A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(64)

Turner reappeared with a glass of water and handed it to Emilia. She took it, gulped, her eyes shut.

“Mrs. Washington, would you mind if we look around?” Carver asked. “Maybe we could find something that would help us with our investigation.”

She put down the glass. “Okay,” she whispered.

He was about to step into the hallway with Turner when he glimpsed something outside in the darkness.

A shed in the backyard.

He exchanged glances with Turner. The other detective gave him a slight nod and said, “Mrs. Washington, you mentioned a planner? Can you show me where it is?”

“We have a spare room where he does his paperwork,” Emilia said, her eyes distant. “I do my ironing there. Sometimes I put laundry on his desk. He hates that.”

“Can you show me?” Turner asked.

The woman got up and shuffled down the hall, Turner behind her.

Carver unlocked the back door and stepped out into the yard. The ground was covered in grass, but it grew wild in some parts and was spotted with muddy patches. The shed lay ten yards from the house.

If Nathan had been held there, there was no chance that Emilia didn’t know.

He switched on his pocket flashlight and walked over to the door, registered the large sliding bolt that held it shut. No lock. But if anyone was kept inside . . .

He slid the bolt and pulled the door open. A musty smell welcomed him as he let the beam of his flashlight run over the shed’s contents. A few gardening tools, an old bicycle, a moldy mattress, three shelves with cans of paint, rusty metal boxes, something that looked like a dog leash.

There was enough room to keep someone here, especially a child. Liam could have kidnapped Nathan and kept him here. Then, at some point, maybe getting worried, he’d decided to move the kid. And his accomplice, displeased, had stabbed him.

It felt wrong. Liam and Emilia’s backyard faced the neighbor’s house. Someone would have noticed. Nathan would have made noise even if he was tied up. And it was just plain dumb. Not to mention that Carver doubted Emilia would have called the police so quickly if she’d recently had a kidnapped kid in the backyard shed.

He stepped out of the shed and slid the bolt shut. Looked down. A muddy puddle by the shed door.

Nathan’s shoe had been soaked in mud.

He glanced at the house, then knelt by the puddle and took out a plastic bag from his pocket. He carefully scraped some mud into the bag. Forensics should be able to compare this to the mud on Nathan’s shoe.

A movement in the house drew his gaze. Emilia’s silhouette passing by the window, hunched under the weight of her grief. He was almost ashamed of his suspicions.

But Liam had been murdered, and Nathan’s shoe had been found at the crime scene. The two were definitely connected. And Carver had to find out how.





CHAPTER 42


The morning sun was almost painful to Abby’s sleep-deprived eyes. She adjusted the driver’s visor, then fumbled for the cup of coffee and sipped from it, the overly sweet liquid already lukewarm. She’d gone to bed way too late and woken up ridiculously early to get ahead of traffic, and now she felt like death. Her life choices, she had to admit, were questionable. Two and a half hours of sleep were not enough for . . . well, for anything, really. It was a miracle she had managed to drive all the way across Long Island without smashing her car into a tree.

Carver had called her during the drive, filling her in on his meeting with Liam Washington’s wife. He’d sounded just as exhausted as she was.

She’d agreed to meet Wong by the turn to the farm, but when she got there, Wong was nowhere to be seen. She checked her phone and saw that Wong had sent her a message. She had been delayed. Abby used the time to open the browser on her phone and search for Tom McCormick’s article in the New Yorker Chronicle. She skimmed it quickly, making sure it matched the article he’d sent her the day before to review. He’d added her quote, naming her and calling her the “hero of the 2018 bank siege.” He’d linked a different article in the online newspaper—the article that had been published on the day of the bank siege. The article had several photos of her—wearing a police vest, talking on the phone, and of course, the final photo that had been published everywhere of the hostages being released with Abby and a guy from ESU ushering them to safety.

She seemed like a hero in the article. But she remembered how she’d felt. The sudden terror that had gripped her when they’d heard a shot fired, and she’d thought the robbers had killed a hostage. That moment when she’d first gotten one of the robbers on the phone and couldn’t hear his words because her heart was beating in her ears.

“Hero, my ass,” she muttered.

Another link in the recent article caught her eye. A follow-up. She clicked the link. It was a Q and A with Eric Layton, the guy she’d met the day before. He’d told her he worked with Gabrielle. In the article he’d presented himself as Gabrielle’s closest friend.

Most of it was fluff, Eric’s story about an afternoon he’d spent with Gabrielle and her brother, how Gabrielle was the best sister anyone could hope for. That he would do anything to help her family get through this horrible ordeal.

The final lines drew her attention.

Q: After two years of phenomenal success, this catastrophe must have hit Gabrielle extra hard, right?

Eric: I think it would have hit anyone hard, regardless of what they went through. But Gabrielle’s life wasn’t easy even before. Their dad left them when she was a little girl, and they were kicked out of a community they lived in. She told me a few stories about those people you wouldn’t believe. And her family nearly ended up in the street. She went through a lot, and she’s much tougher than people think.