Chương 2
“I wasn’t.”
Mia buried her face against Ryan’s shoulder.
Vanessa looked at the child and swallowed.
“Mia, sweetheart—”
“No.”
Ryan did not raise his voice.
Vanessa’s attention moved to him.
He had never spoken to her like that in their home.
Perhaps that was why she obeyed.
Grace was giving the dispatcher the address. Her voice was shaking badly enough that she had to repeat the house number.
Ryan carried Mia into the living room and sat with her on the wide cream sofa. He took off his suit jacket and wrapped it around her legs. She smelled faintly of dust and apple juice.
“How long were you in there?”
Mia looked toward the hallway.
Ryan followed her eyes.
Vanessa had sat on the bottom stair. Her hands rested on her knees. She looked like someone waiting outside an operating room.
Ryan leaned closer to Mia.
“You don’t have to tell me anything right now.”
“Two sleeps.”
His stomach tightened.
“Two nights?”
She nodded.
“Did you have water?”
“Sometimes.”
“Food?”
“A sandwich. And crackers.”
“Who brought them?”
Mia would not answer.
Ryan looked toward Grace.
Grace stopped speaking to the dispatcher.
Her eyes lowered.
That was answer enough for the moment.
Ryan turned back to Mia.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“My ankle.”
“What happened?”
“I kicked the door.”
He pulled the jacket slightly aside and looked without touching. The skin around her ankle was irritated but not badly swollen.
“Anything else?”
“My head hurts.”
“When did you last drink something?”
She shrugged.
The gesture looked heartbreakingly ordinary.
Ryan had seen her perform the same shrug when asked whether she had brushed her teeth.
Grace disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water.
Ryan’s head snapped toward her.
Grace stopped immediately.
“Sealed bottle,” Ryan said.
She nodded, almost gratefully, and brought one from the pantry instead.
He opened it himself.
Mia drank too quickly.
“Slow,” he murmured. “You’ll make your stomach hurt.”
She took another gulp anyway.
Vanessa watched from the stairs.
Ryan could feel her calculating whether speaking would help or hurt her.
He wanted to demand the phone. He wanted to ask what Claire’s dead hand had reached forward through time to destroy. He wanted to know why his wife had participated in a search for a child she had locked twenty feet from their living room.
Instead he checked Mia’s pupils the way he dimly remembered from a wilderness first-aid course he had taken because a corporate retreat required it.
Mia frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m checking your eyes.”
“They’re still there.”
It was such a Mia thing to say that Ryan nearly broke.
A strangled laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
Mia’s mouth twitched.
Then she remembered where they were, and the almost-smile disappeared.
Ryan rubbed one hand over the back of her hair.
“I know,” he said quietly.
Sirens approached.
Vanessa stood.
Ryan stood with Mia.
“Sit down,” he told Vanessa.
“I’m going to meet them at the door.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Ryan.”
He looked at her.
For once, whatever she intended to say failed to arrive.
She sat.
The first two deputies entered with the cautious speed of people who had been told a missing child had been found inside the residence from which she had supposedly disappeared. A paramedic team followed. One deputy recognized Mia and stopped so abruptly that the officer behind him nearly walked into his shoulder.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
The older deputy beside him immediately became more professional.
“Sir, is this Mia Cole?”
“Yes.”
“Was she inside this house?”
Ryan pointed toward the storage door.
Vanessa said, “I need an attorney.”
Nobody had accused her of anything yet.
The older deputy looked at her.
Ryan did too.
Vanessa seemed to realize the timing of her statement only after it was out.
The deputy asked who she was.
“My wife,” Ryan said.
Vanessa corrected him.
“Vanessa Cole.”
The paramedics took Mia to the ambulance. Ryan followed, refusing to let go until one of them explained that they needed the child lying flat for an examination. He sat beside her while they checked her temperature, hydration, ankle, blood pressure, and the small bruise above her right temple that her hair had hidden.
Mia insisted she had not hit her head.
“Then where did that come from?” the paramedic asked gently.
She looked at the ceiling.
Ryan knew the expression.
Claire had done the same thing when she was about to lie badly.
“I bumped the shelf.”
“Was anyone there when you bumped it?”
Mia hesitated.
“No.”
The paramedic glanced at Ryan but did not challenge her.
At the emergency department, everything slowed down.
It was after midnight when a pediatric physician said Mia was mildly dehydrated, exhausted, and bruised but showed no sign of serious physical injury. A social worker arrived. Then a child-abuse investigator. Then another detective Ryan recognized from the search command post photographs Vanessa had texted him that morning.
Ryan answered questions in a consultation room while wearing the open-collar white shirt he had flown home in. His silver watch still showed Denver time because he had never reset it.
“When did you last see Mia before tonight?”
“Sunday morning. Video call.”
“Where were you?”
“Denver.”
“Purpose of travel?”
“Business conference.”
“What time did you leave Massachusetts?”
“Monday morning.”
The detective checked his notes.
“And Mrs. Cole reported Mia missing Tuesday at five forty-eight a.m.”
“Yes.”
“Did your wife tell you what happened?”
“She said she woke up and Mia was gone. She said the kitchen door was open and the back gate wasn’t latched.”
“Did she tell you she had located one of Mia’s slippers?”
“Yes.”
“Near the creek?”
“Yes.”
The detective leaned back.
“And you had no reason to believe Mia was inside the house?”
Ryan looked through the narrow window in the consultation-room door.
Mia was asleep in a hospital bed beyond it, turned on one side beneath a white blanket.
“No.”
May you like
The detective waited.
Ryan understood the question beneath the question.
