Wife by Design

“Maddie isn’t here this afternoon,” Lynn bit out. Everyone knew, everyone, that where the kids were concerned, no one assumed anything. “She’d have had to sign her out and clear it with you face-to-face if Kara wasn’t going to be in class. She knows the rules.”

And clearly this young woman didn’t.

Lynn would have to deal with that later. Right now, she had to find Kara.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she tore out of the room—and straight into Grant Bishop’s arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

WHEN LYNN’S BODY slammed into his, Grant knew, instantly, that something was terribly wrong.

She turned before he could pull her fully into his arms, and righted herself. She was on her phone before she said a word to him.

“Lila, I need a lockdown. Immediately. Kara’s missing.”

She hung up and called the police. A tense fifteen minutes later, a couple of detectives met them in Lila’s office.

They wanted pictures. Descriptions of clothing and shoes and distinguishing marks. While the female officer was on the phone, checking for any reports of unattended children in the area, the male officer, Detective Smith, talked to Lynn.

She answered his questions as stoically as she had earlier when the police had requested the same information for Darin.

“There has to be some connection here,” Grant said as he paced the office. He needed everyone on the same page. “Kara and Darin know each other. They eat dinner together regularly. Darin thinks he wants to marry Kara’s caregiver—who happens to be away from the complex at the moment. They have to be together.”

Lynn stared at him openmouthed. “You think Darin and Maddie have Kara?”

“I think that Darin wouldn’t set foot in your home that first time he was there—because he won’t go anyplace he hasn’t been before unless I take him—but the minute he saw Maddie there, he went in.”

He could see the confirmation of his memory in Lynn’s gaze.

“He would never wander off on his own. But for Maddie…”

“You think her parents are in on it?” Lynn asked.

“Where is this Maddie person?” Detective Smith asked.

“With her parents,” Lynn told him. “Shopping.”

She pulled out her phone. Dialed.

“I’ll take that,” Smith said, reaching for the phone. Lynn elbowed his hand away.

“Maddie’s…special. She’ll clam up if you…”

Grant understood. Smith was male. Maddie was scared to death of men.

Except Darin.

“Maddie.” Lynn turned her back to speak on the phone as the door opened and more officers entered the room along with Lila and some of the security personnel from The Lemonade Stand.

“We’re on lockdown,” Lila told Detective Smith, after asking who was in charge. “All staff and residents have been ordered to check their offices and bungalows and report to the rec hall stat.”

“We’ll want to speak with each one of them,” Smith said. “No one is to enter or leave this campus until we release them.”

“I understand, Detective. Thank you for your prompt response.”

Grant would have added his thanks if anyone had noticed him standing there.

One thing was clear: once a child was involved, the search and rescue policies escalated.

He nodded to himself, quietly going out of his mind. Would his brother really stoop to kidnapping to be with Maddie? Would Maddie put Kara at risk that way?

He just didn’t think so. Couldn’t find a way to make the pieces fit. Darin and Maddie both knew right from wrong. They might not realize how much of a panic they would create if Kara went missing, but they’d still know that it was wrong to take her in the first place.

The female detective called Kara’s father. The police had insisted on making that call so that they could get a true read on him. The conversation was short. From the tone Grant heard coming from the other end of the line, Brandon was shocked and distraught. Not the sound of a guilty man.

“He’s on his way to the airport,” the detective said as she ended that call.

“Maddie just about had a meltdown when we strayed from Lynn’s list of instructions just to let me read Kara a bedtime story when she asked. There’s no way that woman would take Kara without following protocol.” He was speaking to the room at large. Everyone, except Lynn, who was on the phone in the corner, stopped talking to look at him.