The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(79)

“I go home,” Holmes says slowly. “To my husband and daughter.”

“Pretend you’re twenty-three and single.”

“To my parents, then.”

“But her mother is dead and her father is in prison. That leaves the house in Stafford, where her father put her through absolute hell. The house where a man is living with his little girl, and she has checked every day to make sure there are no complaints.”

“There still isn’t a complaint,” Sterling points out.

“Do you think that matters anymore to the woman we heard on the phone?”

She shakes her head.

“Burnside is calling Stafford,” Cass reports. “He’ll give a courtesy call to NCIS after, given that the homeowner is a lieutenant commander. We think we may have identified Cara’s initial trigger.”

“What’s that?”

“A few months ago, her father hired a private investigator to find her. When that was successful, he sent her a letter, asking her to come see him. The letter’s still in her apartment, so we called the prison.”

“Did she go?”

“Yes. This, though: her father got remarried, and his wife is expecting a baby. She’s having a little girl in August.”

“You want to tell me how the hell a man in prison for whoring out his daughter gets conjugal visits?” Watts snarls.

“He doesn’t, but when there’s a friendly prison guard to smuggle out a sperm sample, new wife can go to a fertility clinic for implantation. Guard was fired but it was a done deed.”

“And the father who sold her again and again to his friends gets another little girl. I remember interviewing him after the arrest; he probably tracked her down and told her in person just to torture her. Bastard probably got off on getting to hurt her again. You’re right, that has to be our trigger.”

“We borrowed Blakey, Cuomo, and Kang’s teams so we’d have enough. Hanoverian signed off on it.”

“Her endgame is Stafford.” My heart beats a rapid tattoo. “She can’t help it.”

“How sure are you?”

“What do you do when you’re lost in the woods?” I ask softly.

Sterling takes a step closer to me, leaning into my side.

“You run home,” I remind her. “Everything is on fire and overwhelming, and she’s running home, but when she gets there, she’s going to remember all the ways she was hurt, she’s going to see that little girl, and she’s going to see herself.”

“Kearney, send the address to Eddison.”

“He’s still here at the office,” Cass says.

“He’s what?” Sterling and I ask together.

There’s a shuffle and a beep, and then we can hear Eddison’s tired grumble. “Where are we going?”

“Fill him in on the way, just get there,” Watts orders. “Ramirez, Sterling, go.”

“The regulations?” Sterling asks hesitantly.

“Screw them. You’re the best chance of talking her down, just make sure Kearney makes the arrest. Give me your keys, take mine; I’ve got the lights.” She holds out her hand. Sterling takes the keys from me and drops them in Watts’s hand, scooping up the ring for the SUV.

Sterling had a reputation at the Denver field office for making seasoned agents cry when she drove. Never caused an accident, never incurred damage, but you spend the entire trip praying. Sounds like just what we need. As she peels rubber getting us down the street, I brace myself by my legs, much as I envision sailors must during hurricanes.

“Please let us get there,” I whisper. “Por favor.”



27

The Douglasses’ house is painted with flashing red and blue lights when we squeal in. Eddison, standing at the front door with a uniform, checks his watch and shudders.

“She got here first, probably came straight from Chantilly,” he tells us. “Mother is inside. Father’s on his way to the hospital, but the mother refuses to leave until her daughter’s safe.”

“The mother’s okay?”

“Shot in the arm, a through and through on her side. The paramedics have her bandaged up and they’re keeping an eye on her. Kearney’s with her. Police are organizing traffic stops and a search back into the woods, FBI is sending more agents to help, and if it becomes a search and rescue, the Marines have offered aid out of Quantico.”

“Let’s go inside. I need to talk to Mrs. Douglass.”

Mrs. Douglass is in her kitchen, both hands wrapped around a glass of water. She’s mostly listening to Cass, standing at her side, but she keeps looking out the bay window of the breakfast nook like she’ll see her daughter coming down the street. She just saw her husband shot down and her daughter grabbed, and God, I want to be gentle with her, but we don’t have time.

“Mrs. Douglass, my name is Mercedes Ramirez, I’m an agent with the FBI. Are there any places for the neighborhood kids to play? Anything that’s been here for a while?”

She stares at me. “Sorry?”

“The woman who took your daughter used to live here. Not just in the neighborhood, in this very house. She’s not going to get out of Stafford, so is there any place where the kids gather? Something they maybe think is a secret from their parents?”