Gone in the Night

by Anna J. Stewart

  “You haven’t heard from Hope since she sent you that picture?” the detective asked.

  “No. You said you’re considering everything. That means she might have gone off.” Was she out there? Alone? God, he hoped she was alone. But she could be freezing. Hurt. Scared. “I know there’s some pretty thick wilderness around the home. I didn’t think it was anything—”

  “Again, we aren’t ruling anything out,” Detective MacTavish said. “We have sheriff’s deputies searching the property around the Vandermont home. We also have officers going door-to-door in case anyone saw anything or anyone suspicious in the area in the last few days. Do you have other contact information for your brother besides his cell number?”

  “Yeah.” Max returned to the mug, watched the steam swirl up but still couldn’t bring himself to drink. “Yeah, he wrote it down and stuck it on the message board.” He walked around the detective to the recessed desk, pulled the paper off the corkboard. “He’s been working on a merger with a Japanese company interested in his latest invention, app, something I don’t understand.” Joe with all his big ideas that always paid off. Out to change the world, make it better. For everyone. For Hope.

  “Do you know where we can find Gemma?” Dr. Hollister asked.

  “She said she was going to a spa until Joe got back.” Because his morning wasn’t going bad enough, now he had to think about Hope’s mother. “Joe wanted her to go with him, thought maybe they could work out some of their issues. She refused. Big knock-down, drag-out fight the night before he left. Nothing violent,” he added when he realized the impression that statement would make. “Joe would never hurt either of them. But things have been difficult between them. As I’m sure she knows.” He glanced at Dr. Hollister, who gave a nod of agreement. What was wrong with the woman? She knew Hope; she’d been treating her. Why did she look as if she didn’t want to be bothered to be here?

  “Do you know what spa Mrs. Kellan was going to?” Detective MacTavish asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to anything Gemma says.” Max blinked. “And no, before you ask, I haven’t heard anything from her since she took off. She knew she wouldn’t have to worry about Hope with me around.” Guilt walloped him in the gut.

  “I’d agree with that assessment,” Dr. Hollister said as she flipped through something on his phone. “Gemma isn’t the most hands-on parent, but if she stayed local, I’d lay odds on the Camellia Day Spa off Fair Oaks Boulevard, Jack.”

  “We’ll have one of our officers work on tracking her down,” Detective MacTavish said. “May we have your permission to search your cell phone and the house? Maybe there’s a chance someone picked her up and dropped her off here late last night.”

  “Search whatever you want,” Max said. “Hope hasn’t been here. I’d know. I don’t sleep much.” Maybe never again.

  “Hope told me you’re living in their guesthouse,” Dr. Hollister said as she returned the phone to the detective.

  “Officially, yes, but I moved in here when my brother left so I’d be close to Hope. The guest room is on the other side of the stairs. You’re wasting your time questioning me.” But he knew they had to. How many child abductions led to relatives or friends of the family? Frustration began to swirl. “I should be out there trying to find her.” He couldn’t just sit—or stand—around and wait. He needed to be doing something.

  “We are doing that, believe me.” Detective MacTavish left the room with a gesture that he’d soon return.

  Max stared at the doctor, anger boiling inside him as he pushed aside those warm, fuzzy feelings that had descended out on the street. The last thing he needed in his life again—in any capacity—was a useless doctor. “Stop looking at me like I’m a specimen under your microscope, Doc. I won’t lose it completely.” He gripped the edge of the counter, leaned over and squeezed his eyes shut. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “I haven’t used a microscope since college.” She walked over and picked up his coffee, carried it over to the sink and dumped it out. She searched the cabinets, pulled out another mug, one of the ones Hope used for her hot chocolate, and filled it with coffee. “Here. Drink.”

  He wrapped both hands around the white ceramic, his eyes falling on the cartoon princess frolicking with her animal friends. “Why did you do that?”

  “To give you something of hers to hold on to.” Dr. Hollister pressed her hand over his for a brief moment, long enough to warm him in conjunction with the coffee. “We’re going to find her, Max. We’ve got a lot of smart, dedicated people who are going to help us. Jack and his partner? You won’t find better. We just need you to be here when she comes home.”

  “Easy for you to say, Doc. I bet you don’t feel what I’m feeling.”

  “You’d be surprised what I feel.” Her faint smile was anything but bright. “And it’s Allie, please. Doc sounds a bit clinical.”

  “All doctors are clinical.” He sounded harsh. He didn’t care. Couldn’t let himself care. The only thing that mattered was Hope. “What if she’s run away again? She’s been doing that lately. It’s one of the reasons I moved out here.”

  “If that’s what’s happened, we’ll find her sooner than later.”

  “But you don’t think that’s what this is,” Max countered, daring the doctor to claim otherwise.

  “She’s well aware she can trust you,” she said after the briefest of hesitations. “I’ve seen a marked improvement in her since you came to stay. She’s spoken about you often during our sessions. She loves you. Worships you, as a matter of fact. Her hero uncle Max who fights fires and saves people. I think I actually saw stars explode in her eyes talking about you one day.”

  “Twist the knife deeper, why don’t you.” Max drank more coffee, surprised at how soothing the jolt of caffeine felt. The last thing he needed to dwell on was Hope out there waiting for him to find her, which he couldn’t do as long as he was stuck in here. Not that leaving was an option. What if a call came in...

  His arms shook as his muscles clenched. “For the record, I don’t fight fires. Not anymore, anyway.”

  Detective MacTavish reentered the kitchen.

  “What?” Max’s spine went stiff.

  “Crime scene unit is on its way. My partner is working on getting some FBI assistance while he’s up at the Vandermonts’ home. We want as many agencies on this as possible. The more we blanket the valley, the sooner we’ll find her.”

  “Tell him to request Special Agent Eamon Quinn,” Allie said. “He’s out of the San Francisco office, but he’s one of their top experts in cases like this.” She flinched, as if afraid she’d said too much.

  “Cases like what?” Max demanded.

  “Missing persons,” Allie said quickly. Too quickly.

  “Before this goes any further,” Detective MacTavish said, “I need to ask you something, Max.”

  “Ask away.” What was it with these people that they were treating him with kid gloves? “I don’t have anything to hide.”

  The detective glanced at Allie, who gave an encouraging nod. Max reined in his temper. Damned doctors always thought they knew best about everything.

  “Given the custody fight over Hope,” Detective MacTavish said, “do you think it’s at all possible that either your sister-in-law or your brother could have taken her without telling you?”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Max set the mug down with a clack. “Seriously?”

  “Very seriously. Allie’s filled me in on what she can—”

  “Did she?” Max sneered. “Stretching those confidentiality boundaries are we, Doc?”

  If his words hit an emotional target, he couldn’t tell. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment. Boy, she was one cold ice queen. “I told the detective what I could,” she said. “That your brother’s case has been contentious. Something I’ve been witnes
s to in court on numerous occasions.”

  “Joe wouldn’t do that to me.” Max couldn’t shake the sensation there was something more to this situation than he was being told. Or maybe he was overreacting. The last thing he could rely on these days was his own judgment. He’d never done well when people he loved were threatened. Situations like this always threw him into a tailspin and that’s when he made bad choices. Life-altering choices. “My brother wouldn’t set me up like this or use me. It doesn’t matter how much Joe and Gemma might loathe each other, he wouldn’t let me think Hope was in danger.” The very idea would have made him laugh if he could remember how.

  “What about Hope’s mother?” Detective MacTavish asked.

  “Gemma wouldn’t have any problem letting me hang.” Max grimaced. “We aren’t the other’s favorite person. We only get along for Hope’s sake. I’ve never trusted or liked her and she knows it.”

  “Why don’t you trust her?” Allie asked.

  He hesitated. No need to air that bit of dirty family laundry unless absolutely necessary. “Because my brother’s worth about three-quarters of a billion dollars and she didn’t pay him much attention until he hit the Fortune 500.” Aggravation built to the point of bursting. Max had long believed Gemma had only had Hope to ensure she would be financially tied to Joe forever. “Search the house, take my prints and DNA, hunt down Gemma, set up your phones or what have you, but I need to do something. I’ve got training. I can be out there looking—”

  “We need you to stay close to home for the time being,” Detective MacTavish cut him off. “At least until we can get your brother or sister-in-law back here. You being around to answer any questions we might have is exactly the kind of help we need. Beginning with any friends of Gemma who might be able to help us track her down.”

  “I’ll be here if you need me,” Allie’s too-soothing voice grated on Max’s nerves.

  “I don’t need you,” he spat. “I don’t need anything other than for my niece to walk through that door and prove to me this is all some horrible mistake. So take your niceties and your platitudes and put them to use somewhere else. You find my niece.” He moved in on the detective, who straightened to meet him eye-to-eye. “And you do it fast. Or I’m going to do it myself.”

  Chapter 3

  It was strange, Allie thought, how time possessed a vicious will of its own. It sped up when you wanted to stretch out the memories and slowed to an agonizing crawl when all she wanted to do was push forward.

  The hours that had passed since she’d sat before three terrified little girls felt like days, days she’d do anything to pretend had been a dream. Now, as she stepped inside Hope Kellan’s second-floor bedroom, the reality of the little girl’s absence hit her like an anvil.

  She watched as the last member of the Sac PD’s crime scene unit snapped a metal case shut and left. The tech offered a strained, understanding smile as he did so. Never before had Allie put so much faith in the department she’d worked closely with and in the detectives heading up the case. She trusted them, absolutely and without question.

  And yet...

  Allie, of all people, knew there were no absolutes in life. Not where children were concerned. Not twenty years ago and not today.

  She’d needed solitude; she’d needed quiet. Watching Max Kellan occupy himself with pacing, sitting, standing, and then repeating the pattern, pressed in on her. She understood how he felt; all she wanted to do was go out the front door, breathe in the fresh air and walk until she couldn’t walk anymore.

  His panic, his concern, tasted bitter in Allie’s mouth as she tried not to surrender to the logic of what statistics said about how Hope’s disappearance would play out. The first twenty-four hours were vital—forty-eight, if they were lucky—but Allie was a realist; she knew the odds didn’t favor a happy reunion. Chances increased by the second that she’d be standing in another field, over another little girl’s body.

  “Stop it!” She had to say it out loud, so she could hear it through her own ears. It’s what Simone or Eden would tell her, but they weren’t here. What she wouldn’t give for her best friends to be standing beside her. They were her support system, had been from the moment they’d met on the kindergarten playground.

  Allie had been trying to stand up for herself against a second grader who wanted the bright blue plastic ball she’d gotten for her birthday, but she soon found herself flat on her back on the cement.

  Next thing she knew, Simone Armstrong and Eden St. Claire were standing over her, hands stretched out for her to take. They hauled her up, introduced themselves and then their friend Chloe Evans, who had been standing behind them. Chloe, with her excitement-tinged, wide-green-eyed uncertainty, crooked pigtails sticking out on either side of her head. Her clothes hadn’t matched, not even a little, Allie remembered.

  That day Simone had helped Allie straighten her new pink dress and sweater while Eden retrieved Allie’s ball—before being sent to the principal’s office for kicking the second grader somewhere Allie later learned was vastly inappropriate.

  They’d been picking each other up off the ground ever since.

  Times like this, as she stared at the youthful optimism of Hope Kellan’s bedroom, Allie envied people like Max Kellan.

  Where other people became jittery and restless when faced with a traumatic situation, Allie pulled into her tiny, tiny shell like a petrified, silent turtle.

  Call it professional training or life experience, it was part of what had kept her sane all these years. Today, for the first time, the calmness seemed to be pushing her to the brink.

  When her cell phone buzzed, Allie answered without thinking. “Dr. Hollister.”

  “Well, there’s a surprise. I thought for sure I was going to get your voice mail.” Nicole Goodale’s cheery voice dropped Allie into the quicksand of her youth, exactly the last place she wanted to dwell. “I just wanted to thank you for coming last night to the soft opening of Lembranza. We really appreciate the family support.”

  “It was my pleasure, Nicole.” Allie rubbed the space between her brows. If there was one talent her foster siblings, Nicole and her brother Patrick, had picked up during her three years as one of Allie’s parents’ “projects,” it was Allie’s mother’s bad sense of timing, unfortunately. “The meal was fabulous and it was great to see both of you again.” Funny how, after more than fifteen years and sporadic contact, Nicole seemed inordinately determined to make up for lost time. Not that Allie minded. Nicole and her brothers were among the few bright spots in her childhood.

  “Glad to know we earned your seal of approval. I also wanted to check in and see if everything’s okay with you.” The concern in her foster sister’s voice dropped another weight of guilt onto Allie’s shoulders. She hadn’t wanted to go last night and had even contemplated cancelling at the last minute, but if she’d done that she never would have heard the end of it, especially from her mother.

  “Everything’s fine,” Allie lied. “I’m just dealing with a problem with one of my patients at the moment. Sorry if I sound distracted.”

  “I hope it’s nothing serious,” Nicole said.

  “Serious enough,” Allie said. “And I hope I wasn’t too much of a downer last night at dinner. There’s just been a lot going on.” Being stalked by the monster responsible for murdering your best friend didn’t make for emotional stability. “But it was great to reconnect.”

  “Seeing you again made us realize how much we’ve missed you,” Nicole said. “And you’re right, things have been...” Her voice trailed off and Allie flinched. “It’s been a rough few years trying to get Mom settled and, well, the rest of what happened.”

  She did know. Of the three Goodale kids who had stayed with Allie’s family while their mother underwent in-patient treatment for severe psychosis, Tyler had been the youngest and, even to Allie’s young
eyes, the most fragile. She hadn’t been surprised to hear years later that he’d eventually developed the same issues as his mother and been committed to a long-term psychiatric facility. “Tyler was always very nice to me.”

  Allie shivered and looked down at the pale pink carpet. Tyler had been so considerate, so attentive. Especially after Chloe’s death. He’d followed Allie around, offering to help, to talk. He’d paid attention to her, listened to her, which was more than her own parents had done. Sitara and Giles Hollister had been wrapped up in their own lives, their own ideas, and had chalked Chloe’s death up to “one of those things the universe gives us as a test of character.”

  It was only now, years later as a practicing therapist, that she realized the damage they’d done; but walking away completely would have felt hypocritical given her professional dedication to healing families. Besides, no one could work guilt like Sitara Hollister. But Tyler? He’d been her savior.

  Whenever Allie recalled the quiet times she and Tyler spent in the ramshackle tree house her father had built, eating peanut butter sandwiches and playing board games, she smiled. A little.

  “Well, we all have to move on, don’t we,” Nicole said. “I’ll check in with you again soon. If only to remind you to bring your famous potato salad on Sunday.”

  Allie sighed. “Ma called you, didn’t she?”

  “She thinks you’re ignoring her texts.”

  That’s because she was. “Yeah, well, I’ll answer the next time she calls.” Like Allie had the wherewithal to deal with her mother today. “Thanks for checking in on me, Nicole. I’ll see you soon.”