Chương 8
Cole looked at a map.
"I know it."
"One hour."
"We'll be there."
"No marked cars."
Cole agreed.
After the call Daniel said, "She's dictating an operation."
"She's terrified."
"Could be Gary using her."
"I know."
They prepared for both possibilities.
Lily was not brought.
Claire had asked for her, but Cole refused to risk the child until they knew Claire was actually there.
Instead Daniel sat in the back of an unmarked SUV in the church parking lot wearing plain clothes and feeling ridiculous without his uniform.
At 4:08, a city bus stopped across the road.
Three people got off.
An elderly man.
A teenager with headphones.
A thin woman in a baseball cap.
Daniel knew her from photographs.
Claire Mercer crossed the road.
She limped.
Cole got out alone.
Claire stopped twenty feet away.
"Where's Lily?"
"Safe."
"You said—"
"I said we'd arrange it."
"You lied."
"No. I refused to bring your daughter to an unsecured meeting when the man who abducted you is still missing."
Claire looked around wildly.
Daniel stepped out.
She recoiled.
"I'm Officer Reed."
Her eyes fixed on him.
"Lily's officer?"
He disliked the phrase.
"She met me first."
Claire covered her mouth.
For several seconds she could not speak.
Then she said, "Is she okay?"
Daniel considered all the dishonest answers adults gave when they wanted to make pain smaller.
"She's scared. She misses you. She's safe."
Claire nodded.
Her knees buckled.
Cole caught her.
At the hospital Claire refused sedation until she spoke with Lily.
Doctors found a healing scalp wound, two cracked ribs, dehydration, infection in the cut across her palm, and bruising around both wrists.
She had escaped Gary at a roadside rest area after convincing him she needed a bathroom.
She locked herself in a stall.
When Gary threatened to come in, another traveler entered the restroom.
Claire climbed through a maintenance window.
She ran.
Why not police?
Because Gary had told her Ellison was listening to police radio and had friends at the hospital and sheriff's office.
The sheriff's-office part was a lie.
Claire had no way to know that.
Gary showed her messages from Ellison proving at least one supposedly respectable person was helping him.
After that, every uniform looked compromised.
She spent days moving between shelters, buses and cheap rooms, paying cash.
She called Lily only after seeing news coverage that Russell Vane had been arrested.
Daniel asked the question that had been bothering him.
"Why didn't you tell us about the evidence before this happened?"
Claire looked at her bandaged hand.
"I tried."
"The hospital."
"Yes."
"Why not police?"
She laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
"Because I wasn't sure."
"About Gary?"
"About any of it."
She looked toward the hospital window.
"I found discrepancies. I thought somebody was stealing medication. Then I thought maybe I was wrong. Then Gary started asking questions he shouldn't know to ask."
"You were dating him."
"For three months."
Her shame was immediate and visible.
Daniel said, "That doesn't make what he did your fault."
"I know the sentence."
He stopped.
Claire looked at him.
"People keep giving me sentences. None of them change that I brought him into my house."
Daniel sat down.
"No."
"No?"
"No sentence changes it."
She seemed surprised.
He continued, "Lily doesn't need you to have made perfect decisions. She needs you alive."
Claire looked away.
"Does she hate me?"
"She argued with a foster parent for ten minutes because spaghetti had mushrooms."
Claire blinked.
"What?"
"She's seven."
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
Then she cried.
Daniel left the room.
The reunion happened privately.
He did not watch.
He sat in the hallway with Evan.
That arrangement was awkward for several reasons.
Evan bounced one knee.
"She doesn't want me in there."
"Give them time."
"You're good at telling people to wait."
"Occupational hazard."
Evan looked at him.
"She told me about the baseball game."
Daniel frowned.
"Lily?"
"Naomi. Said you were supposed to leave tomorrow."
Daniel checked the time.
Caleb's game was in eighteen hours.
Three hours away.
He had forgotten.
Not forgotten exactly.
Worse.
He had remembered and repeatedly chosen not to think about it.
Evan said, "Go."
Daniel almost laughed.
"You giving parenting advice now?"
"Apparently. Terrifying, right?"
Daniel looked at the closed hospital door.
Evan said, "Your part here is done."
"No."
"Okay. Mostly done."
Daniel's phone buzzed.
A text from Caleb.
Still coming?
Daniel stared at it.
Then typed:
Yes.
This time he sent it immediately.
Gary Rusk was arrested two days later.
Not through brilliance.
Not through a dramatic chase.
He got hungry.
A grocery-store employee recognized him from a news photograph after Gary bought bread, canned soup and cigarettes with cash. She waited until he left, then called police.
Officers found him in an abandoned rental house four blocks away.
He tried to escape through the backyard, slipped climbing a wet wooden fence, and fractured his wrist.
Daniel heard the arrest over the radio while driving back from Caleb's baseball game.
Caleb's team had lost 6–3.
Caleb had struck out twice and hit a double.
Daniel had sat on aluminum bleachers beside his ex-wife and clapped too loudly at the double.
Afterward Caleb walked toward him carrying his equipment bag.
"You actually came."
Daniel hated how casual he made it sound.
"I said I would."
Caleb shrugged.
"You say lots of stuff."
There was no cruelty in it.
That made it worse.
Daniel nodded.
"Yeah."
Caleb adjusted the strap on his bag.
"You want food?"
"Sure."
They ate burgers at a place beside the highway.
Caleb talked about a girl named Sophie for six minutes without admitting he liked her.
Daniel did not embarrass him by pointing it out.
When the arrest bulletin came over Daniel's phone, he read it once and turned the screen facedown.
Caleb noticed.
"Work?"
"Yeah."
"Bad?"
"Not anymore."
It wasn't entirely true.
But Daniel left the phone there.
May you like
Gary's arrest did not fix everything.
That was the part news stories rarely understood.
