Not One of Us(62)

I didn’t yell at him or grab him hard enough to leave a bruise. It wasn’t necessary. Not yet. And I hoped it wouldn’t be. I prided myself on only using the right amount of force called for in any situation.

But if lethal measures were necessary, so be it.





Chapter 24


TEGAN


Jori and her grandmother sat on the edge of the sofa, their bodies poised and tense, as though ready to spring into flight. Jori’s eyes were dark and wild and large in her pale face. If Linsey and Luke were missing, I’m sure I’d look the same.

Uniformed cops swarmed their small house and the property.

“We’re doing everything possible to find Zach,” Oliver said in his most reassuring voice. “It’s possible Zach returned home, grabbed his toys, wandered outside on his own, and then got lost in the woods. We’ve organized a volunteer search crew to comb the woods, and I have officers interviewing everyone employed at the day program. Hopefully, somebody has seen something out of the ordinary.”

Jori stood and paced to the window, pulling back the curtains. Already, twilight had begun to gather, casting long shadows and cooling the spring air to a slight chill. “He must be cold. And frightened.”

“He doesn’t know how to swim,” Mimi interjected. “If he fell in the water . . .”

Nobody spoke. Less than fifty feet from their house was one of the many winding creeks that threaded its way through swamps about the bayou. They teemed with water moccasins and the occasional alligator. With the advent of spring, the reptiles were stirring from their dormant winter, mating and sunning in the warmer weather.

Zach’s grandmother looked terrible. She seemed to have aged a decade since the last time I saw her. Her frail limbs trembled, and her face was a sickly shade of white and ash. Her eyes were red and swollen. She was a pale shadow of the saucy woman I’d met earlier.

“It’s all my fault,” she kept muttering.

Jori left the window and strode to the couch, then took a seat beside her grandmother and put an arm across her shoulders. “They’ll find Zach. I want you to take your medicine and go lie down. Okay? There’s nothing you can do.”

She nodded meekly, and Jori went to the kitchen, returning a minute later with a pill bottle and a glass of water.

Oliver’s phone buzzed. “Mullins. What’s up?”

I followed him out to the porch as he answered the call, then watched his expression as he nodded and sighed. “Okay. Come on over to the residence. We need every able body in the search. If we don’t find him before dark, our chances dramatically decrease.”

A quick glance over my shoulder reassured me that Jori and her grandmother were heading down the hallway and couldn’t overhear.

“Any news?” I asked as he stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

“No. Mullins and Haywood interviewed every employee who worked at his day program today. No one observed anything unusual. At approximately three twenty, he and two other clients got in the car with their driver. The other clients were safely returned home.”

“What about the driver?”

“He said that when he pulled into the driveway, Zach climbed out, and he watched him until he was safely inside the house, then left.”

“He didn’t find it strange no one was at the door to meet Zach?”

“No. He said sometimes Zach’s grandmother came to the door, but not always. He didn’t think anything of it.”

“What do you think?” I asked. “Surely it’s not a coincidence that Jori Trahern receives threatening messages and then this happens. Would her brother really wander off on his own? According to his family, he’s never done that before.”

The door swung open, and Jori eyed us. “What’s happening?”

“We’ve interviewed all of the day program employees and his afternoon driver,” Oliver said. “Nothing out of the ordinary happened today. There’ve been no reports of suspicious people hanging around the building or any employee who exhibited an inappropriate relationship with your brother.”

“How’s your grandmother?” I asked.

“Crying herself to sleep. The one time I want her to be confused and unaware of what’s happening, she’s one hundred percent lucid.”

“Sleep’s the best thing for her right now,” I said gently.

Jori acted as though she hadn’t heard me. “This is all my fault,” she said, repeating the same words her grandmother had used. “Someone’s after me, and they’re using Zach to hurt me.”

I only had an inkling of how she must feel. Once when the twins were five, my ex was three hours late bringing them home. We were going through the worst of times in our relationship, and I’d feared he’d taken off with the kids. He didn’t answer his phone. He wasn’t at his house. Every minute with no news ticked by like an hour. Even with my extended family gathered around me, it had been a special kind of hell. Finally, he’d called from a car repair shop and reported that his transmission had died and he’d been stranded. Typical Josh—he was careless about charging his phone, and the battery had died. The twins corroborated his story when they arrived home.

Jori needed more resources, I decided. She toted a lot of responsibility on her young shoulders, and even though she’d grown up in the bayou, she’d been away a long time and needed to forge new connections. I’d make sure to help her with that. But for now, I kept my mouth shut, unwilling to utter false platitudes that Zach had probably just wandered off on his own and would be found shortly.