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It didn’t wrest free the troubling thought and wasn’t what I was looking for, but the burning inkling that I was close to a discovery didn’t leave me.

I checked my back pockets for reasons I couldn’t explain, but they were empty, save for my wallet and credentials.

Instinct made me search again, but I wasn’t wearing these jeans yesterday or on the day we’d started the case.

I squinted into the past, trying to see what I was missing. Barely registering the decision to move, my feet guided me to a nearby bank of elevators. I should have headed to the waiting room, greeted the family, or checked on Bryn, but I pressed the call button instead.

The emergency room bustled with activity, a constant flow of people coming and going with ailments of all kinds. I maneuvered through the crowd, searching for Clementine’s parents, but they weren’t there.

At the triage desk, the busy receptionist explained where I might find them. Clementine was out of surgery and in intensive care. She had survived her ordeal, but that was all the uncooperative woman behind the desk would tell me.

I took a different elevator to another floor, and after badgering my way to answers with another cranky hospital worker, I found Clementine’s parents sitting vigil beside her bed, watching their daughter sleep .

My phone buzzed before I could enter the room or make myself known, so I backed into the hallway and checked it.

Aslan: Where are you?

Quaid: ICU. Clementine’s out of surgery. Just checking in.

Aslan: Walk away from the case, Quaid. We have more important things going on.

Before I could type a response or explain that saving a child’s life was important, a woman’s emotion-drenched voice drew my attention. “Did you find the man?”

I glanced up from the device and found Clementine’s mother in the doorway. She bore a striking resemblance to her daughter, only wearier with age and stress.

“I’m sorry?”

“The man who attacked my daughter. Did you find him?”

I frowned, confused by the alternate version of what we believed had happened to Clementine. Were we wrong, or was this woman simply assuming her daughter had been attacked by a man?

“Is Clementine awake? Did she make a report?” I glanced along the hallway in both directions but knew before I checked that no officers were around to take a statement. It was highly unlikely they would question a girl fresh out of surgery.

The woman’s puzzlement matched my own, and she shook her head. “No… They only wheeled her down here twenty minutes ago. You’re the detective, right?”

“Yes, but… Ma’am, I’m working a missing child case, and we believe—”

“I know.” She seemed irritated with my stupidity, but I wasn’t following. “The man who took the child. He attacked my daughter. ”

Flynn attacked Clementine? Was it possible? I rearranged the pieces we’d put together and assembled them in a different order, but no. They didn’t fit the same. It didn’t make sense.

“How do you know who attacked your daughter? Did she tell you?”

The woman shook her head and glanced over her shoulder into the room where her husband remained by Clementine’s side.

Stepping away from the door, the woman lowered her voice.

“His wife fired her. She worked as their nanny. I can’t remember the gentleman’s name.

Clementine said he was a decent fellow. Kind.

Generous. It was him. He came and found us about fifteen minutes ago and claimed the same man who attacked Clementine was the one who took his son.

He said the police knew and were investigating. He said you were on his tail.”

It took a beat for her words to connect and make sense. “Wait. Nixon was here?”

“Yes, that’s his name. Her former employer.”

Again, I scanned the halls as though Nixon might still be present, even though the woman said it was fifteen minutes ago. “I don’t understand. What did he want?”

“To offer condolences and see how Clementine was doing. He, um… apologized for his wife and said if it was up to him, he would have kept her on for the rest of the summer. He asked if he could get the house key back. He said in their last meeting, he’d forgotten to ask.”

“House key? You gave it to him?”

“Well, I didn’t know which one it was, but I had her purse. The ambulance people brought it from the scene. The nurse gave it to us. Nixon found the right key on her key chain. He knew which one to look for. ”

A house key. Nixon had come to retrieve a house key? No. That wasn’t right. Nixon was hunting Flynn. Nixon was pissed off because he’d found out his wife had an affair and a child with his brother.

Flynn had Crowley.

Flynn slept with Nixon’s wife.

A house key.

Again, I unconsciously dug through my pockets, searching for something I couldn’t find. What was I looking for?

“I heard their baby was born early,” the woman said, cutting into my thoughts. “A boy. Robin is his name.”

Robin. A blue jay. Birds feeding out the window.

Birds.

Birds.

Sparrow. Crow. Robin.

Bird names.

Birds.

The memory crashed into me like a tidal wave.

A drawing. A family. Crow and Sparrow and the baby in the tummy named Robin. It was pinned to my fridge at home, where I’d promised to hang it.

Bird names. Birds.

What was it?

A nanny. An imaginary dog named Rex. A white bird with yellow head feathers.

“It’s a cocktail.”

“Do you mean he’s a cockatoo?”

“That’s it. I always forget. His name is Banjo. He doesn’t talk much, but he can sure dance. Clementine showed us. Crowley and I went with her one day to help feed it. She has to take care of it because her friend is gone all summer, and it’s just him all alone in the big house.

“All alone in the big house.”

“What was that?”

“Was your daughter caring for a friend’s cockatoo this summer?”

The woman flinched as though jarred by the sudden shift in conversation. “Yes. Marley has gone to Europe to travel with her husband. She’s a professor at the university. Clementine was in one of her classes. They got along well. She paid Clementine to feed the bird twice a day. Why?”

“Where does Marley live?”