of his element. “No big prints or gaudy colors. Probably not too dressy.”
“No sequins. Check.”
“Business casual.”
“Gotcha.” Sort of. Even as her heart raced, she mentally sorted through the clothes she’d brought with her.
“After you change, I think you’re going to want to check out of the Quality Inn. If you feel ready to stay with the Lawsons—”
“No,” she said too quickly.
Another silence. “All right.” He said it so gently. “We’ll talk about it when I see you. Lunch?”
She glanced guiltily at her plate. She really hadn’t done justice to this breakfast, and Karen must have worked so hard on it.
Pathetic though it was, she’d have begged if she’d had to. She swallowed. “Yes, please.”
“I’ll get takeout. We can park somewhere.”
“That...sounds good.” Her gaze slid sideways again to the amount of food left on her plate. Maybe by then she’d have conquered this roiling in her belly and be hungry.
Letting him go, she then had to detail the plans to the Lawsons, watching Karen’s eyes widen again.
“Eve? Oh, my.”
“I hope this isn’t a problem for her, given her job. She’ll suffer from some reflected notoriety.”
“Oh, my.”
Which pretty well said it all.
* * *
SETH STEPPED BACK into the small staging room where all four Lawsons huddled like a herd of deer unsure which way to leap. Kirk looked his usual stoic self, if uncomfortable in a white shirt and tie, Karen excited and terrified all at once, Bailey resigned and Eve... He couldn’t quite tell.
He’d call her tonight. Or even take her aside after the circus was over, if he had a chance.
“We’re set up,” he told them. “There are a lot of cameras out there. Ignore them. Look people in the eyes when you talk. Along with reporters, we have some curiosity seekers.” His mouth quirked. “I saw the Stimson police chief himself standing at the back.”
Over lunch, eaten at a relatively deserted riverside park, Bailey had finally thought to ask why a detective with the county sheriff’s department was investigating, given that the Lawsons lived in Stimson. The high school, she’d learned, was outside city limits. Since that’s where the crime had occurred, the original and any continuing investigation had been the responsibility of the sheriff’s department.
The sheriff himself had shaken all their hands and been briefed to do the initial talking. Usually detectives stayed in the background, but under the circumstances he’d warned Seth to expect to have to answer questions.
“All right,” he said quietly. “Let’s do this.”
He ushered them all onto the stage. Flashes momentarily blinded him. He blinked as they continued. The forest of big-ass cameras was intimidating as hell. He’d ended up by design with a hand on Bailey’s back. He felt her stiffen, but a sidelong glance reassured him that she and Eve looked remarkably poised. The parents...well, everyone would expect out-of-control emotions.
An experienced, folksy speaker, Sheriff Jaccard had his audience bespelled from the moment he began.
“Twenty-three years ago, a little girl who’d been born and grown up in Stimson vanished into thin air. The community was shaken when news of the abduction spread. Even then, we had our share of crime, but having a child snatched by a stranger under the noses of a whole lot of other parents scared the daylights out of everyone. How was it that not a soul, adult or child, had seen anything at all? This department’s best efforts never produced a fruitful lead. The FBI had no more success. Six-year-old Hope Lawson was gone, for all intents and purposes, from the face of the earth. Her parents were left to grieve and yet cling to their belief that she would someday come home. The rest of us...well, we came to assume she was dead.” He swept the audience with a gaze that commanded attention. “We were wrong.”
Exclamations and shouted questions filled the auditorium.
When they died down briefly, he raised his voice. “We’ll take questions eventually, but first let me finish. Hope Lawson is with us today because of Detective Seth Chandler, who has a special interest in pursuing cold cases. He moved to Stimson only three years ago and had never heard of Hope until someone mentioned her disappearance to him. He’s had some success in tracing missing people, in part because law enforcement agencies are getting a lot better at communicating with each other. But Hope didn’t appear in any of those databases, either. He took the extra step of having an artist create an age-progressed picture.” The sheriff used his laptop, open on the podium, to project a picture on the white screen behind him. He turned to look at it, as everyone in the audience did the same. “This is that picture.”
The flashes dazzled Seth’s eyes again. Photographers, crouching, got as close to the stage as they could, probably trying to get Bailey and the picture in the same frame.
The sheriff explained how Seth had created interest in the case and how the picture had spread across social media sites until someone had said to a young woman, “Your picture is online.” He smiled and stepped aside, motioning Bailey to join him. “Meet Hope Lawson.”
Again questions flew before she could open her mouth. Again he waited for quiet and said, “She’s prepared a statement.”
Poised had been a good word to use for her, Seth thought. Given her background, it was hard to understand where she’d come by so much strength and confidence. Confidence that hid a whole lot of damage and a mess of insecurities, he suspected, but the beautiful woman who gazed calmly at the roomful of people and cameras had one fine facade.
“I do not remember the abduction itself,” she began. “I spent the next five years with a man I do remember. I presume he was the one to take me, although he might have acquired me from someone else. Eventually, he abandoned me in a motel room in Bakersfield, California.” Head high, she looked around. “By then, I no longer remembered my name or family. He had taught me to call him Daddy. Authorities were unable to locate him, but assumed he was my father. I was placed in the foster care system, where I was fortunate enough to have some fine people to help me heal.” She talked about graduating from high school and working a variety of jobs before deciding to get a college degree. “A part of me was afraid to walk into the sheriff’s department and say, ‘I think I’m Hope Lawson.’ I wasn’t at all sure I really was, and also...acknowledging it forces me to face a great deal from my past. I know you have questions, and I will answer some, but not all. I ask you to respect my right to privacy.”
The questions flew. She did answer some. Seth answered others. Yes, he told them, Bailey had that day submitted a sample for a DNA test, but along with the obvious family resemblance and Bailey’s memory of her background, a birthmark had solidified their certainty that she was Hope. Karen did most of the talking for the Lawsons, but Eve told everyone there how thrilled she was to have Hope home.
“After I came to live with the Lawsons, I felt incredibly lucky. But I was always conscious of a hole in our family. Hope was missing. Somewhere, I had a sister out there. Now—” she aimed a shy but warm smile at Hope “—she’s home.”
Truth, Seth thought, but not all of it.
Tears ran down Karen’s face. Kirk swiped some from his own cheeks. Cameras caught it all.
At last the sheriff stepped up to the podium again and made a plea for everyone to respect the Lawsons’ need for privacy and space to move ahead with their lives. Trying for unobtrusive, Seth opened the door at the back of the stage and signaled for the family to fade back.
The moment he’d closed the door, Karen burst into sobs. Looking helpless, Kirk put his arms around her. Eve hovered close, murmuring comforting words, while Bailey stood