In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(76)

“Come up with the money. I could act as your agent and give you a deal.”

I’ll bet you could, Tracy thought. She bet Jewel Chin was adept at working every angle.





CHAPTER 32

Tracy entered Lisa Walsh’s office at just before five o’clock on her drive back to Redmond following her interview with Jewel Chin. Walsh accommodated Tracy, who wanted to ask her counselor about the spell she had suffered at her desk and question whether she had anything to be concerned about.

She initially was concerned she’d had a mild heart attack or stroke. She worried she could be anemic. But other than being fatigued, she didn’t feel any adverse physical effects. She had no numbness in her chest or her left arm. Her breathing had returned to normal. She didn’t have a primary care physician to consult, and she didn’t think her symptoms appropriate for her ob-gyn. As much as she hated to admit it, she believed her symptoms were more likely mental than physical.

She wondered if maybe she was on the same wall as the climber who Walsh had mentioned, and whether she had just taken a fall.

She thanked Walsh for seeing her on short notice.

Walsh smiled. “I’m happy I could accommodate you. Tell me what’s going on.”

Tracy took her seat on the couch. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I was working long hours and keeping busy on the cases I talked to you about. I learned that the brothers I was investigating had a foster sister, and I was pursuing that lead.” Tracy gave Walsh the details of her conversation with Lorraine Bibby and her subsequent return to the office and search for Lindsay Sheppard, culminating in her attack.

“I’m smart enough to see the similarity in that girl going missing at eighteen and my sister going missing at the same age, but I’ve had similar cases and never suffered those physical symptoms. I feel fine now, fatigued after a long day, but fine.”

“Tell me more about the symptoms,” Walsh said.

Tracy did. “Should I go to the emergency room?”

“It sounds to me like you were having a panic attack, Tracy.”

“A panic attack?” Tracy was not familiar with the term. “What’s a panic attack?”

“It’s a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers physical reactions.”

“I was in my office; there was nothing to fear.”

“Exactly.”

“You mean I imagined something to fear?”

“No. What you experienced was real. The physical symptoms were real. When panic attacks occur, you might think you’re losing control, having a heart attack, even dying.”

“That’s exactly what I thought.”

“Many people have just one or two panic attacks in their lifetimes, and the problem goes away, usually when a stressful situation ends.”

“Stress triggers it?”

“It can.”

Walsh made sense, but . . . “So what can I do?” Tracy asked. “This is what a detective does.”

“You can learn to manage it. There’s also medication.”

“I don’t like medication.”

“Nothing addictive and not forever. Just to get you through this time. If you need it.”

“What I don’t understand is why is it happening now? Why at this point in my life? I didn’t experience these attacks when Sarah went missing, and that was the most stressful period in my life.”

Walsh nodded. “But from what you told me, your focus back when your sister went missing was holding your family together, being strong for your mother and your father. Later, your focus changed to trying to find your sister.”

“That’s true,” Tracy said.

“And you told me that finding your sister consumed you for many years. I think you used the word ‘obsessed,’ didn’t you?”

“It did become an obsession.”

“But that’s over now. You found out what happened to your sister.”

“I knew she was dead,” Tracy said. “I always knew Sarah was dead. There’s that faint hope you’re wrong, those very few cases where the woman escapes and makes it home, but I knew how rarely that happens.”

Tracy thought of Lindsay Sheppard, knowing the odds were more likely she, too, was dead. Sheppard had been high risk, coming from the foster care system with family drug problems. The odds had been stacked against her long before she entered the Sprague household. Stephanie Cole was also likely dead.

She was chasing ghosts. She was, again, surrounded by the dead.

“What’s different now, Tracy?”

“What’s different?” Tracy said. “You mean Dan and Daniella?”

“You met a good man and you fell in love. You got married. Had a daughter. Became a mom.”

“You’re saying I have something to lose.”

“Do you fear something happening to Dan, or to your daughter?”

Tracy gave the question some thought. “I do. But that’s natural, isn’t it?”

“What would be the worst thing that could happen to you now?”

“Losing my daughter,” Tracy said without hesitation.

Walsh nodded.

“Is that why I had the panic attack now?”

“Why did you pick this cold case to pursue?”