if they don’t?”
“I can’t answer that, Eva. Sometimes kids are returned home in an hour or two. Sometimes it takes longer.”
She sucked in a breath. “And sometimes it doesn’t happen at all?”
“I think you know the answer to that. I also think that you know we’ll do everything we can to bring Brady home to you.”
She’d wanted reassurance.
She’d gotten truth, instead.
She should be thankful for it but she just felt sick, her stomach heaving, stars dancing in front of her eyes. “I need some air.”
She ran outside, letting cold air bathe her hot face.
“Is everything okay, Ms. Billows?” Officer Cunningham asked, stepping away from a group of officers he’d been talking to.
“Do you know where Detective Black is?” If Slade couldn’t give her an exact location, maybe he could.
“He’s organizing the search team.”
“Where?”
“Headquarters are at the east entrance of the Lost Woods. We have a team setting up there. I’m sure Captain McNeal explained everything to you.”
Eva nodded as if he had, but she’d been told nothing. Maybe Slade hadn’t known. Maybe he just hadn’t told her. The second seemed more likely than the first. He’d taken several phone calls during the interview. At some point, he must have been told that Detective Black was setting up at the Lost Woods.
He had chosen not to share the information.
It didn’t surprise her. She’d learned all about police silence after her parents’ deaths.
She walked back inside, grabbed her purse, slipped her feet into old sneakers.
“Where are you heading?” Slade asked.
“I told you that I was going to go look for my son.”
“I can’t recommend that.”
“Can you stop me?” Because unless he had a legal reason to keep her at the house, she didn’t plan on being there. Not for a minute longer.
He hesitated, then sighed. “You’re not a suspect, and you’ve answered all my questions. As long as I can get in touch with you if I need to, I guess I can’t keep you here.”
“I have my cell phone.” She jotted the number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him, trying hard not to look into his eyes. She respected Slade. He was a good man who’d always been a good neighbor, but if his son, Caleb, were the one missing, he wouldn’t be sitting in his house answering questions while other people searched.
“Just be sure you don’t get in the way of the search, Eva. If you do, it won’t help Brady.”
“I know. I just need to...be doing something.” She grabbed Brady’s coat from the closet, telling herself that she was bringing it to him. That she’d go to the Lost Woods and see him standing with the search team, cold but fine.
She jogged down the porch stairs and across the yard, unlocking the station wagon and sliding in behind the wheel. She slammed the door closed as several people called out to her. A few were neighbors. One was a stranger, a reporter maybe.
She didn’t care.
All she cared about was Brady.
“Please, for once, just start!” she muttered as she shoved the key into the ignition. The starter clicked once, then again. Finally, the engine sputtered to life and she pulled away from the curb, glad for once for her father’s advice. Never park in the driveway or the garage, kid. If you do, it’ll be too easy for the police to block in your vehicle and keep you from running.
Yeah, Ernie had been overflowing with little tidbits of information. Especially when he’d been drinking.
A police cruiser pulled in behind her, lights on. No sirens, though. No doubt Slade had called in a tail. He’d probably call it an escort. Either way, Eva knew her rights, and she didn’t stop or slow down. That was another thing Ernie had taught her.
He’d also taught her that people couldn’t be trusted. Not strangers, not friends and certainly not family. A good lesson that she’d forgotten once and would never forget again.
The road leading out of the neighborhood was nearly empty, the moon hanging low above distant trees. A quarter mile, and she was outside Sagebrush city limits, sparse trees and thick scrub lining the two-lane highway. She knew the way to the Lost Woods. There weren’t many people in Sagebrush who didn’t. The place was legend, the deep wilderness a siren’s song that had called more than one explorer to his doom.
She shivered, flicking on the heater and grimacing as cold air blew out of the vent. The car was a junker, but it ran. Until she finished school and got a better-paying job, there was no way she could afford better. It didn’t matter. She and Brady had what they needed and they had each other. She’d told herself that often over the years. She’d believed it, too. As much as she cringed when she thought about the mistake she’d made, the lies she’d bought into, the things she’d given away, she couldn’t regret Brady.
A tear slipped down her cheek. The second of the night, and if she wasn’t careful there would be more. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, her fingernails digging into hard plastic as she turned onto the narrow road that led to the east entrance of the woods.
If Justice had tracked Brady to the woods, it meant he’d found the trail and been on it for nearly half a mile. Good news, but Eva didn’t want to think about Brady wandering through the wilderness. Anything could happen in the thick shelter of the Lost Woods. Anything could be lost there and never found again.
She pulled in behind a line of police cars, search-and-rescue vehicles and TV-news vans. A crowd of people stood in the glow of several oversize spotlights, huddled around a long table, staring at something spread across its top. A tall broad-shouldered man gestured to the table and then to the entrance of the woods, his sweeping motion including stately pine trees crowded close and giant oaks that seemed to bar entrance to the forest’s dark interior.
Detective Austin Black.
Exactly the man Eva wanted to see.
She grabbed Brady’s coat and jumped out of the station wagon, ignoring the officer who was getting out of the patrol car behind her.
“Detective Black!” she called, pushing past a couple of news photographers.
“Come on over.” He didn’t look surprised to see her. Had probably been warned that she was on her way. Good, because she didn’t want to waste more time arguing about whether or not she should be there.
She squeezed in between him and a dark-haired officer who held the leash of a border collie.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Justice and I tracked your son to the entrance of the woods. We were able to follow the scent trail to a stream about
