by Deirdre Dore
He opened his eyes when she approached and smiled. “Hey, Raquel.”
Raquel had visited him a couple times in the hospital after he’d been hurt, but he’d been mostly unconscious. Seeing him up, but so obviously hurt, made the danger of what she was involved in all the more real.
“Hey, handsome,” she replied, but her voice came out sounding thick. “I brought you some tea.”
He gave her a crooked smile through sleepy eyes. “Tavey made you bring it.”
“Yeah,” Raquel said, realizing that while she and Tyler had always been friendly on a professional and personal level, now they were friends in truth. She hated seeing him like this.
“So, what’s up?” His words were slightly slurred. Raquel guessed he was still on pain meds.
“Oh, you know, hunting down child predators, sex traffickers, drug dealers, and lookin’ for Summer. Just another day in Fate.”
“Three of you. All crazy.”
Raquel nodded. “True enough.”
“Why’s it your job?”
Raquel wasn’t sure what he meant, but she had an idea. Why did they feel it was their job to search for the missing, or to catch predators, or to find Summer? Or did he mean all those things?
She thought about explaining how frustrating it was to be the bastard half-white daughter of Gloria Belle. Or how difficult it had been for Chris to be the daughter of her mother Sylvia’s affair with Robert Carlson, or how lonely Tavey had been as an orphaned heiress, or Summer, much younger than her older sister and brother, blind and largely ignored, considered strange even by her own family because of her preference for “outsiders.”
Raquel didn’t know how to explain all this without sounding like she should be pitied. She wasn’t to be pitied—she’d had the best friends in the world, still had the best friends in the world—but whoever had taken Summer had taken someone precious to her. She hadn’t known her mother’s love, but she’d known Summer’s, and when she’d disappeared, Raquel’s heart had broken.
“She was my friend,” Raquel said simply, because sometimes that was all that mattered.
“Why not just let go?”
“Could you let Tavey go? Now that she’s yours?”
“Different.”
“Why?” Raquel laughed. “Because we were kids? I don’t think so.”
Tyler was quiet for so long that Raquel thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he reached over and squeezed her fingers. “Do what you gotta do. You’ll find her.”
Raquel stared at him, letting the resolve fall and settle inside her. If Tyler, the most straitlaced cop she knew, was telling her to do what she had to do, then she would, even if he was on pain meds and probably had no idea what she was considering.
She squeezed his hand in return, thinking that she would find whoever was responsible for Tyler as well, and for herself. She didn’t think she would ever be whole again without knowing what had happened to Summer, and now that she’d seen the happiness of her two friends, she very much wanted to be whole, whole and brave. Summer had made it so easy to be brave.
Raquel left when Tyler fell asleep, joining everyone in the backyard. Chris and Ryan were sitting at the new patio table. Ryan had changed into gym clothes and tennis shoes and was drinking a beer. Tavey had put on her hiking boots and was spraying her legs with bug repellent.
Raquel frowned. “We’re driving over to Abraham’s, right? We’re not going to walk through the woods?”
Tavey shrugged. “Either way is fine with me.”
It wasn’t fine with Raquel. “I’d rather drive.”
Tavey rolled her eyes. “Now there’s a piece of news.”
“Seriously,” Raquel said. “If I’m right, then the men who were using our woods to hide their operations back then are using the woods now, maybe not here, but nothing is stopping them.”
Tavey held up a hand. “All right. We’ll drive.”
Raquel took a deep breath and tried to calm down before everyone started worrying about her. “Sorry.”
Chris shook her head, refusing to accept the apology. “No, you’re right. I know better than anyone not to underestimate how dangerous people can be.” She looked at Ryan. “And how sometimes we bring things on ourselves without meaning to. So we’ll drive over to Abraham’s and see what we can find.”
Chris caught Raquel’s eye and nodded. Chris had found out something about the address she’d given her—Raquel nearly opened her mouth to ask, but she didn’t want to talk about it in front of Ryan and Tavey.
Just then there was the sound of tires on gravel and the roar of an engine—an older-model car. Raquel felt something—a confusing mix of relief and happiness and wariness—that opened inside her chest and made her tense in sudden panic. Brent had come.
Everyone turned to look at the drive, so Raquel explained, “I invited Brent.”
“I see,” Tavey said matter-of-factly. “Well, he’s very observant.”
Raquel smiled ruefully at that one. “Yes, Brent Burns is nothing if not observant.”
“If he was a dog, I’d pick him to train as a tracking dog,” Tavey elaborated. “He pays attention.”
Brent approached, a six-pack of beer in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other, his walk loose-limbed and relaxed, his eyes missing nothing as he came forward. He didn’t hesitate, just smiled in that easy way he had and looked directly at Raquel.
She swallowed. He looked at her as if she was the most beautiful, most fascinating person he’d ever met. No one else had ever looked at her like that.
Chris let out a long, low whistle, like a twelve-year-old watching a couple make out in the bleachers.
Raquel sent her a glare, which made Chris grin cheekily.
“I brought beer and chips and salsa,” Brent said.
“Thanks, Brent. I’ll put this in a bowl.” Tavey took the grocery bag from him. “And there’s a cooler over there for the beer.”
She disappeared into the kitchen.
Thomas cleared his throat to get their attention. “I am about to cook these burgers. How would everyone like their meat? If you don’t tell me, they will be rare.”
Brent loaded the beer in the cooler while everyone told Thomas how they liked their burgers. Brent kept two of the beers, removing the caps, and walked over the patio to Raquel, handing her one of them, and staying beside her, as if they were a couple.
Raquel took the beer and looked at him. I know what you’re doing, she told him with her eyes, but she took a sip of the beer all the same.
Tavey returned with bowls of chips and salsa and set them on the table. She set out a bowl of potato chips as well, condiments, and a small tray with different kinds of cheeses. Raquel shook her head at the effort that had gone into preparing burgers. Tavey never did anything halfway, not even a planning meeting to discuss a murder. It was just one more reason Raquel loved her.
A LITTLE WHILE later, after they’d eaten and cleaned everything up, Tavey stood. “Okay, everyone. As much as this seems like a lovely family dinner on a warm spring evening, we’re here because Raquel thinks we have a limited opportunity to catch the people who have harmed all of us in one way or another, the people who brought drugs among our friends and family, and in catching them, we hope to find out the fate of our Summer as well.”
Her smile didn’t hide the determined glint in her eye. “That’s why I’m calling this an official meeting of Once Was Lost. We’re going over to Abraham’s, with Tyler’s permission, to search for anything that might help enlighten us as to the identity of the men who took Gloria Belle, men who also apparently took young women in order to sell them. And if we don’t find anything, we’ll keep looking”—Tavey met Raquel’s gaze—“until we do.”
Raquel knew that Tavey was trying to tell her that they were still in this together. Raquel didn’t doubt it, but she also didn’
t want danger touching her friends. They’d been in enough danger over the past year. Raquel had been the only one to see the strange, dangerous side of Summer. Raquel had been the one who’d known that there were depths to her friend that were revealed only to her. People could tell her that it wasn’t her job to find out what had happened to Summer, but Raquel knew that Summer would argue differently. Summer wanted to be found. She wanted Raquel to find her.
Brent took her hand, and Raquel looked at him. He met her gaze, staring at her knowingly, like he could see every thought in her head.
“Before we go, I’d like to show everyone something,” Brent announced. He let go of Raquel’s hand and stood, pulling a folded map out of his pocket. He spread it out on the patio table, holding the corners in place with ketchup, mustard, and beer.
He’d drawn red circles in thirty or so locations in Cherokee and surrounding counties. He pointed to the circles one at a time and said a name, mostly of girls. He stopped at around ten or so. “All these kids went missing from smaller towns in our region over the past thirty years. Most of them twelve to sixteen years old and classified as runaways.”
He pulled a pen out of his back pocket and made five additional circles. “These are the locations of drug busts where substantial amounts of meth, heroin, or pot were found in connection to bikers. Notice anything?”
The pattern was clear. The red circles, while not perfectly clustered around the locations of the drug busts, showed substantial clustering, especially along major highways.
Ryan was studying the map intently. “What made you look into older children and runaways? Summer was eight.” Ryan stopped, cursed himself. “Sorry, man. I forgot about your sister.”
Brent shrugged it off. “S’okay. The focus of your concern has always been Summer. No one even knew about the drugs until a few weeks ago. So it’s just a matter of the right pieces coming together at this point. But I’m not sure how this helps us. We have an idea of where this group has been working”—he waved a hand at the map—“if we can assume that this is the same group, which we can’t, so we may need something more recent. The last incident I found”—he pointed to a black circle near Chattanooga in the north—“was over two years ago.”
Ryan scratched his chin. “We can conduct interviews. Take a look in all these locations. Ask around. See if anyone remembers anything strange. Interview the families.”
Brent nodded. “I’ve spoken to several of the families of the missing kids over the past few weeks. Not much to remember. In one case, the daughter was involved in drugs, but none of the others mentioned it. I didn’t think about the drug angle until Raquel called me this afternoon, or I would have asked more questions.”
Raquel looked at the abundance of red circles on the map. The manpower involved in investigating every one of these incidents for some connection to what happened in ’86 was prohibitive. She could tell just by looking, and so could Ryan. Unless they had more evidence, no prosecutor or government agency was going to fund such an endeavor.
“So all this really tells us,” Raquel concluded, “is that we could be right. This group could still be active, but it doesn’t tell us who they are.”
Brent nodded.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Tavey said firmly. “Now let’s get over to Abraham’s before it gets too late. I want to get back before Tyler wakes up.”
19
BRENT GATHERED UP his map while the others stood and dug for keys, flashlights, and kits for collecting any potential evidence. Tavey put her beagles away and harnessed Dakota.
“He was originally a drug dog before he was abused,” Tavey explained. “I thought it was worth a shot.”
“He up for it?” Ryan asked. The dog had been grazed by a bullet the same time that Tyler had been shot.
Tavey nodded, smiling down at the dog, who sat patiently at her side. “He cries when I leave him, so I’ve been taking him with me, at least until he calms down some.”
As they made their way out to the cars, Raquel fell into step beside Brent, not looking in his direction but matching her pace with his.
Brent felt that stupid happiness slide through him again. He wanted to snatch her to him and hold her, but he didn’t want to freak her out, so he pretended that every cell in his body wasn’t vibrating with insane pleasure because she was walking with him, for God’s sake. The key was that she had done it willingly, without having to be persuaded, as if they had paired up and headed out somewhere a thousand times before.
He grinned like a complete idiot, just for a moment, knowing that Raquel was watching him out of the corner of her eye.
Brent’s Jeep was blocking most of the drive, so he and Raquel hurried to get belted in and get the Jeep turned around. He took the drive a little faster than he should on the car’s ancient shocks, but the adrenaline of what they were about to do, what they might discover, and the anticipation of Raquel’s attention, was coursing through him, making him tense with leashed excitement.
Abraham’s place wasn’t far in miles, just down Tavey’s drive, a few hundred yards east on the county road, and then up a long winding driveway. The drive split close to the house, separating into two paved sections, one along the front of the house, the other down one side.
Brent parked alongside the house, taking a moment to look at Raquel.
Her eyes were still guarded, wary, but she was looking at him the way she’d looked at him when he first arrived on Tavey’s doorstep, like she didn’t quite trust him, or maybe what she felt, but she wanted him all the same.
“This’ll be fun,” he said finally, looking at the smooth deep rose curve of her lips. He dreamed about those lips.
She widened her eyes and gave a quick, considering tilt of her head. “It could be a complete waste of time.”
Brent shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. That’s what’s great about what I do. Whether we find something related to the disappearances or not, we’ll find a story.”
Raquel studied him. “I’ve always known you love making your documentaries. I could see it at nineteen, when you asked me about my mother. You were fascinated by the story.” She paused. “What will your new project be once we’ve either solved this case or we’ve given up?”
“I haven’t decided, but we aren’t giving up,” he said, mostly because he knew she wasn’t going to give up.
Raquel nodded. “Let’s go, then.” She hopped down from the Jeep, her lithe, compact body moving with definite purpose.
Brent gathered his camera equipment out of the backseat and followed her, looping the strap of his favorite digital camera around his neck while he walked.
Abraham’s home resembled a cabin or a lodge, with rough-wood siding and a wraparound porch. The porch had several chairs, but all manner of statues, chimes, and bird feeders impeded a clear view of anyone who might be sitting and looking out. Of course, they impeded the view of anyone looking in as well, which had likely been Abraham’s intention.
Chris and Ryan pulled up alongside the front of the house and parked. Tavey parked behind Ryan’s truck and walked around the front of her Range Rover to let Dakota out of the passenger seat. He jumped down and waited.
“Okay.” Tavey waved Tyler and Raquel over. “How about we look in sections. There are three main rooms in the house other than the kitchen. I think we can discount the kitchen. I’ve been through it and there’s not much in there. But there’s the bedroom, a room he used for storage, and the living room, which has lots of bookshelves.”
“I’ll take the bookshelves,” Brent volunteered.
“I’ll help him,” Raquel chimed in.
“Okay, Chris and I will take the storeroom. Tavey, you okay with the bedroom?” Ryan asked nonchalantly.
Brent knew that up until a few weeks ago, Tavey had suspected that Abraham was involved in Summer’s disappearance. It was the main reason she and Tyler
hadn’t gotten together sooner, her insistence that Abraham knew more than he was saying.
Brent couldn’t tell if Tavey regretted her actions toward Abraham—her resolute expression could have meant she was working in spite of strong emotions, or it could be her usual expression.
“Yes, that’s fine,” Tavey said crisply, and marched toward the house, the dog leaping to catch up.
Brent and Raquel followed her as she led the way up the small set of stairs. She unlocked the front door and held it open for them. “The living room is just past this kitchen.” She pointed toward it.
Brent and Raquel nodded. There was no door between the two rooms; the wall opposite the front door stopped halfway across the room.
Brent removed the lens cap of his camera and gestured for Raquel to wait a moment. “Let me just take a pic before we move everything around.”
He heard Ryan and Chris moving behind him as they went into the storeroom and Tavey’s brisk walk as she entered the bedroom.
He took several photographs while Raquel waited impatiently, her fingers twitching. The room was a simple square with small windows on either side of the northeast corner of the house. An ancient TV squatted in that corner with an equally antiquated La-Z-Boy in front of it, but the rest of the walls were covered in books.
“Where should we start?” he asked Raquel, who was snapping on a pair of gloves.
She held out a pair to him.
He took them, eyeing her, wondering if it was weird that he found the sight of her putting on gloves, watching her snap them on her slender wrists, more than a little sexy. He mentally shrugged; he found just about everything she did sexy.
“Why don’t we begin systematically? I’ll take one corner, you take the other?”
“Hmm, maybe.” He walked the room, looking at the titles of the books. He didn’t have a permanent residence—had never seen the point—but he did have a storeroom in Los Angeles where he kept things like his original VHS tapes from his early work, signed photographs, journals, and his books. He had the boxes organized by subject of interest.