The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(72)

“So why are we assuming that the digital files are the only ones the killer is checking? There’s a whole file room.”

I don’t have a phone number for either of the Smiths, so I text Cass, who answers with a promise to have the Smiths poke at it.

And then, an hour later, she calls the conference room extension and demands to be on speaker. “Sterling, you’re a fucking genius,” she announces.

“Well, yes,” Sterling agrees, nonplussed. “Why this time?”

“Because there are files missing from the records room. The administrator has to go through drawer by drawer to match the files to their spreadsheets and what’s been checked out legitimately, but we’ve got three missing from what he’s checked so far.”

“Ava’s?”

“No, it’s there, but not quite in the right place. Someone took it out and then put it back wrong. All the kids we’ve met are accounted for.”

“Who reported the Levines to CPS?” I ask.

“A neighbor. The fence between the two houses is chain link and she saw Ava in the pool. Bathing suit.”

And a bathing suit was going to make that low belly very evident.

“How far along is she? Do they know yet?”

“Ava wasn’t sure, because she’s only ever had one period. They couldn’t count back. The OB says about eighteen weeks.”

Four and a half months. Christ in heaven.

“They’ve got Gloria down at the station for questioning, and a judge just signed off on a warrant to search her house and car. If she has those missing files . . .”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then we ask to expand the warrant to the other clerks and administrators. I’ll let you know.”

We stare at the conference phone in the center of the table. “Does anyone know where my car is?” I ask after a minute.

Eddison snorts, and Sterling smiles. “It’s in the garage here,” she informs me. “Level four, I think.”

“Thanks.”

A couple of hours later, when I pack up to head out, Sterling follows suit. “Can I be your DD?” she asks quietly.

“I’m not going out drinking.”

“No, but I’m guessing this has something to do with your visitor this morning, and you looked like someone told you there was a killer clown after you.”

“A killer cl . . . What?”

“So it’s emotional. And something you have to face anyway? I’m asking if I can be your designated driver, because when you’re that emotional, driving sucks. And it’s hard.”

“Who was your DD when you and dickhead fiancé broke it off?”

“Finney,” she says with a shrug.

Her old boss, who sent her on to us when we needed an agent because he’d already been promoted out of the field. Vic’s old partner, for a long time, and that makes a lot of sense as to why she fits with us so well.

I should say, No, I’ve got this.

“Thanks.”

I don’t.

So she drives me to the hotel, and I’m willing to bet Vic is paying for the room, because my mother would never spend this kind of money on herself. It’s not fancy, not luxurious or expensive, it just isn’t twenty-nine dollars a night with a roach chorus. When I was a kid, my mother could barely countenance spending money on herself, and with God only knows how many grandkids now, I can’t imagine that’s changed much.

I turn the card over and over in my hand, not moving even after Sterling parks the car, brings the windows down, and cuts the engine. She doesn’t ask, or poke or prod or push. She just pulls out a book of crosswords and settles in.

“Do you have any makeup wipes?” I ask.

“Glove box.”

It feels strange, wrong even, to strip everything off in the middle of the day, but with the aid of the wipes and the sun visor mirror, I get off every bit of it. I look like hell. The bruises under my eyes, the sallowness of not enough sleep. The scars digging pink-white tracks down my cheek.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sterling tells me, without looking away from her page. “Take as much or as little time as you need.”

“Thank you.”

Forcing myself out of the car, I head into the hotel and take the stairs to the third floor because the thought of trying to stand still in an elevator right now makes my skin crawl. The door for 314 doesn’t look any different from its neighbors: plain white with the heavy lock plate under the handle.

Five minutes later, I still haven’t been able to make myself knock.

And then I don’t have to, because the chain scratches in its track and the handle rotates, and the door slowly opens to reveal my mother’s face.

“Mercedes,” she breathes.

My mother.

“You need to go back,” I tell her.



Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of the world.

She thought, once, that it could get better, that it could be better. She’d wanted so badly to believe that, and she had for a time.

But the thing with worlds, in the human sense, is that they come crashing down. When a whole world shatters and self-destructs, is it possible to be less than apocalyptic? Wasn’t that the very meaning of the word?

She’d had a bad few days after leaving the prison. It wasn’t just her daddy’s words ringing through her head, not just his wide, triumphant smile. It was all the other things, too, all the memories crashing in. She’d taken a few days off work, trying to get her head around all of it. She’d taken off another few days and checked into a clinic. She just couldn’t stop shaking. Or crying. Or panicking.