The best athletes? It is life and death, in their minds. Now imagine how much better they’d be if the stakes were really that high.
That was Wilde in the woods.
As he got closer to the Pine residence, he spotted a squad car and three news vans from local stations. The scene wasn’t frantic — this wasn’t the biggest story of the year or anything like that — but the news van had obviously heard Hester’s report and the cops had in turn asked them to move down the block away from the house. Wilde spotted Oren Carmichael by the Pines’ front door, talking to a guy who had to be the father, Bernard Pine. The father seemed upset, not about a missing daughter but about the police and media intrusion. He gestured wildly while Carmichael kept showing him his palms to calm him down.
Wilde’s phone double-buzzed, indicating an incoming text. He checked and saw it was from Ava O’Brien:
Did you find Naomi?
He was tempted not to reply. But that didn’t feel right. Not yet.
There was the moving-dots pause. Then Ava wrote: Come over tonight. I’ll leave the door unlocked.
More moving dots: I miss you, Wilde.
He pocketed the phone without a reply. Ava would get the message, much as he hated to send it this way.
Wilde crept out of the woods. He kept low and headed toward the neighboring backyard. No one spotted him. He stayed down. Naomi’s father finished whatever he had to say to Oren and slammed the door. For several seconds, Oren Carmichael didn’t move, almost as if he expected the door to reopen. When it didn’t, he turned away and headed for his car. Another cop — this one far younger — met him there.
“Keep the press back,” Carmichael said.
“Yes, Chief. Are we going in?”
Oren frowned. “Going in?”
“You know, like doing a search of the house.”
“The father says she’s safe.”
“But that reporter on TV—”
“A TV report is not evidence,” Oren snapped. “Get the press out of here.”
“Yes, Chief.”
When the kid left, Wilde saw no harm. He stood upright and approached the car. Because he’d had enough with itchy fingers, he called out as soon as he could possibly be seen. “Oren?”
Carmichael turned. When he saw who it was, he frowned. “Wilde? What are you doing here?”
“What did the father say about Naomi?”
“Not your business, is it?”
“You know he lied to Hester, right?”
Oren Carmichael sighed. “Why on earth did Hester involve you in this?”
“The father told Hester that Naomi is with her mother.”
“And maybe she is.”
“Is that what he told you just now?”
“He said she’s safe. He asked me to respect her privacy.”
“And you’re going to do that?”
“Neither parent has filed a missing person report.”
“So?”
“So it’s almost midnight. You want me to kick his door down?”
“Naomi could be in danger.”
“And what, you think the father killed her or something?”
Wilde didn’t answer.
“Exactly,” Oren said, clearly exhausted by it all. “This is a girl who has run away before. My guess? That’s what this is.”
“Maybe it’s something worse.”
Oren slid into the driver’s seat. “If that’s true, we’ll find that out, too, eventually.” He stared up from the squad car. “Go home, Wilde.”
He drove off as Wilde headed back to the woods. He stopped behind the first tree and slipped on a thin black mask that covered everything except his eyes. He kept it with him always. The world now had more CCTV cameras than people. Or so it seemed. You never know. So Wilde, who had a thing about privacy in this privacyless world, always came prepared.
When Oren’s squad car was out of sight, Wilde circled back so that he was now behind the Pine house. There were lights on in the kitchen, one upstairs bedroom, and in the basement. As a child, he had broken into countless lake homes and summer cabins. He’d learned to silently case them, circle them, check the driveways and lights, see who if anyone was home. To break in, he’d search for unlocked doors or windows (you’d be surprised how often it was that simple), then move on to other means. If the locks were too strong or the alarm system too complicated, young Wilde would search for another house. Most of the time, even as a child, he had known to leave no trace of his being there. If he slept in a bed, for example, he made sure that it was made the next morning. If he ate their food or needed supplies, he was careful not to consume or steal too much, so that the owners wouldn’t notice.
Had someone taught him all this when he was too young to remember? Or was it instinctive? He didn’t know. In the end, man is an animal. An animal does what it has to do to survive.
It was probably that simple.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. The phone was a personally designed burner. That was all he used and never for more than a week or two. At night, he turned it off. He didn’t keep it with him — he knew that, even when the phone was off, it was possible to trace — and usually left it buried in a steel box by the road.
It was Hester: “Are you with Laila?”
“No.”
“Where are you then?”
“Casing Naomi’s house.”
“You have a plan?”
“I do.”
“Tell me.”
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
Wilde hung up and moved closer to the house. Loads of homes now had motion detector lights that snap on when you approach. If that were to be the case, Wilde would simply sprint back into the woods. No harm, no foul. But no lights came on. Good. He kept close to the house. The closer to the wall, the less chance of being seen.
He checked the kitchen window. Bernard Pine, Naomi’s father, sat at the table and played with his phone. He looked nervous. Wilde circled the perimeter and peered in through the first-floor windows. No one else present, no other movement.
Wilde bent down and checked the basement windows. The shades were drawn all the way — blackout shades — but Wilde still spotted the small sliver of light.
Someone down there maybe?
He had little trouble climbing onto the second-floor overhang. He worried about the structure, if it could hold his weight, but he decided to risk it. There was a light in a corridor that shone through what appeared to be the father’s bedroom. He climbed toward the corner back window, cupped his hands against the glass, and looked into the room.
A computer monitor displaying a dancing-lines screen saver provided the only illumination. The walls were blank. There were no posters of teen heartthrobs or favorite rock groups or any of the expected teenage girl clichés, except, perhaps, the bed, which was low to the floor and blanketed with stuffed animals — dozens of them, maybe hundreds, in various sizes and colors, mostly bears but there were giraffes and monkeys and penguins and elephants. It was hard to see how Naomi could fit in the bed with all of them. She must have just jumped in, like she was living inside one of those claw-crane arcade games.
Naomi was an only child, so Wilde was pretty sure that this was her bedroom.