The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(76)

“And now someone is using your history against you,” she murmurs, lightly touching the bear’s bow tie with one fingertip.

“I don’t think they mean to. I think this is them trying to give that gift to others.” We sit in silence until I finally ask the question I try not to ask any agent. “Why are you in CAC, Eliza?”

“Because my best friend’s father was a serial killer,” she answers calmly. She actually smiles a little. “I told Priya that, three years ago. Archer was being an ass to her. My best friend’s father was a serial killer, and even though he murdered grown women, I saw what it did to the kids when the truth came out. I used to have sleepovers at her place all the time. He tucked us into bed. And he did all that. I wanted to understand it. I never have, of course, but it left me obsessively researching criminals and psychology and one day, when I was home from college for winter break, my dad asked me if I was going to make a career out of it.”

“You hadn’t even thought about it, had you?”

“No. I mean, I had a couple of psychology and criminology classes under my belt, but it was only my sophomore year. I’d only just finished up my gen eds, and was trying to decide on a major. But he got me to realize that I could put that motivation to work helping others. And I chose CAC because I’m still friends with Shira, and I remember how terrible it was when we found out about her father, and I wanted to help kids. CAC lets me do that.”

After a while, she gets to her feet and offers her hand to help me stand. We look around the mess of teddy bears on the floor. I don’t have any more garbage bags in the kitchen.

“Leave it,” she advises. “Come back to it later, decide then. You’ve been collecting them for years, and this is a really bad time to make important decisions.”

“Tossing teddy bears is a big decision?”

“It is when they remind you of why you’re here.”

“You’re a wise soul, Eliza Sterling.”

“I think we take turns with it. Given everything else, it would irresponsible of me to get you drunk, so hopefully this will be enough.”

My phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket, but I can’t bring myself to answer it. Not if it means another child dead.

Sterling takes it from my hand, checks the display, and thumbs the call to speak. “Kearney, you’ve got Mercedes and Sterling here.”

“Awesome.” Cass’s voice sounds tinny and distant, like maybe she’s using the speakerphone as well. “Burnside went through every single file access in the office the last few weeks and took special note of which ones were accessed without additional information being added, the ones most likely to be superfluous access.”

“Okay. Does that point to Gloria?”

“That’s where it gets a bit weird.”

“How do you mean?”

“For one thing, a lot of the access to our kids’ files, among others, was done on Gloria’s chemo days. File clerks don’t have remote access.”

“So someone else is using Gloria’s log in. Could it be Lee?”

“If it was, it wasn’t from his computer—it’s clean, and the clerks probably would have noticed if he’d been out there on Gloria’s computer. The really weird part is that there’s one search that comes up almost every day that isn’t in Manassas CPS jurisdiction. It’s over in Stafford, and there is no active CPS file for that address. Can you think why anyone would do a daily search on an address that’s not only out of their office’s jurisdiction, but also out of their hunting ground?”

“Stafford? Stafford, Stafford . . .” Listen to your gut, Mercedes, it’s telling you something. “Run that address against my old cases.”

“Let’s see . . .” In the silence of the house, I can hear the click of keys over the phone. “Holy shit, Mercedes. Nine years ago, a fourteen-year-old girl named Cara Ehret. Her father beat her, raped her, and prostituted her to his friends. Fuck. You stayed with her in the hospital.”

“A guardian angel,” I murmur, remembering. “She said she finally had a guardian angel. Her mother drove her car into a tree when Cara was nine or ten. Her father’s still in prison—the rest of his life, I seem to recall—so he’s not still living in that house. And I doubt Cara is either. We looked at her case this morning but couldn’t trace her after high school; where is she now?”

“We’ll dig in and find out. I’ll call back when we’ve got it.”

“Cara Ehret,” Sterling repeats, tasting the name. “She was on our short list. But what’s her connection to Gloria? Or to whoever was using Gloria’s log in?”

I shake my head, the final threads still just out of reach. “She was blonde as a kid, but her father dyed her hair red when he started renting her to his friends,” I tell her, the details I read so recently crowding in on me. “What if we’re looking for Cara, but she—”

My phone rings again before I can finish the thought, but it isn’t Cass. It’s an unfamiliar number. “Ramirez.”

“Mercedes,” comes a hoarse whisper. “Mercedes, she’s here!”

“She’s here? Where’s here? Who is this?”

“It’s Emilia,” the girl on the other end of the call whispers. “The lady who killed my parents, she’s here at my Uncle Lincoln’s!”