you think of anything we haven’t done?”
Eden’s question was as much to herself as to Dean. As hard as it was to believe, they were now approaching the infamous forty-eight-hour mark on Raine Nolan’s kidnapping. And despite doing everything she could think of, they were no closer to finding her than they had been when the call had come in yesterday morning.
“Pray?” Dean looked up as he took a bite out of one of the sandwiches someone had brought into Eden’s office hours ago.
The take-out iced teas that had accompanied them had formed puddles of condensation on the glass cover of her desk. The possibility of food poisoning crossed her mind, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from biting into her own sandwich.
“I expect folks who are more adept at praying than either of us have that covered. What’d the lab tell you?”
“That they’re six months behind, but that since it concerns a child, they’ll do the best they can.”
Chronically underfunded, the state forensics lab was their only option. The county didn’t handle enough crime to justify having one of their own.
Not that the guys who had gathered the evidence had been all that optimistic that there was anything in the girls’ room that would point a finger in the perpetrator’s direction. The best they could hope for was something that might be useful at the trial.
If there ever was a trial…
“The Bureau’s questioning the Nolans again.” Dean shrugged as he added the information.
“You think they got their minds made up?”
“Looks that way. I’m not sure it matters, though. Long as you don’t.”
It would be easier, God knows, to think that whatever had happened to Raine was over and done. An out-of-control moment by an exhausted parent that ended in tragedy.
That image, disturbing as it was, was more palatable than those that had played in Eden’s head the past two days. The only way she’d found to defeat them was to keep herself mentally occupied by making sure the department was covering every possible angle.
“They say a camera doesn’t lie,” she said. “I don’t see how anybody who watched Margo yesterday morning could doubt she doesn’t have a clue what happened to her daughter.”
“So…you like Ray for this?”
“I didn’t say that. You don’t, and I trust your instincts. I just haven’t watched him get emotional like I’ve watched Margo.”
That was one thing she’d have to give the national media credit for. They’d given the mother’s plea to bring her daughter home endless airtime. The fact that they’d apparently had a couple of slow news days had played into that, of course, but the story itself was compelling enough to demand attention.
Where would you think a child would be safer than in her own bed?
Banishing the memory of her mother’s voice, Eden took another bite of her sandwich. The silence that fell as they ate was companionable. And she had leaned heavily on Dean’s experience and his knowledge of the region and its people through these endless hours.
“Anything new from the hotline?”
Dean laughed. “Last I heard, a boatload of garbage. That’s better than nothing, I guess. Better than folks not calling. You just got to weed through it all to find something that might be helpful.”
“And have they found that?”
“Not that I heard.”
Eden let it drop, concentrating on finishing her supper. More an act of refueling than anything else. After the long hours between this and breakfast, she’d needed it.
The knock on the glass top half of her office door disturbed the silence. She motioned with one hand, giving Winton Grimes permission to enter. As it had half a dozen times today, her heart began to race a bit in anticipation of what he might have come to tell them.
“Got something?” she asked as he opened the door and stuck his head in.
“You said you wanted to hear anything we thought might be…significant.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, okay, this is a little bit… Hell,” Winton said with an embarrassed grin, “it’s a whole lot off the beaten path, but I thought since we ain’t got much of nothing else, you all might want to hear it.”
“So tell us.” Dean’s tone suggested he’d listened to enough hemming and hawing.
“If this wasn’t who it is, I might have just let it go, but…”
“Damn it, Winton,” Dean exploded, “spit it out. Nobody’s got time for your pussyfooting. Not today.”
“It’s okay, Winton,” Eden soothed. “We want to hear. Whatever it is.”
“Jake Underwood.”
Eden couldn’t quite identify the sound Dean made in response to the name. Laughter? An expression of disbelief? Whatever it had been, Winton stopped again, his thin lips flattening.
“Who’s Jake Underwood?”
Her question brought the young deputy’s eyes back to her, but it was Dean who answered.
“His grandmother was Miz Etta Wells. The Wells that was one of the founding families. Jake spent summers here when he was a kid.”
Eden waited, but neither man seemed inclined to go on. Finally she prodded, “And you’ve got some reason to believe he may have had something to do with the Nolan girl’s disappearance.”
“It’s not that,” Winton said. “At least…not exactly.”
The sound Dean made this time was clearly one of contempt. Eden couldn’t be sure, however, whether that had been directed at Jake Underwood or the deputy. “Then exactly what is it?” She tried to imbue her voice with the same authority her father’s seemed to command naturally. Apparently, it was effective.
With another glance at the older man, Grimes began to talk. “Underwood says she’s in a cave or something underground. Says somebody’s keeping her down there. He says it’s wet and dark, and all you can hear is water dripping.”
There was a long silence. Since she’d asked the question, Eden felt it was up to her to break it. “Is that it?”
“Yeah. Except he said she’s scared. Terrified is the word he used.”
Despite the fact that she had no basis for believing the validity of any of that description, it had chilled Eden. A four-year-old child kept in the dark would be terrified. Anyone would know that. How Mr. Underwood could know the Nolan child was there was another question.
“And he knows all this how?”
There was another hesitation, and another glance at Dean, before
