but it dried up at a place called Black Mountain.” He shuffles through the papers until he finds a map, then spreads it across the table. His fingertips fly over a sea of green to the north of Dahlonega, decorated with swaths of black squiggles—the Chattahoochee National Forest.
I clamp on to the edge of the bench, my knuckles going white with fear, with hope. If the dogs caught his trail once, if they tracked him up a hill, then surely they can track him down the other side.
Dawn rushes back in the room, and her expression punches a bright red panic button in my chest. She heard the update, too. “Black Mountain’s not a place,” she says, and she looks sick. Physically ill, and now, so am I. “It’s a road.”
Detective Macintosh’s hands freeze on the paper, and he looks at me with a compassion that clamps around my heart like a vise.
The realization, one I’ve been battling since the detective showed up at my door, dawns in brilliant, horrifying color.
Ethan is not out there, wandering the woods or huddled from the rain under a tree. He’s in somebody’s car.
But with whom? Going where? I think about all those movies and TV shows featuring children shoved into a trunk or the back of a van, then push the images away. Those stories never end well, the real-life statistics too grim. What is it all those advocacy groups say in their warnings? Scream, kick, fight, but whatever you do, do not get in that car. Because the minute that door is slammed with you on the inside, it’s too late. Statistics say you’re already dead.
A vibration starts up somewhere in the very core of me, somewhere deep and primitive. It rattles my bones and throbs in my veins, pushing outward in quakes as violent as a seizure. My mouth fills with bile and a scream, but my frozen lungs can’t push it out. It echoes, loud and horror-movie wild, through my head.
Dawn sinks onto the bench beside me, wrapping a hand around mine. “I know it’s scary, but this development changes things.”
I look at her. Shake my head.
She nods hers. “We will be doubling down now, expanding the roadblocks and the canvassing area. We were already going door-to-door at every home within a five-mile radius of the camp property line, but now we’ll concentrate on the homes and trailers on Black Mountain Road. Hopefully, one of them saw something and can give us a description of the car.”
Her words electrocute my heart, sending it into a panicked dance. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” I press my free hand to my mouth and try not to throw up.
“I need you to start thinking of the people you know both a little and a lot, okay? People you run into during a normal day. People who might be looking for more time with Ethan. The vast majority of children are taken by someone who knows them somehow.” She pauses, and I know from her expression, from the way her mouth straightens out and tightens, what’s coming next. “I need you to tell me about Andrew.”
Her words make me dizzy. My soon-to-be ex-husband. The man who once told me he would love me forever. Who brought me lunch at work and flowers just because. Who even in our worst moments could always make me laugh. And now these people are suggesting he might be behind this? I’m as repulsed by the idea as I am tempted to believe it. At least if Ethan were with Andrew, he’d be safe. Andrew wouldn’t hurt him.
But pushing up through all the chatter are two questions I can’t escape, no matter how hard I try to smother them.
Where is Andrew?
Why isn’t he answering his door?
5 hours, 13 minutes missing
I pause on the top step, listening to the voices drifting across the foyer downstairs, trying to identify them. My husband’s, deep and powerful. A male voice I don’t recognize. A softer, higher tone that can only belong to a female.
I turn around and head back up.
People who don’t know me, those who see me trailing Sam around town to openings and fancy fund-raisers, assume that Sam chose me because I’m arm candy. A pretty little wife selected for her sample-sized figure and red-carpet smile, curated with the sole purpose of elevating the mayor’s standing. I’m supposed to cheer him on, champion his causes, boost his popularity, hike up his poll numbers.
Yes, I look good on his arm, but most people don’t know I once had dreams and plans that had nothing to do with Sam. A master’s in Art History from Columbia, a love of all things French, a holy grail goal of one day working at the Louvre. People don’t know this about me because they don’t ask, and sometimes, I get so caught up in this life as the mayor’s wife that I forget it myself. Dreams don’t die as much as they fade into the background.
Sam and I met at the tail end of grad school, when I was here for a monthlong internship at the High Museum. My mother had just moved to town, and I was staying with her, sleeping on her pullout couch and pounding away at my thesis, the visual hagiography of St. Margaret of Antioch in thirteenth-century stained glass. I was biding my time here, a quick pit stop on my road to Paris.
And then I met Sam.
It happened at a Falcons game, where my father had dragged me to a VIP suite high above the field. Dad was a busy, busy man. If he could knock out a business deal while also celebrating his daughter’s thirtieth year on the planet, the night was a win-win for everybody—except me.
Just after halftime, I felt someone sink into the seat behind me.
“It’d sure be nice if the D could get some stops during garbage time instead of letting the other team run their asses ragged.” He leaned forward in the plush chair, pointing over my shoulder with his long arm. “We thought we had a blowout on our hands, see, so the Falcons sent in the second-string team. But being too cocky is never a good thing. Makes you sloppy. The defense is paying for it now.”
My answer was an uninterested hum. I’m not a football fan, have never understood the appeal of grown men fighting over a piece of leather and air.
He didn’t take the hint. He reached his arm around to offer a hand. “Sam Huntington.”
I hadn’t been in Atlanta long, but even I knew who Sam Huntington was. Old Atlanta royalty and rising political star, the youngest deputy attorney general ever appointed in Atlanta, a city that bore his last name on more than one street sign. Sam’s great-great-grandfather thought Atlanta might be a good spot for a railway terminus, and the long line of Huntingtons have been profiting from his vision ever since.
But there was his hand and I had no other choice but to shake it. He had a warm, firm grip. A politician’s grip. The grip of a guy who would go far.
“Stefanie Lawrence.”
“Nice to meet you, Stefanie Lawrence. I take it you’re not a fan.”
“I couldn’t care less about football,” I said, turning back to the field.
“I meant of me.” I looked at him in surprise, and he grinned. “Reading people is my superpower. A necessary one in my line of work, but still. People tell me I’m pretty good at it. Right now, it’s telling me you wish I’d go away so you can finish pretending to watch the game.” He reclined in his chair, sweeping an arm
