Chương 10
“On a flash drive.”
Emily looked at me.
The small black drive in David’s evidence envelope suddenly felt heavier even from several feet away.
David asked, “Do you still have that file?”
Claire shook her head.
“I gave the drive back.”
“Any copy on your computer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you still have the computer?”
“Yes.”
“Do not open it.”
She looked alarmed.
“I already use it every day.”
“From this moment forward, leave it alone until company counsel and independent forensic staff can preserve whatever is there.”
Claire nodded.
Nolan stared at his sister.
“So Adrian had you changing vendor records before Emily ever confronted him.”
Claire’s mouth trembled.
“I didn’t know.”
Emily sat down hard in the porch chair.
I moved toward her.
She lifted her good hand.
“Please.”
I stopped.
She needed distance.
That was hard for me.
I gave it to her.
For a minute nobody spoke.
A moth battered itself against the porch light.
Nolan went inside and returned with the pie I had brought.
He looked down at it as though surprised to find it still existed.
“Does anyone want this?”
Claire stared at him.
“What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know what else to do with my hands.”
Emily laughed unexpectedly.
Then she covered her face and began crying.
The sound was small at first.
Claire knelt beside her.
This time Emily did not pull away.
I stood three feet from my daughter and learned that loving someone sometimes required tolerating those three feet.
My phone rang in Emily’s hand.
She looked at the screen.
“Robert.”
She wiped her face and answered.
“Hello?”
We could hear only her side.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“No, I’m not coming there to fight.”
Another pause.
Her expression changed.
“Put Sophie on.”
She listened.
“Dad, put her on the phone.”
Her voice sharpened.
Then she went very still.
“What do you mean she isn’t there?”
I felt David move beside me.
Emily stood.
“Where is my daughter?”
The color disappeared from her face.
“No.”
She gripped the phone.
“No, Adrian told you to keep her with you.”
Her eyes found mine.
Fear had returned.
Raw this time.
Unhidden.
“What time did Celeste pick her up?”
Robert answered loudly enough that I could hear the strain in his voice through the phone.
“About twenty minutes ago.”
Emily closed her eyes.
“You let her take Sophie?”
“I thought Adrian sent her.”
“Dad, Adrian is with the police.”
There was a long silence.
Then Robert said something too low for me to make out.
Emily’s face changed.
“What do you mean she said I was in the hospital?”
Claire stood.
Nolan swore under his breath.
Emily pressed the phone harder to her ear.
“No, I am not in the hospital.”
Another pause.
“Did Sophie go willingly?”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Robert answered.
Emily looked at me.
“She told Sophie I’d been hurt worse than we thought and that she was taking her to see me.”
I was already moving toward David.
“Call the sergeant.”
He had heard enough.
He was dialing before I finished.
Emily spoke into the phone again.
“What car was she driving?”
Robert answered.
“The Mercedes?”
She looked toward the street where Celeste’s car had disappeared minutes earlier.
“Which direction?”
He did not know.
Of course he did not know.
People remembered license plates and turns only after someone told them those things mattered.
“Call me if she contacts you.”
Emily ended the call.
For a second, she simply stood there holding my phone.
Then she said, “She took my daughter.”
The sentence was quiet.
No one tried to soften it.
Raymond stepped toward her.
“Emily, does Celeste have any other property nearby?”
“A condo downtown.”
Claire shook her head.
“She sold it.”
“A lake house,” Nolan said.
“Two hours north.”
“Not at night,” Claire said.
“Mom hates driving that road after dark.”
“Friends?” Raymond asked.
“Everyone Mom knows has a guest room,” Nolan said.
“That doesn’t help.”
David was speaking rapidly to the sergeant.
I heard vehicle description, child, possible false pretense, and grandmother.
Emily started toward the driveway.
I caught myself before reaching for her.
“Where are you going?”
“To find her.”
“In what car?”
She looked around as if expecting one to materialize.
Then she pressed both hands against her forehead, forgetting the sling, and winced.
“I can’t stand here.”
“I know.”
“Do not tell me to stay calm.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking we need to be useful.”
She looked at me sharply.
“Then be useful.”
There was enough anger in it to hurt.
Good.
Anger could move when fear could not.
Claire stepped off the porch.
“Mom has Find My enabled.”
Everyone looked at her.
Claire immediately shook her head.
“No, wait, not with me.”
“With who?” Raymond asked.
“Dad.”
Emily was dialing Robert again before Claire finished.
He answered on the second ring.
“Dad, can you see Mom’s location?”
We waited.
Robert said something.
Emily frowned.
“Your phone.”
Another pause.
“Open Find My.”
Nolan muttered, “This is going to take an hour.”
Claire shot him a look.
“What?”
“He still prints boarding passes.”
“Not helping.”
Emily paced to the edge of the driveway while talking Robert through his own screen.
Her injured arm shifted against the sling with every turn.
Finally she stopped.
“Where?”
Her eyes lifted.
“Say that again.”
She looked at Claire.
“Briarwood.”
Claire frowned.
“There’s nothing in Briarwood.”
Nolan stopped.
“Yes, there is.”
“What?”
“Grandma’s house.”
Celeste’s mother had died nine years earlier.
I remembered the funeral only because Thomas had still been alive then and had whispered during the service that the pastor was pronouncing the family name wrong.
Afterward, Celeste had complained about it for three months.
Claire stared at Nolan.
“That place is empty.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“Mom kept it.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure?”
“I drove her there last summer.”
Claire looked at him.
May you like
“Why?”
“She said she was meeting a contractor.”
