Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(4)

“Yes.” Geoff Edwards rubbed his forehead. “They were good friends. They went to school together.”

“To Elmhurst Academy?” Zach asked.

Geoff nodded.

“Do you have kids there, too?” Ronan asked.

Adrienne’s uncle frowned and shook his head. “No. My wife and I never had any kids.” There was something in his eyes when he said it, but Adrienne’s mother and father chose that moment to walk in. Camden and Isabelle Edwards looked drained of life.

It took moments to fill them in on what they’d already covered with the uncle. Isabelle held herself together this time, only barely.

“Did you find Carrie?” Isabelle almost asked the question as if she couldn’t bear to hear the answer. “Is she—?”

Zach shook his head. “We haven’t located her. We’re not sure yet if the two cases are related.”

“Everyone’s been saying Carrie ran away since there wasn’t any ransom demand,” Camden Edwards said.

“It’s possible.” Zach wished they had answers for the family.

They went through the usual questions after that. Anyone who might want to hurt the family or Adrienne? Anything suspicious in recent weeks or days? Any information they had on their daughter’s whereabouts beginning at breakfast and going through the day yesterday?

“She was supposed to come home after school. We’d been fighting lately,” Mrs. Edwards said, and her voice held the heaviness of a parent who would do anything to undo the last fight they’d had with a child. “I told her she had to come home and work on her homework instead of hanging out with her friends. Her grades had been slipping.”

“What would ‘hanging out’ have been for her?” Ronan asked.

“Oh, they might go to one of the other girls’ houses or to get ice cream. They weren’t troublemakers. They hung out at the library a lot.” Mrs. Edwards offered.

Zach knew “hanging out at the library” could mean ditching your books there and leaving, only to come back just before your parents were due to pick you up. “Did she have her own car?”

“Yes, but she only drove it on the weekends. We didn’t want her having too much freedom during the week. We drove her to school and our housekeeper would pick her up on days she didn’t go to a friend’s house or out with friends.”

“Did the housekeeper pick her up yesterday?” Zach asked.

“No. We called her last night when we realized Adrienne wasn’t here.” This was delivered with a sob and Adrienne’s father took over.

“She said Adrienne had texted her that she would get a ride home with a friend later. Eva left at four o’clock, so she assumed Adrienne would be home shortly after that.” Edwards rubbed his wife’s back as he spoke.

When Zach confirmed that Eva was the housekeeper, he continued. “And no one saw her in the afternoon?” Zach asked.

The look on the man’s face was pained as he shook his head. “We came home to get ready quickly that afternoon. Her door was shut, and we just...” Shoulders slumped and his head hung, as though he couldn’t help but blame himself for his daughter’s death.

Zach suspected that would always be the case, even if Adrienne did turn out to have been dead long before the parents came home that afternoon. He would guess they would spend the rest of their lives in the company of too many what-ifs and if-only-scenarios.

Edwards spread his hands, palms up, helpless to change what had happened. “She always listened to her music with her headphones on in her room. You hear about kids blasting their music, but that isn’t the way they are nowadays. In truth, they put those earbuds in and shut themselves into their own world.”

Zach and Ronan stood. They’d need to talk to a lot more people to try to piece together where Adrienne had gone when she was killed. Right now, they needed to get to the school and retrace this girl’s steps. Because right now, it was looking for all the world like Adrienne Edwards might have walked right into the hands of her killer.

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Chapter Three





The ride to the state criminal justice building in Rocky Hill wasn’t a long one, but it was long enough to give Zach plenty of time to think. His mind should have been on the case. Specifically, on the fact their case had just taken a shocking turn when Dr. Kane matched the lipstick and rope on their victim to that used in several thirty-year-old murders.

Not similar to that used. She’d matched the items to the actual items in the old case. They were no longer in a “there are similarities” mode. They had a match.

But that wasn’t what monopolized Zach’s thoughts. No, Zach was caught up in the memory of a cold case investigator he hadn’t seen in years. Shauna O’Rourke.

It had been three or four years since he and Shauna had run into each other, and six years since they’d been together. Since before he’d joined the academy, in fact.

It had been right when he’d left the military and before he’d signed up for the police academy. He’d been freaked out about leaving the military, not at all sure what he was going to do with the rest of his life, and more than a little unsure about his role in Naomi’s and Luke’s lives. He’d been a total dick back then. He was at least man enough to admit that, now. Not that he’d realized it then.