Faith got up from the table. She started loading the dishwasher. She checked the time, because her mother was going to pick up Emma soon. If Faith’s precious baby was up in her bedroom right now taking off her clothes, Evelyn was going to walk into the scene of a murder/suicide. At the very least, Emma would be barefoot. Faith did not have the requisite hour to make her daughter put her left foot into her left shoe and right foot into her right.
She took a deep, calming breath and tried to summon memories of the sweet angel she had come home to last night. Emma had always been a sponge for Faith’s moods. News of Will’s disappearance had left Faith shaky. Dash was a monster. The IPA was filled with monsters. They were all planning to do monstrous things. What if Will wasn’t able to fool them? He’d had two hours to prep for his undercover identity. What if he messed up? What if Beau flipped for his own self-interest? What if her partner, her friend, was lying dead in a shallow grave?
Emma had absorbed Faith’s pensiveness. She’d been cuddly and accommodating and said so many precious things that Faith almost took her baby book out of the wrapper. Even bath time, which normally ended with one or both of them in tears, had been relatively easy. Emma had only made Faith read two stories. The only stuffed animal she’d had to sing “You’re Welcome” to was Mr. Turtelle. Faith had done her best Maui yet.
Then she had switched on the nightlight. She’d turned off the lamps. She’d left the door open to the requisite six-inch gap. And Emma had unzipped her skin and a demon had jumped out.
Faith closed the dishwasher. She strained her ears, listening for breakage, crying or a Satanic voice saying, What a lovely day for an exorcism.
No sounds set off an alarm bell, which could be an alarm bell on its own, but now would be the only time that Faith had to straighten up. She crammed the blueberries into her mouth as she transferred the bowl to the dishwasher. She wiped down the sticky counter and table. She got on her knees and cleaned the sticky floor. She smelled the trash and decided it could wait. She washed her hands at the sink.
There was one more thing Faith needed to do before going upstairs.
She went to her desk and stacked together the documents from the Michelle Spivey investigation. Emma didn’t need another coloring book. There were over two hundred pages, photographs, witness statements, and background checks. If the key to finding Sara was contained within this file, they were screwed. Van’s redactions had turned the pages into Mad Libs, thick black lines covering the important words.
Spivey was seen at_______with ________at the ________.
There was plenty of there there, but Van was holding out on her.
So was Amanda.
Last night, she had refused to explain why she had let the FBI take Beau Ragnersen into custody. Faith had slammed down the phone so hard that she’d bruised her hand. Her fury had a double edge. Faith was the idiot who’d passed on Beau Ragnersen’s name to Aiden Van Zandt. Yesterday, she had asked him to cross-check the name against Michelle’s work files. Obviously, Van had found something. Obviously, he wasn’t going to tell her what he’d found. Her livid reaction had been another classic line for the baby book—
You were two years old the first time you heard Mommy scream “cocksucker!” into a pillow.
“Oh . . . no . . .” Faith realized there was a cap from a Magic Marker on her desk.
Only the cap. No marker in sight.
She swung herself up the stairs. Emma’s door was open. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by colored pencils. She was trying to put them in the box. The bottom was open, so they kept falling onto her lap, where she would scoop them up again. By her delighted expression, Faith assumed her daughter believed she’d discovered an endless supply of colored pencils.
Faith asked, “Where are your shoes?”
Emma grinned at the cascading pencils. “Snack holes?”
“They’re not in your pockets.” Faith looked in the closet, under the bed, the dresser, the nightstands and the changing table. No shoes, but she had finally found the approximately eleven thousand mittens that Emma had lost last winter. “Get your shoes on before Nana comes.”
“Nana’s here!” Evelyn was making her way up the stairs.
Faith felt like a basketball player who’d been tapped out of a rough game.
“Already a scorcher outside.” Her mother was smartly dressed in linen trousers and a matching sleeveless shirt. She kissed Faith on the cheek, telling Emma, “Put your shoes on, sweetie.”
Faith asked her mother, “Do you know a woman named Kate Murphy?”
Evelyn didn’t have to think about it. She knew everyone. “Kate was Maggie’s partner back when we still carved our DD-5s into stone tablets. I believe she was part of the EEOC lawsuit that forced the FBI to put women in the field. That’s a good girl. Where’s your backpack?”
Faith did a double-take. Emma was wearing her shoes. On the correct feet.
What was this dark magic?
Evelyn suggested, “Mandy knows Kate better than I do. Hurry up, Emmybear.”
Faith watched Emma spin in a circle as she tried to put on her backpack. “What about her boy, Aiden Van Zandt?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t trust men who wear glasses. Why can’t they just see?”
Faith hissed out a long breath of air.
Her mother misinterpreted her exasperation. “Oh, sweetie, he’s not your type. And, besides, his father was a sleazy womanizer.”
“Do you have the father’s number?”
“Ha. Ha.” Evelyn scooped up Emma and rested her on her hip. They each gave Faith a kiss on the cheek, then they were down the stairs and gone.
Faith held on to the image of her daughter’s face. Dark, almost black hair. Light brown eyes. Lovely brown skin. She had inherited none of the Mitchell genes, which came in a shade slightly more pale than a glob of Elmer’s glue.
Emma’s father was third generation Mexican American. Victor wasn’t much into his heritage unless it helped him make a point. Faith’s high school Spanish was ten times better than his. He could barely order a good margarita and forget whispering palabras sucias while echando un polvo. She should’ve known it wasn’t going to work out the first time she’d seen Victor walking around the bedroom with his undershirt tucked into his boxer shorts.
Faith made Emma’s bed, tucking the sheets in tight. Mr. Turtelle was returned to his proper place. Socks were paired. By a miracle from God, the uncapped Magic Marker was located. Faith found herself feeling melancholy as she tidied the room. The house always felt different with Emma gone. Cleaner, certainly quieter, but also lonelier. She straightened up a pile of clothes. She scooped up the colored pencils and carried them downstairs.
She stopped in the foyer. Will’s head was showing in the glass at the top of the door. He was just standing there. He hadn’t knocked. He seldom came over unless she needed an emergency repair. She saw his head turn toward the driveway.
“Don’t go!” Faith juggled the handful of pencils so she could open the door.
Will was dressed in the same clothes from the day before. Relaxed jeans, black long-sleeved shirt. He looked at her. Through her. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked awful. She had never in her life wanted to hug someone as much as she wanted to hug Will right now. But they didn’t do hugs. If he was sitting down, she squeezed his shoulder. Sometimes, she punched him in the arm the way she did with her brother. Right now, she worried that even a tap would knock him over.
He didn’t speak, so she said, “Come in.”
Will followed her through to the kitchen. She had no idea why he was here. It was obvious he hadn’t slept. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles. His whiskers had grown into a legitimate beard. He should’ve been at headquarters by now. The team had worked through the night pulling maps and topographical information around the Citgo off exit 129.
Will was supposed to meet Gerald in eight hours.
What was he doing here?
“Sit down.” Faith dumped Emma’s colored pencils onto the kitchen table. “Do you want breakfast?”
“No, thank you.” Will grimaced as he maneuvered into the chair. She had never known him to pass up breakfast. He started straightening the colored pencils, arranging them by color.
She said, “That kid from the baseball field, Kevin Jones. He went from the park to a shopping center. By the time our people were on foot, he’d already handed off the bag of pills. They followed him to a doc-in-the-box where he got his knee stitched up, then back to his parents’ house. We’ve got eyes on him 24/7, but we can’t pick him up until this is over.”
Will nodded like he already knew. He said, “They lost the black van when it left the nursing home.”
Faith gave him the same nod in return. Amanda had briefed Faith as it was happening. The van had quickly left the residential area near the nursing home. The driver had cut the lights. He’d headed into a more rural area where a helicopter would’ve shown like a beacon. The four chase cars could only get so close on the straight, narrow country roads. The drivers had dropped back, then farther back, then suddenly the van had disappeared.