Page 88 of The Witch’s Orchard

There’s a knock at the door and, hand on my gun, I yell for whoever it is to come in.

It’s Greg Andrews, Max’s dad. He’s looking the absolute opposite of combative, holding a sealed bottle of whiskey, his mouth pulled into an aggrieved frown.

I tell AJ I’ll talk to him later and we hang up.

I hold the door open for Greg and he walks across the room and sets the bottle of whiskey on the counter.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“An apology,” he says.

I look at him and his bottle and his red, haggard eyes.

“I accept.”

I pull two short tumblers from the cabinet and fill them halfway with the amber liquid. We both drink.

“I take it you want me back on the case?”

“Were you ever off the case?”

I shake my head.

“This is going to kill my son,” Greg says.

I nod.

“I think he’s worried that his friendship with Shiloh got Lucy kidnapped.”

“It’s more likely that my meddling did it,” I say. But, in truth, I’d already considered whether someone was targeting Max. Taking his surrogate little sister the same way they took Molly. But who would do such a thing? It’s not like the introverted, artistic eighteen-year-old had spent his whole life going around making enemies.

I take another sip of the whiskey. It’s not great but it’s good. It burns appropriately for eleven o’clock in the morning the day after one was present at a little girl’s kidnapping.

I put my glass down and look back up at him and ask, “So why do you want me looking into it now? What’s changed?”

“Like I said the other day, the cops couldn’t do it ten years ago. I don’t trust them to do it now. I just… I thought it was over. But it’s not. And this isn’t right. It’s not right. I like Shiloh. She’s a good kid. She doesn’t—no one does—no one deserves to go through what Janice and I did.”

“Fair enough.”

“I can pay you,” he says.

“I’m already being paid.”

“Okay.”

I tilt my glass and watch the liquid slide. I tilt it the other way.

“Were you and Max’s mother having marriage problems before Molly was kidnapped?” I ask.

The question takes him for a wild ride. His eyes widen and then darken, and his cheeks go red like he might be about to shout, but in the end he just slumps down where he sits.

“Yes,” he says. “Did Max say something?”

“No. If Max remembers it or ever knew it at all, he’s never mentioned it. Were you getting counseling from Bob and Rebecca Ziegler?”

He half sighs, half groans.

“Of a sort.”