Wherever She Goes(21)

“I saw the video clips,” he says. “Someone spotted you on the news and told me. I watched it and . . . and I don’t know what to say.”

I stop. Then I turn to face him. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you. If this causes you any embarrassment—”

“Christ, Bree. No. I’m worried about you. You saw something in the park.”

“I didn’t see ‘something.’ I saw a boy get taken. Kidnapped.”

“Putting aside what you think you saw—”

“What I think I saw? A boy was taken, and now his mother is dead, and the police are ignoring me.”

He goes quiet. Then he says, carefully, “I know you wanted more children—”

“What?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “You said that had nothing to do with you leaving, but you left shortly after I told you I wanted to wait.”

“What does this have to do with me seeing a child abducted?”

“You want more kids, so when you thought you saw a child in danger—”

“You think I’m hallucinating a kidnapped kid because, what? I feel like my future babies have been stolen from me? That is the most messed-up amateur psychobabble I have ever heard.”

His lips compress. “Don’t mock me, Aubrey. I’m trying to help.”

“You know what help sounds like, Paul? ‘Aubrey, I saw that clip on the news, and I can’t believe the police are brushing you off. Let me see what I can do—I have contacts in the department.’ ”

He opens his mouth.

“No,” I say. “Those aren’t the words coming out of your mouth, so I don’t want to hear the ones that are. Get out.”

“I just want—”

“And I don’t give a damn. You want to know the real reason why I don’t take money from you? Because paying for this place means it’s mine. All mine. So if I tell you to get your ass out, you are going to turn around and do it. Now.”

He hesitates. Then he stalks out, the door slapping shut behind him.



Now I’m angry. No, I am furious, in a way I haven’t been for years. A way I haven’t allowed myself to be. At last, I have a target for my bottled-up rage.

Paul.

He didn’t give me hell for being on the news. Didn’t storm over here to accuse me of publicly humiliating him. I think that might be better. Then I could have snarled back that this wasn’t about him.

What he did is worse. It’s condescending crap. It’s Paul thinking his wife has lost her mind. Poor, poor Aubrey. She’s hallucinating missing children because she’s sad that she doesn’t have another baby yet.

Screw you, Paul. I saw a boy kidnapped. Any doubt I had evaporated the moment I saw his mother’s photo. That is the woman. He was the boy. He was taken.

And I’m going to prove it.





Chapter Thirteen





I have the photo. The one the police are very clearly not interested in. So it’s time to show them what I can do with it. I’m going to get numbers on that plate, and then I’m going to find that SUV, if it means hacking into the damned DMV to do it.

Yeah . . .

That doesn’t turn out quite as well as I hope. I can’t get any characters from the plate even when I download an illegal copy of the best enhancement software I know. Whoever obscured that plate knew what they were doing, and the mud is caked on thick enough that all I can make out is a few straight lines.

It’s a setback, but not a dead end. I’m too pissed off to let it be a dead end.

I met the dead woman. However shallow our conversation might have been, there is a clue there. I’m sure of it. So I meditate, clearing my mind to focus on our conversation, tugging wispy threads from memory and writing them down. Then I return to meditating and teasing out more threads.

It takes two hours to recall our brief chat, one that wasn’t even a conversation, but simply a series of exchanges punctuating a lesson on cartwheels.

“A librarian,” she laughs when I tell her what I do for a living. “I did not picture you as a librarian. But I suppose that proves it’s been a long time since I set foot in a library. I really should take my son sometime.”

“You should. We have great early-reader programs.”

“That’d be good. I’ve been reading with him at night.”

My son. Him. She never gave me a name. Not for the boy, not for herself.

“Do they have morning programs?” she asks. “I work at a pizza place. We don’t open until noon so I never work mornings.”

A pizza place. That’s all I have. She works at a pizza place that opens at noon.

There are thirteen pizza parlors in Oxford. Only five open at noon, and two are chains. If she worked at one of those, I’d think she’d say, “I work at Domino’s.”

I’ll start with non-chain pizza parlors.

I rise from my laptop . . . and see the clock on the microwave. It’s after eleven at night, and I won’t get far questioning sleepy employees.

This can wait until tomorrow.

It has to.



I wake the next morning to a voice mail from Paul.

“Aubrey, it’s, uh, me.”

As if I couldn’t tell by the phone number.