The Truth About Comfort Cove

“She’s okay to have her go at Wakerby…”

Lucy’s smile was strictly on the inside, but it was a big one.

“…on two conditions.” Lionel’s firm stare went between the two of them. “First, you keep Amber informed at all times— before you visit, and immediately afterward, too. No surprises.”

Lucy nodded.

“And second, no mention of the rape, Sandy, any evidence pertaining to either, any charges that are filed or charges that might be filed. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Amber—” Lionel glanced at the other woman “—as a professional courtesy to one of our own, I’m asking you to keep Lucy informed as you work this case.”

“Sure.” The thirty-eight-year-old redhead nodded toward Lucy. “I was doing that, anyway.”

Amber Locken had been a new detective when Lucy volunteered to be the stoop for the Gladys Buckley sting. She’d been Lucy’s guide, her voice of encouragement. Lucy was glad not to have lost that support.

“I grossly overstepped,” Lucy said again. “I’m really sorry.” She was. Honestly. And she’d do the same thing again if she thought it would help her find her sister. She gave every waking hour to the job. Her life belonged to her mom and Allie.

“Okay, then, I guess we’re done here,” Lionel said, spreading his hands as he dropped down to the old leather chair behind his desk. That chair and that desk had been sitting in that office in the Aurora Police Department since before Lucy was born.

Lucy waited for Amber to leave. She had something else she wanted to discuss with Lionel. Claire Sanderson was not her case, was not even close to her jurisdiction, but her DNA had been found in Gladys Buckley’s evidence—found only because Lucy had made it her personal business to check every missing child she ever heard of through the database she’d had set up after Gladys turned over her records.

“Sir, I visited Gladys Buckley this week…” Lucy started in as soon as the door closed behind Amber.

“You don’t have to report to me every time you question a prisoner, Hayes.”

“I know that, sir.” Lucy sat in the chair in front of Lionel’s desk. A place she’d been often during her two years as a detective. “I was doing some research for a friend in Massachusetts.”

“Detective Miller?”

“Yes, that’s right. And I found a DNA match between a hair ribbon we took from Gladys’s place and a two-year-old girl who went missing from Comfort Cove, Massachusetts, twenty-five years ago.”

“What did Gladys have to say about that?”

“This wasn’t the first time I asked her about the ribbon, sir. Both times she denied ever having a two-year-old in her home. I believe her. And, technically, I’m done with my part in this case. I just wanted to run what I found by you in case you have any ideas.”

Lionel had been the principal on the Buckley case.

“I—”

As soon as the captain started to speak, Lucy’s cell phone rang. The ringtone told her Marie, her mother’s caregiver, was on the line.

“Excuse me, sir, may I take this?” Marie knew she was on duty and wouldn’t be calling unless it was important.

Lucy had the phone to her ear before Lionel had a chance to nod.

And was standing and at the door within seconds.

“I’m on my way,” she told Marie, and with a hurried, “my mom’s in a bad way. I have to go…” toward her boss, she was gone.

The week’s lack of answers left a bad taste in Ramsey’s mouth. Leaving the office, he thought about going home, putting a steak on the grill, sitting inside while it cooked, nursing a shot of whatever he had in the cupboard above the refrigerator and seeing if there was a ball game on.

The fact that he wasn’t even sure what sport was currently in season—had the Super Bowl happened yet?—steered him away from any possibility that a game on television would be enough to distract him from the puzzles that haunted him.

He’d given the Boston girls as much as he had in him that week. He’d spent the night before reading and rereading their files and Boston news articles dating back to 2000. Time for a break, for the distance that would allow him to gain a different perspective.

Time, again, for Claire Sanderson to speak to him. Or rather, for him to clear his mind and listen to her. The toddler who disappeared from Comfort Cove without a trace spoke to him constantly. Every minute of every day. She’d lived in his town. Made no difference to him that he hadn’t lived in Comfort Cove when Claire had been abducted. He’d been a ten-year-old boy running wild and free on a Kentucky farm twenty-five years before. But he was in Comfort Cove now. She’d been born here. He lived here. She was his responsibility.