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Lionel chuckled, like the answer was easy.

“Because you think you’re smart, Dale. Because you already went through all the bullshit excuses about the laptop in your head— I lost it.

I don’t remember who I gave it to. I accidentally dropped it in the toilet —and you realized that the only solution was to erase the hard drive and hope that would be the end of it. ”

Dale looked down at his hands, but not before Emmy saw the stunned expression on his face. He did think he was smart. He had panicked.

Lionel leaned forward again, elbows resting on his knees. “My partner’s the one who spoke to your wife.”

Both rooms were so quiet that Emmy heard Dale’s throat gulp as he swallowed.

“He told me Esther works a part-time job as a secretary at the Baptist church. He says she comes across as a good Christian lady. Do you agree with that description of your wife, Dale?”

He breathed out the word, “Yes.”

“Esther’s devastated, Dale. She couldn’t stop crying. She actually threw up when we told her. My partner had to call in a doctor.”

For the first time since all of this started, Dale looked concerned for someone other than himself. “She suffers from anxiety.”

“She’s suffering right now,” Lionel said. “She’s worried about Madison and Cheyenne.”

Emmy saw Dale’s lower lip start to tremble. His eyes were wet with tears.

Lionel said, “One of the most important tenets of Christianity is forgiveness. Do you think Esther will ever forgive you for this?”

Dale swiped under his glasses, wiping away the tears.

“I think Esther will forgive you eventually, Dale. Your wife believes in the Bible. She’s a God-fearing woman.” Lionel paused. “But she can’t forgive you if you don’t tell the truth. And that’s what you really want, isn’t it? You want to tell the truth.”

Dale started to nod, but he didn’t say the words.

“The laptop belongs to you, doesn’t it?”

Dale shook his head.

“Tell me where the girls are, Dale. Let me take them home to their families.”

He kept shaking his head, but still didn’t speak.

“Dale, help me bring Cheyenne and Madison home. Ruth needs to see her baby. Hannah wants to hold her little girl one last time.”

Emmy felt her own tears flooding into her eyes. She looked at her father. Gerald hadn’t moved. His gaze had stayed locked on the same monitor as before—the one that showed Dale Loudermilk’s face.

“Tell me,” Lionel said. “Unburden yourself, man. Tell me where they are.”

Dale finally broke down. A loud sob shook the speaker. He threw his glasses on the table, covered his face with his hands. He started to cry, but then his cries turned into a kind of wailing. He rocked back and forth as if to soothe himself.

Emmy gripped the arms of her chair as she watched him.

She could only think of Madison and Cheyenne.

Had they cried like this? Had they felt terrified, helpless, abandoned?

Was Cheyenne thinking of the end of her life when Dale shot her in the head?

Was Madison wailing like a child in the dark place he’d taken her?

“Dale, listen to me, man.” Lionel put a hand on Dale’s shoulder to steady him. “Look at me, okay? The way you free yourself from this guilt is to tell me where they are. That’s all anybody cares about. Tell me where they are.”

Dale kept his face in his hands. He was mumbling something. His voice was too muffled for the microphone to pick up.

“What is it?” Lionel couldn’t hear him, either. He pulled away Dale’s hands, looked at his face. “Tell me.”

“I said I didn’t do it!” Dale screamed. He pushed away from the table. Started waving his arms, shouting, “I didn’t fucking do it! I didn’t fucking do it! I didn’t fucking do it!”

Emmy could hear his screams in echo, coming from the hallway first, then half a second later, from the speaker.

“Shit,” she hissed. She wanted to punch the monitor. She told her father, “He’s never going to give it up. You know that.”

Gerald reached toward the speaker and clicked off the sound. The muffled screams stopped just as abruptly. Emmy saw that Lionel had stood up. His hands were out as he tried to get Dale to calm down.

Gerald said, “Cheyenne’s locker. Show me.”

Emmy took out her phone. She tapped through to the photographs and handed the device to her father. “What am I missing?”

“Don’t know.” His fingers were clumsy on the screen. It took a few tries for him to zoom in. “No necklaces.”

Emmy felt stupid for not making the connection. “They got them for each other last Christmas. I don’t think they would’ve taken them off for the photos. They’re still wearing their other jewelry. That means the photos are at least seven months old.”

Gerald swiped across the screen. He did the same thing Emmy had done at the school, looking closely at the backgrounds for clues as to where the photo session had taken place.

He asked, “Color printer?”

“Yeah, the ink and paper’s not going to help us. It’s the kind you get at Office Depot. There’s no watermark or time stamp.”

He swiped again. “Tell me about Cheyenne’s phone.”

“I entered the serial number into the system. The iPhone was reported stolen in Atlanta in February of last year. We’ve got APD trying to track down the original owner, but the thing is, all the data on the phone was wiped.

Cheyenne did a factory reset.” Emmy anticipated the next question because she’d had the same one.

“Celia told me that Mrs. Burrough sent Cheyenne to the office to turn over the phone. She was on her own in the hallway. She had plenty of time to wipe it on the walk over.”

“But she didn’t take the SIM card.”

“She probably didn’t know that she needed to wipe that, too. That’s why Madison went back two days later.”

“On whose order?”

They both looked at the monitors. Dale was sitting down now, arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t come across as particularly tech savvy.

Gerald asked, “What do we know?”

Emmy checked her watch. “We’re coming up on seventeen hours since the kidnapping.

A man who taught both victims is a pedophile.

We’ve got two crime scenes: the soccer pitch where the two bikes, Cheyenne’s blood, and Madison’s phone were found.

The other scene is on the backroads where a broken gold necklace was found along with bike tire marks, a pair of large footprints and a pair of small footprints. ”

“What do we think we know?”

“There’s a man called the Perv we can’t identify and who might not even exist. A drug dealer named Wesley ‘Woody’ Woodrow who might be their supplier.

Cheyenne’s flip phone that her parents know about is out there somewhere.

The second burner phone she bought to replace the one Celia confiscated is out there.

The confiscated phone was erased by Cheyenne for some reason.

For some reason, Madison risked getting into trouble to steal the SIM card out of Celia’s office two days later.

She cut the card into three pieces, but she held onto it, even though there’s no way to access the data, which implies she was going to give it to someone as proof that it was destroyed. ”

“What data?”

“A SIM card stores the phone number, network authorization, contact lists and a limited number of text messages. The data transfers with the card to whatever phone you put it in.”

“Photos? Videos?”

“No,” Emmy said. “But Cheyenne could’ve backed them up to the cloud. You can use a debit card to buy storage. Fake your name and address. It’s not hard.”

“Is our kidnapper in some pictures?” Gerald asked. “Videos?”

Emmy hoped like hell that she wasn’t the officer who found them.

“The FBI says it’s not likely they’ll be able to restore the data on the wiped phone.

There’s an encryption key or something technical I didn’t understand, but the upshot is, it’s a lost cause.

They think they’ll have better luck with Madison’s phone.

Or if we find the second burner Cheyenne was using. Or maybe her flip phone.”

“Too many phones,” Gerald said. “Go back to the envelope in the locker.”

Emmy knew he’d seen the Clifton Tool and Die logo on the return address.

“Felix Baker works at the factory, so he could’ve had some envelopes lying around the house.

But he told us that he dropped Ruth and Pamela off at the river basin, then went to work.

He’s got four hours that we need to account for. ”

“Done,” Gerald said. “Called the factory this morning. Talked to security. Baker’s key card swiped in at three twenty-eight, out at six fifty-one. CCTV caught him in the building. Minivan was parked in the lot.”

Emmy wasn’t ready to let Felix Baker off the hook.

“I know his wife said he got to the river around seven thirty, but can we trust her? Leaving at six fifty-one still gives Felix time to go to the park and take the girls, do whatever he was going to do, then show up in time to drive Ruth and Pamela home.”

Gerald reached for the phone on the wall, punched in Virgil’s extension, then hit speakerphone. The rings warbled in the dark room.

“Yes, boss?” Virgil said.

“You got the logs?”

“They just hit my inbox,” Virgil said. “The license plate on Felix Baker’s minivan was picked up by GHP at seven sixteen last night turning onto Front Basin Road. Got scanned again leaving at eleven oh-two.”

Emmy knew all Georgia Highway Patrol cruisers had license plate scanners mounted on their front grilles. Front Basin Road was the only way in or out of the county fireworks display, so Felix Baker was in the clear.

Gerald asked, “What about phone records?”

“I’m expecting Madison’s activity from yesterday to update any minute now. Meantime, I’m working with the phone company trying to get the call logs on the two burner numbers. The only thing I know so far is that the first burner number came online in August of last year.”

“And the flip phone?” Gerald asked.