Page 36

She said, “Look around the neighborhood. Are any houses being remodeled or under construction? Is there a neighbor with a babysitter or visiting relative or friend? A new substitute teacher or maintenance worker at school? We need to be talking to everybody, Brett. I want all hands on deck. Nobody sleeps until we find Paisley.”

“Yes, chief. Backup just got here. Anything else?”

“Go.”

Gerald hung up the phone. He grabbed his jacket off the chair. Emmy squeezed Tommy’s shoulder as she left the office with her father, ping-ponging from one tragedy to another.

Paisley Walker. Fourteen years old. Riding her bike on the backroads.

Was there another child, a second victim?

Was the pattern repeating? Had the girl been taken to a secluded location where she would be raped and tortured, the bones of her hands and feet shattered so that she couldn’t fight, couldn’t run away?

“Mom!” Cole ran out of the house with their duty vests. “I just heard—”

“Get in the car.”

The sun was blinding as she crossed the yard.

Emmy could hear her father struggling to keep pace.

Her eyes started to water. She felt as if she was going to vomit.

This couldn’t be happening again. Not with Adam out of prison.

Not with her mother spiraling, her father fading away, her life falling apart.

She felt shaky and sick as she opened the door to her cruiser.

Cole jumped into the back. Emmy wanted to slow things down, to take a second to catch her breath, to keep her mind from racing to all the bad places, but there wasn’t time.

Gerald flipped open his phone as Emmy sped up the driveway. She watched him dial the number for the GBI. Time was of the essence. They needed to cue up a Levi’s Call, Georgia’s equivalent of an Amber Alert.

She told him, “Sylvia Wrigley got thousands of followers after she was interviewed for Jack’s podcast.”

“Yep.”

Emmy slipped her phone out of her pocket. There were half a dozen notifications from the Herald . She swiped them away, then pulled up the private WhatsApp group of female law enforcement officers in the area. She typed with her thumb—

Poss abduction 14yo girl details incoming BOLO

“Mom,” Cole said. “Where are you going?”

Emmy had bypassed the road to the station. “Adam Huntsinger’s house.”

“But—” Cole grabbed the metal partition to hold on. “If Adam kidnapped this girl, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to take her to his house.”

“Put your seat belt on,” Emmy ordered. “I know Adam’s not that stupid, but other people are.”

She took another sharp turn, slinging Cole to the opposite side of the car.

He finally put on his seat belt when she reached the interstate.

Emmy looked at her watch, doing the math.

Millie’s part of the backroads was a ten-minute bike ride from Coleman Avenue.

Sylvia would’ve called in the bike as soon as she saw the blood, then Brett would’ve rushed to the scene, then he’d called the parents, then the school and hospitals, then finally Gerald.

That gave them a fifty-minute window during which something bad could’ve happened to Paisley Walker. Emmy let her mind carousel through all the possibilities one more time. A parent. A family member. An acquaintance. A stranger.

Fewer than one percent of child abductions were committed by predatory kidnappers.

The victims tended to be almost exclusively females with the aggregate age of fourteen.

They were more likely to be taken in an outdoor setting and to be coerced with a firearm.

The kidnapper was more often than not driving a car.

In forty-four percent of cases, the victim is murdered within the first hour.

Seventy-eight percent die within the first three hours.

Within twenty-four hours, virtually all of the victims are dead.

“Sherry,” Gerald said into the phone. “Need your help.”

Emmy tuned out her father’s voice. She kept the carousel spinning in her head, running through the innocent explanations. Paisley had spun out on her bike. She was walking to get help. Or going somewhere to hide so she wouldn’t get in trouble.

Paisley’s bike had been hit by a car. The driver had taken her to the hospital. Or an emergency clinic. The staff had changed over. Her chart had been lost in the shuffle. Nobody remembered seeing her. She was already on her way home.

Any of these scenarios was possible, but none of them felt right.

Adam Huntsinger had been back home for two days.

Half the town was ready to string him up.

The other half wanted to put him on a pedestal.

That was a lot of attention for a man who’d spent virtually every hour of every day alone for the last twelve years.

In studies of paroled pedophiles, stress was the number one contributing factor to re-offending.

“Will do.” Gerald closed his phone. “GBI cued up the alert. Give me the timeframe.”

“Paisley left the house around seven. Sylvia called it in around seven thirty. Brett called you about twenty minutes later, and now—” Emmy looked at the clock on the dash. Her heart sank. Paisley’s chance of survival was about to be split in half. “She’s been gone for fifty-eight minutes.”

“Set a timer. Thirty minutes.”

Emmy’s hand went to her watch as she kept the other on the steering wheel. She knew her father didn’t believe in statistical probabilities. “What are we counting down?”

“Calling the FBI,” Gerald said. “Made a mistake last time. Waited too long.”

Emmy dialed in the timer as she exited off the interstate.

In the last four months, they had spent hours talking about the case, picking apart the discrepancies in Jack’s podcast, reviewing the evidence, discussing what they could’ve done differently.

In all those conversations, Gerald had never once expressed any regrets about not requesting FBI assistance sooner.

There was no time to ask him about it now.

The road turned from asphalt to gravel. Dust kicked up behind the cruiser.

They had finally reached Elsinore Meadows.

Emmy glanced at Cole in the rear-view mirror.

He was staring straight ahead, his jaw set.

She could tell this was feeling very real for him now.

It was one thing to listen to a podcast on your morning run, quite another to be flying blind in an investigation where every decision you made, every step you took, could mean the difference between the life and death of a child.

Fighting with Jonah. Ignoring Madison. Not returning Millie’s incessant calls. Emmy would never get those small moments of bad decisions back. All she could do was vow never to make them again.

“Shit,” Cole whispered.

Emmy muttered her own curse. Sylvia Wrigley’s breaking news had done exactly what they’d feared.

Abandoned cars were parked twenty deep on either side of the road.

A crowd of at least two dozen people had gathered at the top of the Huntsinger driveway.

They were shouting, shaking their fists, spoiling for a fight.

Emmy whooped the siren a few times on approach, but they didn’t disperse.

They were too angry and too scared and too desperate for revenge.

Emmy slowed the cruiser, telling Cole, “Block off the end of the road. Call for immediate backup.”

“Yes, chief.” He started to get out of the car.

“Cole,” she yelled. “Get your fucking vest on. Strap it down tight.”

Emmy didn’t pull away until he was tugging at the Velcro straps. Her foot went to the gas. The cruiser lurched. This wasn’t the time to make a soft entrance. She hit the brake, swerved the car, and came to an aggressive stop.

“Back up!” Emmy shouted as she got out of the car.

She grabbed her ballistic vest from the back seat and strapped it down.

Her eyes swept the crowd, checking hands and hips.

Cell phones filming her every move. Faces contorted in rage.

Two Glocks, one Sig Sauer, a Smith & Wesson revolver, a liquor bottle with a dirty shop rag sticking out of the top.

No one had unholstered a gun or set anything on fire, but there was no guarantee it would stay that way.

“I said back up!” She put one hand on her gun, one hand in the air, pointing them across the road. “Back up! Now!”

There was movement, but not enough. Gerald slammed the car door shut. He started walking toward the crowd. No vest. No sidearm. Twelve years ago, they would’ve parted like the Red Sea. Now, they stood their ground, screaming, yelling, raging, wielding the cameras in their phones like weapons.

“This is your fault!”

“Fucking cops!”

“Why the hell do I pay my taxes?”

Gerald waited for their silence. “Need you to go home.”

“Fuck that,” a woman said. “You let a pedophile out of prison. Now he’s snatched another girl.”

“Yeah!” a man yelled. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Gerald waited for another lull. “Gonna knock on the front door.”

There was no response. They weren’t so far gone that they could argue with a simple solution.

One person moved out of the way. Then another.

Then finally, there was a clear path for Gerald to walk down the driveway.

Emmy watched his slow progress. The house was no more than fifty feet from the road, but she didn’t let herself breathe until he’d made it to the front porch. The door opened before he could knock.

Gerald disappeared inside.

She took another deep breath before she let herself check on Cole.

He was holding back a line of cars. He couldn’t stop the people who were on foot.

Emmy was about to look away, but then she recognized one of the women walking toward her.

Blonde hair pulled back. Light make-up. Hannah’s anxiety was palpable.

Her hands were clasped together. She was still wearing the diamond ring Emmy had helped Paul Dalrymple pick out for her.