The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(48)

“Except Brooklyn,” Yvonne counters. “Does that mean she isn’t connected?”

I hold up a finger to ask for patience. “According to her file, the day after she went missing, Kendall’s parents gave a press conference explaining that their daughter had a dangerous and unpredictable medical condition. They begged whoever had their daughter to please, for the sake of her life, drop her off at any hospital.”

“What was the condition?”

“Inoperable brain aneurysm. Recently diagnosed. She was a ticking time bomb.”

Bran stares at me, then turns and leans against the wall, muttering profanities under his breath. In Spanish, from what little I can hear.

“For those of us not on the Eddison-Eliza wavelength?” asks Yvonne.

“Kendall’s diagnosis was only a couple of weeks old. Her parents told the lead detective that their extended family didn’t know yet, because they were still looking into alternative treatments. Her kidnapper wouldn’t have known. Kendall might not even have known.”

“How would she not know?”

“Aneurysms are largely asymptomatic until they rupture. They tend to be found while examining other injuries. Like a dodgeball to the head, in Kendall’s case. The school notified her parents, parents took her to the hospital just in case, to check for concussion.”

“Did the impact cause the aneurysm?”

“No, it’s just what helped them find it. But how do you explain that kind of condition to an eight-year-old? ‘Hi, sweetheart, you have this thing in your head that could kill you at any time without any actual provocation, okay, go play now’?”

“You and Eddison would have interesting kids.”

All of us turn and look at Yvonne. She just shrugs.

“Aneurysms do what they want,” I continue after a moment. “Telling her to be very careful when she plays wouldn’t have decreased the likelihood of it rupturing. It wouldn’t surprise me if her parents didn’t want to tell her until there was actually something that could be done.”

“But if it ruptured and she didn’t know to expect it . . . ,” whispers Gala. “She would be so scared.”

“Depending on how big it was and how quickly it ruptured, there might not have been time to realize anything was even wrong before she stroked out.”

Ian clears his throat. “I’m a little disturbed at you knowing this much about it, Eliza.”

“My Theory of Knowledge professor freshman year had a stroke and dropped dead in the middle of class. Turned out he had an aneurysm, and the whole experience was traumatic enough that one of the profs from the UC Denver med school came up and taught us all about it. They didn’t want us to think we’d missed any signs or anything.”

“That’s actually impressive on the part of the university.”

“Boulder’s full of hippies. They care about feelings.”

Yvonne braces her arms against the table, forehead against her wrists. “So you think Kendall . . .”

“As far as we know, not one of these girls has been found, dead or alive,” I point out, wincing at the bluntness. “What we have to work off of is that repeated two-year gap. Two years. Whoever’s taking them, it’s extremely unlikely that they’re killing or trading the girls right away. Not with that kind of gap. Maybe the girls age out of their abductor’s preference, or maybe it’s something else entirely. We don’t know. But we can reasonably assume those two years are significant. And then they take Kendall Braun, with no idea she has a problem.”

“You think she died recently,” Bran says hoarsely. “He took Brooklyn to replace her. That’s why Brooklyn seems to break the pattern.”

“Yes.”

He resumes his cursing, thumping the side of his fist into the wall with carefully restrained violence.

What’s worse: Not knowing anything about who took your little sister and what was done to her, or learning that she may have been kept for two years, suffering God only knows what, and still not knowing what happened to her after?

Eventually, I clear my throat and look down at my notepad to gather my thoughts. “Gala, for the files we already have, start going through and picking out names in common. Neighbors, teachers, friends, whoever.”

“Spreadsheet?”

“Beautiful. Yvonne, can you dig more into the people in Brooklyn’s neighborhood?”

“We’ve already done some digging; how far do you want me to get before we run into the need for a warrant?”

“Who’s moved there in the past year? Every one of these abductions is in a different place. This isn’t someone who puts down roots.”

“Wouldn’t this move to the area be more recent?” Ian asks.

“We don’t know that. Maybe he kidnaps someone as soon as he’s been there long enough to see their habits, or maybe he kidnaps someone just before he leaves for a fresh city to make it harder to get caught. What we can reasonably assume is that the move would have happened after Kendall’s disappearance and before Brooklyn’s.”

“If he moved,” Gala points out with a wince. “What if it’s someone who travels a lot for work? Home base could be anywhere, right?”

“Fuck.”

She wilts.

“No, Gala, you’re right, and it was good to point that out.”