Tears welled in Kim’s eyes as she shook her head. “Dad, where’s Ashley?” A lone track coursed down her cheek. “I know we got into a fight, but why would she run away?”
Lord, I hope it’s only that. J.T. couldn’t believe he had thought that, but if she were missing and she hadn’t run away, the alternative would be that she had been taken. And that chilled him to the bone. In Chicago some of those missing children cases he’d been involved in hadn’t ended—
Reminded of the ugliness in life he’d left behind, J.T. snatched up the phone and called the station. Time was of the essence, especially if she had been kidnapped. Twisting away from Kim to cover the trembling in his hand that held the receiver, he counted the rings.
On the fourth one, his secretary and receptionist Susan Winn finally answered. “Mercer County Sheriff’s Office. How may I help you?”
“J.T. here. Ashley’s missing. Send a couple of deputies to my house.”
“Missing? What happened?” Susan asked.
“I don’t know. She isn’t in our backyard where she was supposed to be and none of her friends know where she is. It isn’t like Ashley to leave without letting someone know where she’s going.” Ashley was his child who always followed the rules.
“Do you want to put out an Amber Alert?”
The waver in Susan’s voice as she asked about the alert forced J.T. to dig deep for the mantle of professionalism he wore in cases like this. But his secretary’s question underscored the situation. He couldn’t afford to fall apart—not with his daughter’s life at stake.
“I’ll call you back in a few minutes and let you know. I want to check with the neighbors first.” Please, God, let her be at one of their houses.
“J.T., I—”
He lowered his voice so Kim wouldn’t hear. “She’s okay. She’s probably next door or across the street. Got to go.” Dear Lord, I hope that is all it is.
When he hung up, his hand lingered on the receiver for a few seconds as he composed himself for Kim. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. He drew in a deep, fortifying breath. He’d been involved in many cases where nothing had been wrong.
But the few—
He shook the thought from his mind and pivoted toward Kim. “I’m going to check with the neighbors. You need to stay right here and wait for my deputies. Don’t open the door to anyone else. Understand?”
With tears still streaming down her face, Kim nodded. “Daddy, I didn’t want…”
Hearing her call him Daddy tore at his fragile composure. She’d stopped using it several years ago when she’d informed him she was too big to call him Daddy. He pulled her to him for a quick hug. “Everything will be all right, honey.” When he opened the back door, he said, “See if you can get hold of Neil at the baseball complex and have him come home.”
“Hey, maybe Ashley went to see Neil practice.” She grabbed the phone.
“Maybe. If so, I’ll be next door. Lock the door after I leave.”
He waited on the patio to hear the lock click into place. J.T. hated to quench Kim’s theory. But Ashley disliked anything to do with sports and didn’t even like to go to her brother’s baseball games. So Ashley going there didn’t seem likely.
At a jog he headed toward his nearest neighbor whose view of his backyard was blocked by his six-foot wooden fence down both sides of his yard that the previous owner had erected because he had wanted some privacy. That very privacy could have made it easier for someone to come onto his property undetected.
Day one, 9:30 p.m.: Ashley missing three hours
“Kim won’t come out. She refuses to eat.” Susan grabbed the pot of coffee and began to refill everyone’s cups as distant thunder rumbled.
Exhausted, J.T. pushed himself to his feet, his muscles protesting the movement after the hour spent sitting at his kitchen table mapping out a strategy to find Ashley. “I’ll talk to her.”
The blaring of the phone cut into the silence. Its sound jarred J.T. He whirled around, reached across the glass table and grabbed the receiver before it rang again. “J.T. here.”
“Sir, we checked all the places you gave us and found nothing,” Deputy Derek Nelson said, frustration marking each word spoken.
All energy drained from J.T. His eyes squeezed shut for a second as he leaned against the table for support. “Go back over every square inch a second time. The church. The school. The park.”
“Yes, sir.”
J.T. slammed the phone down. “Derek reported nothing.”
“We still have four more teams who haven’t called in yet.” Kirk Carver studied the map of the town and the surrounding countryside. “Maybe she wandered off and lost track of time and they’ll find her.”
Lost track of time? Three hours? After dark? J.T. faced his deputy and wanted to laugh. He knew in his gut that Ashley hadn’t walked away from the yard willingly. Someone had taken her. What little evidence they had pointed in that direction. He needed to be searching like his sons. “As soon as I talk with Kim, I’m going back out. All this planning isn’t doing my daughter any good.”
“We need to coordinate where people look. We need—”
“I don’t. You can,” J.T. interrupted his deputy. “There’s got to be something—some kind of evidence that will tell us what happened, where to look.”
“We scoured your backyard before it got dark. Except for her shoe there was nothing.”
“And those footprints by the bushes.”
“We’ve taken a casting. There’s still a possibility—”
“What possibility? That Ashley is at a friend’s playing? That someone opened my back gate and innocently wandered into my yard to stand by the bushes and face the back of my house?” All his anger and frustration—held at bay while he’d focused on planning—swamped him. “Nothing about this feels like a missing person. No one has wanted to say it, but I think Ashley has been kidnapped.”
Susan gasped, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “Why?”
J.T. swung his gaze toward his secretary. “If I knew that, I might know who.”
“Are you sure?” Her eyes wide, she dropped her arm limply to her side.
“Don’t you think with practically the whole town out looking for the past couple of hours we’d have found Ashley by now?”
“Sir, we still need—” Kirk paused a few seconds “—to drag the lake and search the surrounding woods. Your house isn’t too far from it. The two teams checking all the places around the lake haven’t reported in yet.”
His deputy’s statement hung heavy in the sudden silence. J.T. lowered his gaze to the tile floor, his hands clenching at his sides.
