “—she told Drew...”
“I know what he claims she told him.” The emphasis on claims was subtle, but unmistakable.
“Why would Drew lie? This was an accident!”
“Was it?” Clay’s angular face was hard now, all cop. “I’m starting to wonder.”
CHAPTER THREE
RICH BALDWIN, A sergeant in the patrol division, crossed his arms atop the open driver’s-side door of his unit and eyed Clay. “I’ve got to admit, I wondered why you were there early on.”
He paused, eyebrows raised, but Clay didn’t rise to the bait. Damned if he was going to admit to having a thing for a woman who despised him.
The eyebrows flickered, but Baldwin gave up and finished his thought. “I’m glad now you were. It’s looking more like your baby all the time.”
Clay grunted his agreement, although he could not freakin’ believe he was dealing with the second kidnapping of a child within a matter of weeks. Except for the everyday domestic blow-up variety where Dad didn’t bring the kids home when he should just to spite the ex-wife, kidnapping almost never happened around here. He kept telling himself the girl was going to turn up anytime, that there was a reasonable explanation for her disappearance.
But as the hours passed, the odds that seven-year-old Brianna Wilson would turn out to have spent the afternoon with a friend were looking longer by the minute. At 7:30 in the evening, your average family’s dinnertime had come and gone and the sun was dropping low in the sky. Kids that age did overnights, but according to her dad, Bree hadn’t taken pajamas, toothbrush or anything else with her.
A deputy had stayed at the Wilson house to answer the phone, mostly in hopes some mother would call and say, “Was I confused? Weren’t you going to pick Brianna up by six?”
Clay almost wished he could anticipate a ransom call. That would have been better than the far uglier alternative. But though the Wilsons’ house was nice, even before Drew lost his job, they didn’t have the kind of money that would make a scenario of that kind probable.
Ankles crossed, Clay leaned against the fender of Baldwin’s squad car, parked not far from the emergency room entrance. Clay was arriving, Rich departing from the hospital.
“I don’t like that we couldn’t find Mrs. Wilson’s phone,” Clay said.
“Or that it’s dead to the world.”
Destroyed, he meant. If she’d given it to the kid to take with her, they should have been able to triangulate its location even if Brianna had somehow turned it off.
Yeah, the completely missing phone was a puzzle piece slotting into an increasingly ugly picture in Clay’s mind. He just wished there weren’t so damn many missing pieces still.
A missing kid was what he really meant. Clay had seen Brianna Wilson’s first-grade school picture now, as well as a formal family portrait of the whole family taken just before Christmas. Bree, as Jane called her, was a doll, Clay hadn’t been able to help thinking, on her way to being a stunner. Her hair was the same chestnut-brown as Jane’s, highlighted with red, and wavy like hers, too. And, damn, but Clay did love Jane’s hair. Little Bree had just enough freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose to be cute. In both photos her untroubled grin showed missing front teeth. Unlike Jane’s, the kid’s eyes were a warm brown.
Clay was ashamed in retrospect at how closely he had studied that family photo,