was a fire just outside the cabin while everyone was sleeping. That Ethan disappeared somewhere between the rush outside and the chaperone putting out the fire. That the dogs had some trouble catching his scent at first, until one of them led searchers a mile and a half through the woods, where it dried up at a road. Lucas’s reaction to the last one makes me grip the table tighter.
“Sounds like a trap,” he says, and Dawn doesn’t argue. She thinks it sounds like a trap, too, and honestly, who wouldn’t?
I turn back to Lucas. “They think it might have been Andrew.”
He frowns, but he doesn’t look particularly surprised. “Of course they suspect Andrew. Don’t you ever watch Law & Order? It’s always the parent.” He turns to Dawn. “Did you call him? Did you send somebody to bust down his door?”
“Yes to the first, but we can’t do the second without a warrant, which the Atlanta PD is working on. By now they’ve knocked on his door often and loud enough to wake the neighbors on either side. It looks like nobody’s at home.”
He curses.
Dawn examines him carefully, her pen stilled. “It doesn’t seem like I need to ask whether or not you think Andrew would be capable of kidnapping his own son.”
“Hell yeah, I think he would. He’s smart, he’s sneaky and don’t even get me started on that man’s mental state.”
That Man. The Wife Beater. Captain Douchebag. Just a few of the nicknames Lucas has coined for my soon-to-be ex so he would never have to say Andrew’s name again.
But Lucas is right about one thing: don’t get him started on Andrew. Lucas is the kind of man who makes a decent living off sweat and elbow grease. Who values pulling your own weight, making an honest buck and taking care of your own. God. Country. Family. Maybe he could have respected Andrew if he’d built his company from the ground up instead of using a significant chunk of his parents’ life insurance settlement. The other half he sank into our six-bedroom home on a half-acre lot in Dunwoody, where he now lives alone. Lucas has never been shy with his opinions, and he’s always had a long list of reasons I should have never married Andrew: too self-important, too focused on the material, too headstrong and controlling. Later, after his drinking had become a problem, he was too quick-tempered and unpredictable. By the time I saw what Lucas did in Andrew, it was too late. We already had Ethan.
But the last thing I need right now is to rehash yet another I told you so. “So now what?”
Dawn pushes up from the couch. “Now I need to do a quick check-in with Sheriff and the team over at the dining hall. In the meantime, I want you to start making those lists we talked about. Places Ethan goes on a regular basis, people he knows and interacts with, websites he visits and people he talks to. I want the names of every adult Ethan has come into contact with in the past year. People he knows well. People he knows not so well. We want to take a look at anyone he might have formed an attachment to.”
I know what she means.
She means anyone who might have formed an attachment to him.
She points to the legal pad balanced on the arm of the couch, where she scribbled a phone number across a fresh page. “That’s my cell. If you need me, I can be back here in less than five minutes.”
Lucas watches her shrug into her coat and collect her things, jaw clenched. Muscles and tendons twitch under the cotton of his T-shirt.
Dawn slips out the door, and he turns to me. “What do you need me to do?”
I don’t hesitate. This is the reason I called him here, to bulldoze the woods and search for clues, to follow my baby’s footsteps through the terrain. As much as I want him to stay here and comfort me, I need him to find Ethan. Never have I needed anything more.
“Find him, Lucas.” I hold his gaze, and his eyes glisten with marching orders. “Go out there and find Ethan for me.”
Lucas jumps up, swipes his duffel from the floor and disappears out the door.
* * *
As soon as Lucas is gone and I’m alone in the cabin, I try Andrew’s numbers but get flipped to voice mail again. The sound of his voice after all these months scrapes across my nerves like a patch of stinging nettle.
At the beep, I take a deep breath.
“Andrew, this is Kat... I’ve been trying to reach you for hours now. Ethan’s missing. If you had anything to do with it, if he’s there with you right now, I’ll do anything you want. I’ll give you anything. I’ll cancel the restraining order. I’ll beg the judge to give you fifty percent custody. I’ll take out a full-page ad in the AJC and tell everybody you never laid a hand on me if you want me to...” My throat threatens to funnel shut, but I force myself to shove the words over my tongue. “Just please. Don’t take Ethan from me. I’m begging you. Please don’t take my baby away.”
I hang up just in time, right before a sob pushes up my throat and steals my voice. I toss the phone on the table, cover my face with my hands and let the tears come, the images flitting through my mind like a horror show. Ethan on the backseat of Andrew’s Mercedes, wondering where they’re going. Andrew laughing every time he sees my name pop up on his cell phone screen. Are the police tracking it? Are they watching the blips move farther and farther away on some computer screen? It’s almost nine. They could be halfway to Mexico by now.
I jump out of my chair and begin pacing.
I think about what it would be like to never see Ethan’s face again, to live the rest of my life not knowing, never finding answers. I think about Ethan, blindfolded and bawling, in the back of some unmarked van. His little body, mangled beyond recognition. My thoughts are wild things, chasing me around the tiny room.
“No.” My voice is thin and reedy in the cabin, and I try it again, this time louder. “No.” I can’t do this to myself. I swipe the legal pad and pen from the couch and force myself to sit still long enough to make a list of names.
The first dozen or so come without much effort. Lucas. Izzy and two—no, three of her ex-boyfriends, none of them lasting more than a few months but long enough that Ethan remembers their names. Our old neighbor, Mrs. T, who still drops by on Christmas with hand-knit socks nobody ever wears. Andrew and our old friends, most of them people I haven’t seen since the afternoon outside the CVS. Are they still in his life? Are there new friends I don’t know about? I have no idea.
And what about my neighbors? I don’t know their names, but I know I don’t trust them. Ethan is not allowed to play in his own front yard without me there, a lioness watching her cub. Though why would any of them drive all the way here to steal the kid who lives across the street?
I make a list of places we go—school, the Publix down the street, the deli on the corner where Ethan once asked me why a homeless man was rummaging through the Dumpster. “Because he’s hungry, I guess.” Ethan gave the man his sandwich. Fresh tears prick my eyes, because that’s the kind of child I have, one who is constantly reminding me there are people in the world who have it worse.
I think back to what Dawn told me earlier, about roadblocks and neighborhood canvasses and all those strings of letters that sounded straight out of a crime show. One pops miraculously in my mind: BOLO. Be on the lookout for. But did she mention where they were looking? Which direction? I wish I’d thought to take notes.
The questions beat an insistent drill in my skull. Where else are they looking? How many police officers are on the case? Has the media been alerted? What about an AMBER Alert? Are there other state and national alert systems for missing children? Are there others working to spread the word, too?
I flip to a clean page, start jotting down the questions before they can flit away. I’ve barely recorded one before the next one thrums its way into my consciousness. Before long, the paper is covered in blue ink and scribbles. I flip to the next sheet and keep going.
What about the teachers and chaperones? How certain are the police that they were where they said they were?