drive from Wichita to Black Rock.
“You have to do something,” she exclaimed after she’d hung up with Rick. For the first time there was an edge of frantic anger in her voice. “Why haven’t we heard something? What’s taking so long?”
Tom had been thinking the same thing. “We should hear something from them any minute. We have the AMBER Alert out and I have a deputy checking background on Kathy. At this point there’s nothing else we can do but wait here until we have more information.” He glanced toward her phone.
She followed his gaze, then looked back at him, her eyes widening slightly. “You think maybe she’ll call?” A half-hysterical sob escaped her. “She won’t call. This isn’t about a ransom. Kathy knows I don’t have any money.”
“Then what do you think this is about?”
“I don’t know,” she cried. “I feel like this is all some horrible joke, or a terrible nightmare. I can’t imagine why Kathy did this. I just can’t wrap my mind around all of this.”
She whirled around as the door opened and Caleb and Benjamin walked in. Caleb gave a small shake of his head.
“What does that mean?” Peyton asked. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“There’s no Kathy Simon living at the Black Rock Apartments,” he said.
“What do you mean? I know she lives there. I dropped her off there several times.” Peyton looked from Caleb to Tom, then back to Caleb again.
“We checked with the manager. There’s no Kathy Simon on a lease. We also knocked on every door and asked if anyone knew her. Nobody did,” Benjamin added.
Peyton’s eyes widened in horror as she looked at Tom. “Then where is she? And where has she taken my Lilly?”
Chapter 2
Peyton felt as if the ground beneath her feet was no longer solid. The world was no longer as it should be, and she’d never felt such fear. Lilly! Her heart cried in anguish. Where was her baby?
Who was Kathy Simon, and why had she done this? Had anything she’d told Peyton about herself been true? One thing was certain: Peyton had wasted enough time sitting around waiting for something to happen.
She needed to find Lilly, and she wasn’t going to find her sitting around and answering questions. Without saying a word to the sheriff or his deputies, she headed down the hall to her bedroom.
Sheriff Grayson followed just behind her, as if afraid to let her out of his sight for a minute. “What are you doing?” he asked as she grabbed her purse from the top of her dresser.
“I’m going to find my baby.” She turned to face him. “If I have to knock on every door of this town, I’ll find Kathy and my Lilly.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he protested.
She raised her chin and embraced the anger that was so much easier to tolerate than her pain. “The only way you’re going to stop me, Sheriff Grayson, is to arrest me and lock me up.”
Despite the fact that he was easily six inches taller than her and had shoulders as broad as mountains, she shoved roughly past him and headed for the front door.
She’d gone only a couple of steps when he grabbed her by the arm. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” His dark eyes held her gaze intently. “We don’t know if this woman is dangerous. She might not harm your baby, but she would definitely be a threat to you.”
She considered his words and gave him a curt nod. “Then let’s go. I can’t sit here another minute.”
She was vaguely surprised to see that the sun was still high in the sky. It had been less than two hours since Kathy and Lilly had disappeared, but it felt like an eternity.
Even the intensity of the late afternoon sun overhead couldn’t warm the glacier that had become Peyton’s heart. She slid into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s car and was instantly engulfed by the scent of leather and, more faintly, the spicy cologne he wore.
As he got in behind the steering wheel he turned to look at her. “Do you have a plan?”
She’d shot out of the house lit with the fire of a frantic mother seeking her child, but she realized with the question that she didn’t have a plan; she just knew she couldn’t sit still another minute.
“The pizza place on Main Street,” she said suddenly. “Kathy told me she was working there until she could get something more permanent.”
He nodded, started the car and pulled away from the curb. Peyton stared out the window, irrationally hoping that Kathy would suddenly appear on the sidewalk.
The only thing that kept Peyton from losing her mind altogether was the belief that Kathy wouldn’t hurt Lilly. “She was good with Lilly,” she finally said aloud. “She seemed to love her.”
“Did she mention wanting children of her own, maybe not being able to have them?” Sheriff Grayson asked.
“No, nothing like that. I just know she was always very sweet to Lilly. Surely the pizza place will have her address on file.”
“What I need you to do is think of all the conversations you had with her, any tidbit of information that might be helpful as to where she might go and who she might be with,” he replied.
For a moment Peyton was overwhelmed. “Sheriff Grayson, we talked almost every day, about everything and nothing.” She frowned and tried to ignore the headache that pounded in the back of her head, the continuous frantic race of her heart.
“Call me Tom,” he said. “There are four of us Graysons working law enforcement in Black Rock. First names make things easier.”
“Caleb and Benjamin are your brothers?” she asked.
He nodded. “My sister is also a deputy, then I have one other brother who doesn’t work for the town of Black Rock.” He frowned. “Did Kathy mention dating somebody here in town? Perhaps somebody she was interested in?”
“No, in fact just the opposite. I got the impression she was a bit shy and was having trouble meeting people.” She released a sigh of frustration. “God, what did I miss? What didn’t I see or hear in all those conversations, in all the time we spent together?”
“You can’t beat yourself up about that. How could you guess that something like this would happen?” He pulled into a parking space in front of the Canyon Pizzeria and cut the engine, then he turned and looked at her with his dark, intense eyes. “You let me ask the questions. I need to do my job.”
She nodded and unbuckled her seatbelt, butterflies like little kamikaze pilots hitting the sides of her stomach. Please, let us get some answers, she thought as she got out of the car.
It was nearing dinnertime and the air outside the restaurant smelled of tangy tomato sauce and baking crust. The food smells only upset Peyton’s stomach even more. The last thing she was interested in was food.
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