The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(22)

“No, not so much. Thank you, Doctor.”

In the waiting room, Sterling is frowning down at her phone, a foam cup at her elbow steaming. “There’s a coffee vending machine, if you want something,” she informs me. “If their coffee is as bad as their tea, you might not want to risk it.”

“I’m awake enough for now,” I admit, dropping into the seat next to her. “I haven’t turned my ringer back on yet; any word from the boys?”

“They said it’s a similar scene to the Wilkins house. Father was subdued with a couple of gunshots, mother was hacked to death, father was really hacked to death. Unlike Daniel Wilkins, Samuel Wong has a number of stab wounds on and around his groin.”

“Ronnie Wilkins wasn’t sexually abused, Sarah Carter was, so that makes sense, I guess.”

“They live in one of the neighborhoods on the edge of town, where the houses each have a couple of acres. No neighbors close enough to hear or see anything.” She looks up from her phone. “Vic said the mirrors in Sarah’s room and bathroom were covered over.”

“That’s not uncommon for someone who’s been hurt that way.”

“CSU is going over the scene, but so far nothing really stands out. A lot of people in that neighborhood don’t lock their doors at night.”

“A safe neighborhood.”

“I’m sure they feel safe now.” She sighs and drops the phone facedown in her lap. “Did she make them watch?”

“No. Three would be much harder to control than one, especially since two of them weren’t abused. She woke them up after and made them go in to listen for heartbeats.”

“Holy God.”

We sit in silence for several minutes. I try to decide which is better: telling Siobhan myself, despite her little edict about letting her initiate contact when and only when she’s ready to do so, or leaving her to hear it through the grapevine at work. I should email the analyst pool so they can start running cross-checks as soon as they get into the office, finding anything and everything that links Sarah to Ronnie. One point in space is generally next to useless, but two points, two points can make a commonality, the beginning of a pattern. Two points can make a line. I wish Yvonne, our team’s dedicated analyst, was back from maternity leave. She’s good at finding those hidden threads between A and B.

“Do you think Eddison’s bed is big enough for three people?”

“What?”

Sterling leans her head on my shoulder. She scraped her hair back into a ponytail at some point, and stray strands tickle the back of my neck. “Mine’s not big enough, and yours is probably taped off. None of us should be alone tonight.”

I reach across and tug lightly on her ear. “You’re still a little bit drunk, aren’t you?”

“Just a little.”

“None of us get to sleep this morning, but tonight?” I tilt my head against hers and just breathe. “If Eddison’s bed isn’t big enough, we’ll all go crash on the floor of Vic’s living room.”

“Deal.”

The silence resumes, broken by distant conversations and the occasional intercom call. After a while, a handful of doctors in scrubs and paper trauma gowns race past us to the ambulance bay, and a few minutes later we hear the whine of approaching sirens. Sterling’s phone buzzes and chirps with a series of texts delivered in swift succession. We take one more breath, one more moment, and then she picks up her phone, opens up the message, and starts reading the new texts out loud.



9

“They’re saying more kids were taken to your door.”

Siobhan is at my desk, and I have no idea what time it is right now, but she’s obviously been to her desk already this morning (still morning?) because she’s got her hideous sweater on. There’s a vent right over her desk, and whatever thermostat it’s attached to seems to be permanently set on freezing. The fact that my brain is stuck on her sweater, rather than her presence at my desk, does not bode well for the conversation that’s sure to follow.

I lean back in my chair, trying not to rub at my face because my makeup is the only thing keeping me looking semi-human at the moment. “I left you a voice mail,” I say after a moment. “Asked you to call me back.”

“Yes, and then I got to my desk, and Heather was waiting there to tell me all about my girlfriend getting more bloodied children delivered to her door.”

“It’s not like I’m ordering them off Amazon.”

“Mercedes!”

“What do you want me to say, Siobhan? Yes, there were children at my door. Yes, their parents were killed. Yes, it was terrible.”

“What’s going to happen to them?”

“I don’t know,” I sigh. I’ve been on the phone with the on-call social worker. Sarah and Ashley’s grandparents in California are willing to take the girls, but they’re apparently fervent racists and won’t take “the half-breed,” and Sarah has already announced that if she’s sent anywhere without both her siblings, she’ll run away. Which, you know, good for her, but still. The girls’ father is in prison for a white-collar crime, his parents have been dead for years, and Sammy’s grandparents haven’t been located. There aren’t any uncles or aunts, and it’s hard to find fosters willing to take in a trio and keep them together. “For right now they’re at the hospital until they’re sure the oldest one is okay, and then they’ll be taken to a group home while it’s being figured out.”