Page 15

FOURTEEN

Durham, New Hampshire

Wednesday, October 9

6:05 p.m.

Making her life hell.

“Ava, wait!” Leigh shoved away from the marshal and ran after her adopted daughter. But she wasn’t fast enough. “I didn’t mean that!”

Ava’s wiry frame merged with the shadows closing in from the narrow corridor, and then she was gone.

Dragging her phone from her blazer—still damp in spots—Leigh hit the flashlight feature. There were over a dozen classrooms Ava could’ve disappeared into in the past few seconds. Her heart rate drowned out any chance of hearing shuffling footsteps or sobs. She had to calm down. Had to think about this rationally.

“Leigh.” Ford was on her heels, adding his phone’s flashlight to hers. “I’ll start searching the classrooms. You see if she made it back to the lobby.”

Okay. She could do that. “Message me if you find her. Please.”

She didn’t want to screw this up, but she couldn’t see a way back either. She’d had a hope things would get better between them. Maybe they had the past few hours, but now… Ava had clawed her way into Leigh’s life and seemed just as determined to claw her way out. Their union wasn’t a typical adoption case. Ava had come to her through violence and trauma and secrets and murder. Leigh had always known it wouldn’t be a smooth transition—for either of them—but now she didn’t know what to do. Why couldn’t she be like her own mother? Where was the unlimited patience, the emotional intelligence, and ability to smile through the hard times?

Leigh jogged back toward Thompson Hall’s lobby. Students were beginning to settle in for the night against the walls and on benches with their coats. The stab of rain pelted against the lobby door glass and windows, turning the two-story chamber into a prison. She targeted the first student she saw. “Have you seen a girl run through here? Brown hair, about five-foot-five?”

The woman shook her head. “No, sorry.”

She caught sight of the group of five Ava had spent the past few hours with. Panic welled in her chest. This. This was what being a mother felt like. Every time her adopted daughter had taken off in the middle of the night or refused to come home from school, this feeling threatened to crush her. Until all Leigh could do was live in it. Become it. She grabbed on to one of the group’s members. “Have you seen Ava? She must’ve run through here.”

Tension thickened under her touch, the poor guy’s eyes widening. “Last we saw her, she was looking for someone.”

For Leigh. Nausea churned in her gut, harsh and acidic.

“I’ve searched all of the classrooms.” Ford appeared at her side in the blink of an eye. Impossible for someone his size. Or maybe Leigh really was that blinded by worry. “There isn’t any sign of her.”

The pounding of her heart pulsed behind her ears. Growing louder. More uneven. She was moving again without conscious thought, running to the opposite end of the building. They’d sequestered students to the lobby and main floor, but Thompson Hall was structured with two more floors above them. “She wouldn’t leave. She has to be here.”

Ford’s hands were on her then, tucking her against his chest. She didn’t know how much she’d needed that until right then. The support. The reassurance she wasn’t in this alone. That she didn’t have to do this alone. “We’re going to find her. She can’t get far in this storm.”

“You obviously don’t know how far Ava is willing to go to get away from me.” Breathe. She’d fought serial killers for the people she loved, she’d been drowned, stabbed, and had her entire future ripped out from underneath her. She could do this. She just had to think. “She’ll want to get as far from me as possible.”

Leigh pulled free of Ford’s arms for a second time. Each time was getting harder and harder, but she couldn’t focus on that right now. “I’m going to search the third floor. You take the second.”

“Got it.” Ford headed for the stairs ahead of her.

She’d faced each of those life-ending events without a single thread of hesitation. But Leigh found herself pausing at the base of the stairs. She’d wanted nothing more than to have a family, to replace what had been taken from her when her brother had gone missing. She craved the visits from the tooth fairy, registering kids for school, the late nights with newborns, and weekly date nights with the man she loved. She wanted the hard things as much as she wanted the professional Christmas photos in front of the tree and the gap-tooth smiles, all the while knowing she’d earned every second.

But adopting Ava hadn’t come close to the picture in her mind, and she certainly hadn’t earned the right to call Ava hers. She belonged to another mother. And Leigh was… a placeholder. It was all Ava would let her be. And Leigh couldn’t blame her.

She forced her feet to move, to take the stairs two at a time. The surgical sites across her low belly twinged with a hint of pain, but they wouldn’t slow her down. Sweat slicked at her temples as she passed the second floor and moved on to the third. She had to trust Ford to keep his word instead of taking full control of the search. Something she didn’t enjoy imparting considering her past two cases, but she had to keep her focus on Ava.

Leigh hauled the stairwell door open and crossed the threshold onto the third floor. The president’s office stood out at the end of the long hallway with more offices on either side of her. Grant and contract administrators, IT director, career counselors. Too many offices to count. “Ava?”

Her lungs burned with exertion. Out of control. The helplessness added to the panic ripping through her. All too real, all too consuming, as though she were at the wrong end of a handgun. Lightning lit up the sky through the wall of windows. “Ava, please. I didn’t mean what I said. You haven’t made my life hell. I was… overwhelmed in the moment. I didn’t mean it.”

Time ticked by effortlessly, out of her hands. There was a killer on the loose. A body in the morgue. A professor keeping secrets. She didn’t have time for the dramatics of a fifteen-year-old teenager, but this moment felt important. Her chance at a family was slipping away, and Leigh couldn’t stomach the thought of losing something so precious.

“Go away!” Ava’s voice warbled on the last word. Cut through with a sob. Thunder boomed directly overhead and threatened to knock the remaining strength out of Leigh’s legs. A shadow raced across the corridor ahead.

Leigh picked up the pace. Trying to predict where Ava planned on running. One answer took shape: as far from her as possible. A door slammed. The crushing sound of rain grew louder. The roof access. “Ava, no!”

She charged the length of the third floor and shoved through the heavy metal door with a growing puddle of water squishing beneath her feet. A rubber foot stop demanded attention from the floor, and she shoved it underneath the frame to keep them from getting locked outside.

Wind pelted a wall of rain into her face, and Leigh raised the lapel of her blazer to block the onslaught. In vain. She was soaked in seconds, hostage to the hurricane-force winds on a roof offering little protection. Air conditioning units groaned under the assault, their fan blades spinning wildly. Another round of lightning flashed. Too close. She was exposed out here. In danger. But she wasn’t going back inside until Ava was safe. “Ava!”

She searched the roofline. And caught sight of her adopted daughter at the south edge. Directly over the crime scene where Alice Dietz had been left by her killer. “Ava!”

“Don’t!” Ava threw one hand out, half turning toward Leigh. One wrong gust of wind and she’d tip over the edge. Her clothing whipped around her, tearing in opposite directions as the storm battered Durham. “Don’t!”

Her heart stuttered in her chest. No. No, this wasn’t happening. She wasn’t going to watch her adopted daughter go over the edge of a three-story building. Tendrils of hair slashed across Leigh’s face and blocked her vision. But she still took that step forward. Raising her voice over the thunder of the storm, she reached out a hand. “Ava, please. You don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t know what I want!” Pure venom contorted Ava’s beautiful face, a face nearly identical to her mother’s. “Nobody asked me what I wanted when she went to prison.”

“I know.” Leigh attempted another step closer. “It wasn’t fair, Ava. I know, but there’s no going back. We’re all we have left now.”

“I said, don’t come near me!” The fifteen-year-old’s balance shifted precariously, her toes pressed to the roofline’s edge, and Leigh pulled up more than ten feet short. Could she even reach Ava in time? “I don’t know you, and you said it yourself, I make your life hell. You don’t even want me, so why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“I want you!” Her voice broke as the tears pushed into her eyes. “More than you know.”

The metal door swung back on weak hinges and slammed against the brick wall behind it. The impact claimed Ava’s attention, and her balance failed. She wobbled with both hands stretched out.

Leigh moved to lunge, to grab her no matter the cost of being the most hated woman on the planet. She could deal with that. But she couldn’t deal with losing Ava altogether.

“You’re lying! You only took me because my mother forced me on you before she went to prison. Like I was some kind of pet that needed looking after.” Devastation had replaced rage and stripped Ava’s expression down to nothing. She got better control of her balance then, standing straight. Facing off with the one obstacle in her path. She looked like some kind of goddess. Strong. Beautiful. Knowing her power over others. Leigh would be proud if it weren’t for the fact the obstacle keeping Ava from what she wanted was her.

“Ava, please.” The helplessness she’d avoided her entire life reared its ugly little head. “I don’t want you to fall. Please, come back inside, and we can talk about all of this.”

“Do you know why I keep running away? Why Officer Caine has to drag me back night after night?” Ava’s voice projected over the chaos around them. Even and clear. “You never ask what I want or what I need. You think you know what’s good for me, and you make decisions for me, but you’re always going to be chasing after the next case. Your job is everything to you, and I’m nothing but a case you can’t close! That’s what he made me. A case!”

Leigh’s reach faltered. It was the first time Ava had talked about the man who’d abducted and assaulted her. Up until this point, she’d waited for Ava to broach the subject of what’d happened. To take that first step. Now… she wasn’t so sure she’d made the right choice. “That’s… That’s not true.”

It couldn’t be true.

“Leigh!” Ford’s voice was lost to the howling wind from behind. He’d followed her but, thankfully, kept his distance as he surveyed the situation.

Ava’s mother had sacrificed the rest of her free life to keep her daughter safe. To prove the force of a mother’s love. And yet, Leigh hadn’t really been willing to do the same, had she? Ava was right. Adopting a daughter had been terrifying and confusing, and she hadn’t known what she was doing from the beginning. Becoming a mother didn’t automatically make you one, as she’d assumed. Her own mom had made it look so easy. Natural. And when it hadn’t proven to be the case for her, she’d immersed herself in her work, in the next case to give herself something tangible to rely on. Distracted herself from what was happening in front of her. All this time, she’d convinced herself she deserved the experience of having a family of her own. That she’d more than earned it. But what had she ever really sacrificed in return?

“I’m not a case you get to solve. I’m not anything anymore. He made sure of that when he took me.” Ava faced the front of Thompson Hall. And lifted one foot in the air.

“No!” Ford’s scream lanced through her. His suit jacket penetrated her peripheral vision a split second before Leigh was moving.

She closed the last bit of distance between them, hand outstretched. The wind pounded rain into her skin, into her clothing. Stinging pain prickled along the back of her hand, but she didn’t care. About any of it. The storm. Ford. This case. All that mattered was Ava. Getting to Ava.

She fisted her hands in Ava’s T-shirt and threw everything she had into wrenching her back. They hit the graveled rooftop as one, but neither of them acknowledged the impact. Leigh wrapped both arms around the fifteen-year-old’s shaking frame, trying to absorb Ava into her very skin to keep her safe.

Ford positioned himself to keep the rain from pelting them.

“You’re mine,” she said into the crown of Ava’s head. “You’re mine.”