followed Sheriff Grayson through the front door. Inside, about a dozen people were seated at various tables and booths. Most of them raised a hand in greeting to the sheriff.
He went to the woman standing behind the cash register. “Hey, Linda, is Don in?” he asked.
“He’s in the back. You here to arrest him for spicy sauce?” The blonde gave him a saucy, flirtatious smile.
“I need to talk to him. Can you get him out here?”
Her smile faded as she apparently heard the seriousness in his voice. “Sure, I’ll go get him.”
She disappeared into the kitchen and a moment later a big burly man clad in a tomato-splattered apron walked out.
“Hey, Tom. What’s up?”
“You have a Kathy Simon working here for you?” Tom asked.
Peyton watched in horror as Don shook his head. “I’ve got a Stacy, a Katie and a Linda, but no Kathy,” he replied.
“Are you sure? Maybe she was going by another name,” Peyton said desperately. “She’s tall with red hair?”
“Sorry, nobody like that works for me,” Don replied.
Peyton staggered back outside where dusk was beginning to fall, vaguely aware of the sheriff right behind her. Nothing Kathy had told her had been true. She’d lied about where she worked, where she lived. Why?
She got back into the passenger seat and Tom slid in behind the wheel. “You okay?” he asked as he started the engine.
“Of course I’m not okay.” She reached for anger, knowing that if she didn’t hang on to something she’d lose it altogether. “Nothing she told me was the truth. Why would she lie to me about the most basic things? God, she was good. She had so many details. She told me about a man who had tipped her twenty dollars, about a little girl who wanted pizza crust and cheese but no sauce. She was so good with her lies.”
A sickness welled up inside her as she realized night was falling too quickly and she was no closer to finding Lilly than she’d been when she’d regained consciousness on her bathroom floor.
“Any other ideas?” Tom asked as he backed out of the parking space in front of the pizza place. “Or are you ready to go back to your place?”
“No, we can’t go back,” she exclaimed. She didn’t want to be there without her baby. “Just drive around. Maybe we’ll see something.”
For the next thirty minutes he drove up and down the streets of the small town. Peyton kept her gaze on the sidewalks, on the houses they passed, hoping for a glimpse of the woman she knew as Kathy Simon.
He received only one phone call during the drive. When he hung up he told her that there was no driver’s license matching what they knew about Kathy Simon.
“So that’s probably not her real name,” Peyton said flatly. She was numb; in a place where her fear was so great she couldn’t process it any longer.
“Probably not,” he agreed.
“How are we going to find her if we don’t even know her name?” Peyton wanted to scream.
“We’ll figure it all out,” he replied. “Have you had any problems with anyone here in town?”
“No, nobody. Oh, there was a young man who cussed me in the parking lot of the grocery store. I was getting Lilly into her car seat and my shopping cart accidentally rolled into his truck.”
“Did you exchange information?”
“No, nothing like that. It didn’t scratch or dent the truck. He cursed me, then got in his truck and roared off.”
“When did this happen?”
“About a week ago. Surely you don’t think that has anything to do with Lilly’s kidnapping,” she said.
“I’m not taking anything for granted at this point,” he replied. “What did this guy look like? What kind of a truck was he driving?”
“It was a black pickup, but I don’t know the year or model. He was tall with brown hair.” She sighed in frustration. “That doesn’t help much, does it?”
“Sounds like half the men around this area,” he replied.
As he once again drove down Main Street, Peyton knew this probably wasn’t standard operating procedure, that he was just indulging her need to be out looking. She also knew that there was no way she would see Kathy casually walking down the street with Lilly in her arms. She knew in her heart that Kathy had probably run out of town mere minutes after grabbing Lilly.
“I noticed you had a new patio in your backyard.”
Peyton shifted her gaze from the window to him. “It was poured yesterday. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just curious.”
She stared at him, her heart beating an unsteady rhythm. She had a feeling this man didn’t indulge in idle curiosity. There was a sharp intelligence in his sexy dark eyes that made her believe he was a man who didn’t miss much.
As the realization of what he might be thinking struck her, she gasped. “You can’t really believe that I had the patio poured to hide my baby’s body?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. I have to think of all possible scenarios,” he said without apology.
“Pull over,” she exclaimed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
He whirled the car to the curb and she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door and stumbled outside. She bent over, feeling the need to throw up. He thought she’d killed her baby. He thought she’d killed her Lilly and buried her beneath the patio.
She dry heaved, her stomach rolling as tears blurred her vision. She was vaguely aware of a big, broad hand on her back, and she shook it off, the need to be sick swallowed by a rage she’d never felt before.
Her rage wasn’t directed at Sheriff Tom Grayson, who was just doing his job, but rather at the woman who had pretended to be her friend and support over the past two months. The woman who had hit her in the head and stolen her baby.
She finally straightened up and stared at the sheriff. “If and when we find her, if she’s hurt Lilly in any way, I’ll kill her.” She didn’t wait for his reply but instead turned and walked back to the car and got into the passenger seat.
It was at that moment, with the fire of rage burning in her eyes, that Tom believed her. He hadn’t been one hundred percent sure what to believe up until that point. There had been far too many cases of murdered children when the mothers concocted a story to cover the fact that they’d either accidentally or purposely hurt or killed their child.
He liked to believe he was good at assessing people, at recognizing liars and criminals. He didn’t believe Peyton was either, and that meant they had a missing baby on their hands.
When they pulled up to her house,
