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Five minutes later, we had looked through every room in the house. Her car was still out front but Maggie was gone. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach as Mark called Knox to report her absence.
He cursed and said he would be over in a few minutes with Candice. I briefly wondered how their afternoon together had gone. I couldn’t help but imagine it being rather awkward.
I sat next to Mark on the sofa and curled into him. “What if something terrible happens to Maggie?”
His arm tightened around me. “You can’t think like that. I have a feeling that if they wanted to kill her, they would have. Look, nobody else has been taken. They were all killed outright.”
I wasn’t sure if I felt better about this, but I nodded. “You are right. Were you able to speak with Brian and Natalie?”
“For a few minutes,” he said into my hair. “Brian said it’s been quiet in the trailer and they haven’t found anything that looks unusual.”
I blew out a breath. “I hope we are making the right decisions about all of this.”
Mark’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket and answered it.
“Hey, Brian.”
I was close enough that I heard Brian’s voice. “We have a ransom note. Natalie and I are on our way over.”
And then he hung up the phone.
CHAPTER 21
Sutton
Bring $3 million dollars and the files that Judith Coswell stole from her husband to the Wickshire Cemetary at midnight Saturday if you want to see Margaret again.
The words stared me in the face as I re-read a copy of the ransom note over and over again.
“And you have no idea whose handwriting it could be?” Mark asked Knox, who had brought Candice over when they received the news.
“We are sending it to forensics now, but my gut feeling is that it’s a woman’s hand. Most likely they had Margaret write it. I hate to cast aspirations, but we don’t know Margaret Landry very well. Is there any way that she could be in on the scam?”
This drew my head up to Knox, who had spoken.
Could Maggie be in on it? The thought made me feel ill considering I had invited her into our home and she had a key to our house.