Echo(90)

I watch over his shoulder as he clicks to zoom in on something, which I didn’t think to do because I swear to God, I’m losing all sense of focus.

“There it is,” he says as he grabs a pen and jots down the license plate number.

“Christ, I’m a f*cking idiot.”

“Not as much as this f*cker,” he counters and then grabs his cell. “Try to relax. We’ll find her. Let me make a couple calls while I grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen.”

I nod and walk over to the couch and take a seat, but the moment I do, I hear a buzzing coming from Lachlan’s jacket. Curiosity piques, and I go over to find another cell in one of the pockets. With no name flashing on the screen, I accept the call and stay silent.

“Baby, are you there?” a woman says, and it takes me a few seconds to connect the voice in my head.

“Camilla?”

There’s a moment of silence before my father’s girlfriend questions in return, “Declan?”

“Why are you calling Lachlan?” I ask, but she quickly pivots, saying, “How have you been? Your father and I haven’t heard from you since you—”

“How do you know Lachlan?” I question, cutting her off mid-sentence.

“Umm, well . . . ” she stumbles. “Maybe you should . . . you should probably ask Lachlan.”

“I’m asking you.”

There’s no immediate response, but it isn’t long before she releases a sigh and reveals, “Your father is in a little trouble. I wanted to call you and tell you this sooner, but your father insisted that I refrain. You know how stubborn he is.”

“Stop the shit, Camilla. How do you know Lachlan?”

“It’s a rental,” Lachlan announces when he rushes back into the room, and in the same second, Camilla hangs up, disconnecting the call.

“What the f*ck is this?” I question as I hold up the cell.

He’s collected and calm, responding, “My personal cell.”

“And that is . . . ?” I question, eyeing the cell in his hand.

“My work phone.”

“So tell me then, why is my father’s girlfriend calling your personal cell? And why, when I asked her how she knows you, did she choke like a cheap whore giving head?”

“Camilla’s an old friend. Don’t worry; your father knows that. You probably just caught her off guard when you answered the phone.”

His composure makes me second-guess whatever suspicions I have, but she called him baby, and I can’t ignore that, but I also can’t waste time right now. I’ll have to deal with this shit later as I draw my attention back to what he said about the car.

“McKinnon,” Lachlan adds. “Relax, okay? We’re going to find her.”

“I’ll relax when she’s back in this house. Tell me, what did you find out?”

“I’m waiting on a call from the rental company. Seems, whoever this guy is, he wasn’t aware that the car has a tracking device in it that the company installs on all the vehicles.”

“What about the police?”

“The minimum wage kid who took the call was an easy payoff,” he tells me.

Grabbing her bag, I say, “I’m going to check her room. I’ll be down shortly.”

“Sure thing.”

Heading upstairs, I walk into the guest room I put Elizabeth in since bringing her home with me earlier this week. I set the bag down and sit on the edge of the bed. When I look over to the nightstand, I see a pair of pearl earrings along with a necklace that catches my attention. I pick up the thin silver chain and stare at the small charm that hangs from it—a lotus.

How could a woman who is so dead inside be so sentimental?

This girl is incredibly damaged. To wrap my mind around her psychotic thoughts and deranged actions would be a wasted effort because there’s no way to make sense of it all. The trauma that a person has to endure to get to the state of mental instability that she’s in is gut-wrenching to think about. Everything she’s told me about her childhood, everything she went through, is morbidly sickening. If I had to walk around holding on to what she does, I’m not sure I could live with myself.

Her past has molded her into a monster. But to look into her eyes as deeply as I find myself doing, there’s something innocent inside of her. She’s very much like a child in many ways; I see it in small glimpses. It’s almost as if she hit pause and stopped living when she lost her dad. Like she’s somehow stuck because the life she was thrown into was too heinous that she never let go of the childlike beliefs that the world is a good place filled with good people. You would never know it unless you found yourself in the core of her. She knows how ugly life is, but there’s a little girl inside of her that hasn’t given up just yet.