Whirling around, Darcy bounds down the stairs with Laurie begging her to slow down before she breaks her neck. But Darcy doesn’t care what happens to her.
The truth of what’s happened dawns on her as she steps into the cold blues of the December night. Running through the yard, she spins and calls her daughter’s name. Her voice echoes off the hills like a wraith screaming. She wishes she can turn the clock back, claw through time to reach her daughter before the night takes her.
Jennifer is nowhere. Gone.
Laurie hurls the garage door open and shouts inside. Hunter descends the steps like the dead walking, then he breaks into a sprint and screams his sister’s name when the gravity of the situation hits him.
Darcy reaches her phone to call Hensel when Jennifer’s ring tone plays somewhere in the yard.
“Jennifer! Where are you?”
Darcy finds her daughter’s phone behind the garage, the screen glowing with the words Bethany Calling mocking her.
“I’m calling 9-1-1,” Laurie says somewhere behind her.
Darcy falls to her knees and screams.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Darcy doesn’t wait for the FBI and sheriff’s deputies to arrive.
Sweeping her flashlight over the driveway and bordering meadow, she searches for fresh tire tracks, anything she doesn’t recognize. Between the Prius and Laurie’s truck, multiple tracks draw a confusing pattern as they come together and diverge. She shouldn’t be able to make sense of the tracks, yet she does, her mind processing information at inhuman speeds as she recognizes the shallow grooves of her tires, treads incapable of cutting through mud or handling off-road driving. The uneven wear of Laurie’s truck tires become clear, the tracks leading toward the front of the garage where Laurie parked. Besides the sheriff cruisers from the last two nights, no unidentifiable tracks exist. She can’t locate evidence of another vehicle turning down Laurie’s driveway.
“This is why I told you to stay inside.”
Hunter, pushing aside grass and weeds as he examines the earth inside the meadow, flinches. Darcy immediately regrets her words. This isn’t Hunter’s fault. He is upset as Darcy.
Headlights flash across the meadow and blind Darcy. She shields her eyes as Laurie runs toward the black SUV bouncing down the dirt and stone path. The driver kills the lights. Agent Fisher climbs down from the driver’s seat and starts toward Darcy with Hensel and Reinhold behind him. Whirling lights through the trees announce the sheriff’s cruiser before it pulls behind the FBI’s rental. Another vehicle races down the lonely country road, and Darcy recognizes the Georgia State Police logo.
“She was just here,” Darcy says, running to meet Hensel as Fisher’s inquisitive eyes move from the house to the meadow and hills.
“We’ll find her,” Hensel says, wrapping Darcy in his arms.
A damn break of emotion bursts forth. She sobs against his shoulder, wanting her friend and old partner to bring Jennifer home. But she’s been in his place too many times and understands the usual platitudes are meant to soothe and should never be taken as a guarantee. We’ll find her. How? Jennifer vanished without a trace.
At the sound of dogs barking, Darcy turns her head. Search and rescue dogs. A bearded trooper holds one dog by the leash as Tipton walks over to meet him.
“Laurie, run upstairs and get me something that belongs to Jennifer,” Darcy says, anticipating the trooper’s request. “Any piece of clothing will do, but if she left dirty laundry in the bedroom, grab that first.”
Laurie nods and runs back to the house as Tipton and the bearded trooper round on her. They’ll have questions. How did Jennifer sneak out of the house, and what time did she disappear? Her mind races faster than her speeding heart. She takes a calming breath, but there can be no peace of mind until she finds her daughter.
“Ms. Gellar, this is Georgia State Trooper Max Quigley,” Tipton says, introducing the trooper. Holding the leash, Quigley stands back with the sniffing bloodhound, keeping the dog away from Darcy and Hunter. “Trooper Quigley and I go back two decades, and there’s no one better when it comes to search and rescue. We’ll find your daughter. Do you have an item of clothing?
“Getting it for you now.”
“Good. You’re one step ahead of us.”
Sucking air into her lungs, Laurie hands Tipton one of Jennifer’s t-shirts. Darcy remembered seeing the shirt tossed into the corner of the bedroom, and for once she’s thankful her daughter rarely picks up after herself. Tipton hands the shirt to Quigley, who places the clothing before the dog’s snout. A series of loud sniffs, and the dog whirls on its leash and tugs Quigley into the meadow.
“Ask me anything you want, Sheriff, but I’m on the move. I’m going after my daughter.”
Tipton nods. Then the sheriff turns and directs the deputies and FBI, fanning out the members into teams of two’s and three’s to cover the most ground in the shortest amount of time.
“How long since Jennifer disappeared?”
“Forty-five minutes at most,” Darcy tells Tipton, handing him her daughter’s phone. “We found her phone behind the garage.”
“Show me where.”
Darcy leads Tipton to the corner of the garage, a good place to hide from the prying eyes of anyone inside the house. Tipton kneels down and sweeps his hand through the grass as Deputy Filmore aims a flashlight over his shoulder. Tipton removes his own flashlight and walks in expanding circles, the beam stroking the grass. He stares at a spot in the yard between the garage and meadow. At first, Darcy sees nothing. Then she spies the matted grass, the spot large enough to be a footprint. Now Filmore joins Tipton, pointing the flashlights at the meadow, looking for evidence the kidnapper dragged Jennifer into the tall grass. The sheriff glances at Darcy.
“Ms. Gellar, do you know the passcode to your daughter’s phone?”
“Sure.”
Darcy takes the phone back from Tipton and punches in the six-digit code. The screen unlocks, and Tipton grabs the phone and scrolls through the message logs.
“Didn’t you say Jennifer vanished forty-five minutes ago?”
“Yes.”
“I see a message sent from Jennifer’s phone to a Bethany Torres forty-seven minutes ago, and a callback from the same number a minute later. Is it possible this Bethany Torres has something to do with Jennifer’s disappearance?”
“She lives in North Carolina,” Hunter says. They all turn to look at him. “So no, she has nothing to do with whoever kidnapped Jennifer.”
Tipton nods, unconvinced.
“Read Jennifer’s message,” Tipton says, tilting the phone toward Darcy. “It’s clear she was desperate to reach Bethany Torres. I want to know why Torres called her back. Take nothing for granted.”
Tipton’s wasting precious time and following the wrong scent. Though Jennifer’s need to speak with Bethany piques Darcy’s interest, the North Carolina teenager didn’t mastermind an abduction by providing a distraction.
“How was Jennifer’s demeanor earlier?” Tipton asks. “Did you have an argument?”
“My daughter didn’t run away,” Darcy says. Heat builds through her cheeks. “And if she did, she wouldn’t toss her phone on the lawn. She’d take it with her and text all her friends about what a terrible mother I am.”
“I have to ask these questions, Ms. Gellar. Okay, so it’s unlikely she ran off. Are you certain you didn’t hear another vehicle outside the house?”
Darcy turns toward the driveway.
“No, and I couldn’t identify tracks besides ours and yours. Whoever did this, they came on foot.”