The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(63)

“Constantijn Hakken,” he sniffs. “With a j.”

Halfway through writing it, Holmes blinks. “Where does the j go?” she asks helplessly.

The smiling nurse chokes a little.

Turns out the j comes after the i, and there’s an alphabet joke in there somewhere if I’m brave enough to make it (I’m not). His mother’s name is Maartje, and when we ask about his grandparents, he shifts uncomfortably on the bed. His father’s parents, he explains, didn’t think gymnastics was good enough for their son, and they haven’t had contact since his father was a teenager. His mother grew up as a ward of the state, and never knew her parents.

I have the feeling, though, that when the elite gyms he’s auditioning with learn his story, he’ll find a space and a host family to be his legal guardians. I hesitate to think of it as One Good Thing, but at least it’ll be something.

One of the uniformed officers stays with Noah when a doctor comes to take him for a CT. Holmes and I wander out to the waiting room to join Sterling and the newly arrived Cass.

“Agent Watts is on her way,” Cass immediately reports to Holmes. “She lives up in Norfolk.”

“Hell of a commute. That’s what, three hours each way to work?”

“Her husband is stationed on the base at Norfolk; she spends the weekends there, cases allowing, and stays with her brother-in-law and his wife on base at Quantico during the week.”

Holmes shakes her head. “That sounds exhausting.”

“She’ll be here as soon as she can, but she asked me to come ahead.”

“Let’s fill you in, then.”



22

“I’m just going to . . .” I hold up my phone, and Holmes nods, focused on the attentive Cass.

Sterling follows me to the waiting room, where I can actually make a call without getting scolded. “You believe him, then? That he wasn’t abused?”

“I do, and that’s going to be a problem.”

“That you believe him?”

“That he wasn’t abused.”

“You want to run that one by me again? We’re supposed to be happy when kids aren’t abused.”

“So far as we know, she hasn’t killed any innocent people,” I tell her quietly. The waiting room isn’t frenzied, but there are a few people there, and our professional clothing is already getting some looks. I take her by the elbow and lead her outside, a safe distance from the doors so we don’t get in anyone’s way. “Mason’s father, Paul Jeffers, maybe. We don’t know if he was aware of what his wife was doing. Probably not, but we’ll never know, and I don’t think our killer is capable of drawing a line between ignorant and complicit.”

“Okay . . .”

“Zoe and Caleb Jones died, and she’s going to take that as not saving them soon enough. She’s going to take that on herself, and it’s going to make her rage burn even faster, and even messier. And when word gets out that Noah wasn’t remotely abused, that she murdered a completely innocent woman who loved and supported her son?”

Sterling pales in the crappy outdoor lighting. “There have to be hundreds of at-risk kids in this county. We have no way to know who she’ll go after. There’s no way to warn anyone.” She touches the thin gold Star of David at her throat. “Mercedes . . .”

“I know. Watts needs to start really digging into the CPS employees. We also need a list of kids who fit this killer’s criteria. Anything that’s gone through the Manassas office. I know it’s probably a huge list, but we have to have something to work off of. We’re running out of time.”

I text Eddison and Vic to let them know, hoping they’ll sleep through the alerts. There’s nothing they can do right now anyway. Still, it’s not entirely surprising that not long after we head back inside, Eddison walks in with a drink carrier.

“It was a gas station,” he says gruffly, handing one to Sterling. “I didn’t want to trust the tea. It’s hot chocolate.”

He is absolutely not awake enough to safely drive, how the hell did he get here?

Then he throws away the empty cup in the fourth spot of the carrier and picks up a second cup of jet fuel for himself, so there’s that terrifying answer. He holds the last cup out to me, a mix of hot chocolate and coffee because they’re both shitty at gas stations but mixed together, they’re not half bad. Somehow.

“If we head to the office, we can keep working on your files,” he says after listening to the full update. “Maybe we can find her.”

“Check with Holmes. She might want me here for when Watts questions Noah.”

But Noah, when he gets out of CT with the good news of no concussion, is fast asleep and hard to wake, the trauma adding to the Benadryl to knock him out. They wheel him to a room in Pediatrics, and he doesn’t so much as stir when they shift him to a normal bed. At least they cleaned him up before the scan and changed his clothes. We stand in the doorway and look in.

Holmes smiles a little at the sight, something soft and maybe a little wistful. “How far is it to Quantico?”

“This time of day? About half an hour.”

“Then go ahead. Watts can call you back if she wants you here for questions.”

“All right. We’ll be at the office for the foreseeable future.”