by Ciara Shayee
“When you get to my office you’re going to hear things that will upset you.” Riley paused his quick strides to look between Reagan, Peter, and Laker. “Can I trust you to keep your calm as much as possible? Any delays could make a huge difference to how this plays out.”
It took less than a second for the three men to nod in agreement. As much as they knew it would kill them to hear details of the girls’ disappearance and the lost twelve years between then and now, the thought of hindering the investigation was abhorrent. It would break them.
“Good.” Riley resumed his fast pace.
When the men reached the waiting car outside, four of them quickly hopped in—PC Richardson left in a car of his own. The black car melted into the traffic before they could blink.
“This is my driver, John. You remember his face, you remember his voice, okay? You want your girls back, yes?”
He received vehement nods, chuckling ruefully like he’d expected exactly that, and pulled the pale yellow manila folder from his bag.
“All right. You do everything we ask you to, and I’ll do everything in my power to get them back to you. Wherever they’re hiding, we’ll find them.”
Despite having spoken to this man a total of two times, meeting him for the first time just fifteen minutes previous, Reagan, Peter, and Laker couldn’t help but trust him. It was pure gut instinct, but what else did they have?
“I don’t think you understand. We’ll do anything, Mr. Lawrence. Anything at all to get our girls back,” Peter said firmly.
Riley’s eyes met his for a beat, lips twitching upwards just a touch. “Call me ‘Riley.’ I think we’re past the formalities.”
With that, he cast his eyes down to the information in his hands, the details of the British police’s case, and they stayed that way until John pulled up outside the FBI headquarters. Security guards signed them all in, then Riley led the trio through what seemed like endless corridors and elevators until they finally arrived at a pair of heavy wooden doors. After warning them that the room on the other side would likely be mayhem, Riley ushered them through.
He was correct.
The entire section was alive with loud chatter into phones and headsets, the sound of many fingers beating keyboards so thunderous that Laker had to stop himself from covering his ears. It was then, standing amidst the centre of the investigation, that Reagan realised just how big this was, not just for him and Peter, but for the world. When Indie and Grace went missing their faces had been on the news on and off for months. It got so bad one day that Peter removed all the TVs from his and Reagan’s house and they didn’t return for over six months. The expansive news coverage the case had had was brilliant in terms of spreading awareness, but it didn’t make the families’ lives any easier seeing their much-missed girls plastered across TV screens every few hours, day after day, week after week. The newspapers were the same.
“Come on, we’ve got some things to show you before we make a move.” Riley moved through the chaos without pause. Hesitant, Reagan, Peter, and Laker followed. When they reached the large area at the back of the room where boards were covered in photographs and spidery writing with key information beside them, Reagan felt his stomach churn in revolt.
Right in the centre was an unfamiliar picture of Indie and Grace.
In the twelve years they’d been missing, he and Peter had spent countless hours staring at photos of their girls. They’d seen them all. Run their fingers over their cheeks, their hair, their smiles. But not this one.
It was the most recent photo of them, taken just a day before the ranch blew up. In this picture Indie’s hair was longer, curlier, slightly darker, and Grace’s face had lost that baby-roundness she’d carried as an eight-year-old.
Reagan’s fingertips traced Indie’s too-slender cheekbone, nausea punching him square in the gut the moment he spotted the tiny pink line above her left eyebrow. A scar. One he’d never seen before, never kissed better after a football accident with her brother, or a bump after falling down.
“Reagan, sit down a minute,” Peter urged softly, a hand on his best friend’s shoulder, the other clenched in a white-knuckled fist at his side. He had spotted the photo, too, but his immediate concern was Reagan, and the fact that he looked about ready to rage at anything and everything. “Let Riley explain, okay?”
Inhaling deeply, Reagan allowed Peter to guide him into a chair. Laker caught Peter’s pointed look and moved to flank him just in case. Around them, agents had realised who they were, had stopped to look at the broken fathers whose girls they’d been working hard to find. For the parents among them, it was a startling look into the reality of what abduction did to people. This was why they did this job. Why they poured their blood, sweat, and tears into their work.
“This picture was taken recently by an undercover agent. We didn’t know then that these girls were your daughters, though we’d started to suspect they weren’t who they said they were,” Riley exhaled, knowing he might have two, possibly three, irate six-foot men on his hands at any given moment. One quick glance behind them assured him that he’d have backup.
Riley turned to a large, free-standing whiteboard to point to the images of a fair-to-grey haired man and a woman stuck side-by-side.
“Three months ago I planted two agents on a ranch in the south of Montana. They’re two of the best, quick-witted and sharp as a tack. I trust them implicitly.”
Reagan and Peter nodded stiffly. Laker marvelled at his surroundings, at the crime movie set come to life.
“I can’t share details of any other case regarding the suspect, but I can say we first believed his family may be involved somehow. We now know we were not only incorrect, but he also doesn’t have a family, as such.”
His hand moved to the right, where he placed his fingertip on the edge of a mug-shot. Instinctively the men knew who they were looking at. They froze, eyes fixed to the six-by-four of the grey-brown haired, hazel-eyed scum.
This was the man who’d made their lives hell.
And then, something nobody could have predicted happened.
Reagan’s eyes sharpened with recognition.
Riley, Peter, Laker, and the two agents hovering nearby stared at Reagan. His lips moved into a scowl, the cogs of his mind almost audibly whirring as he tried to place the face.
“No…” he finally whispered. “It can’t be.”
The eruption was sudden. He stood so quickly that his chair flew backwards onto the navy carpet with a thud. Heart shooting off at a sprint, eyes wide and chest rumbling with a furious, animalistic growl, he roared, “It can’t be!”
Anguish washed over him, thick and impervious, warring against fear and confusion. The ear-splitting wave of memories and thoughts assaulting him made Reagan’s head feel like it was going to implode. The agents surrounding the volatile man looked to their boss for instruction. Riley eyed Reagan, then the photo of the suspect.
“‘It can’t be,’ what?” He asked. Riley tore down the photo, taking two large steps to bring him toe-to-toe with Reagan. With every deep, fury-riddled breath Reagan’s chest almost brushed his, their eyes not quite level but fierce in their intensity. “Reagan. ‘It can’t be,’ what? What can’t it be?” A thought sprung to mind. “Do you know this man? Reagan!”
“Yes! Yes, I know him. Or I did, years ago.” Everyone watched as Reagan fumbled his wallet from his pocket and pulled a worn photo from the clear sleeve. Riley’s eyes widened as soon as he laid eyes on it, two familiar people in the centre, as well as one who looked eerily similar to…
“That’s me, and that’s him. My wife is in the back row, third from left.”
“I see that.” Riley scanned the photo, seeing a much younger Reagan standing tall and proud with a mischievous grin on his youthful face. Then he eyed the suspect beside him, and the oddly familiar blonde teenager in the corner. “This is your wife?” he asked for clarification, disbelieving his own sight because if he hadn’t known better he’d have been ce
rtain it was Indie standing in the back of this thirty-year-old picture.
“Yes,” Reagan’s voice softened noticeably. “She died in ninety-nine. A collision with a drunk driver. Pete’s wife…she was in the car, too.”
Riley’s mind took off running with this new information. Reagan and his late wife attended school with the man responsible for the kidnapping of his daughter and the daughter of his best friend—coincidence? His rarely-wrong intuition told Riley it wasn’t.
“Did you and he get along? Were you friends, acquaintances? Enemies?”
Reagan scoffed. “He was weird. Always following Penelope—that’s my wife—around. She hated him, said he freaked her out. She was always nice to him, though. She couldn’t be nasty to anyone if she tried. I never spoke to him other than to tell him to leave her alone. When me and Penelope started dating he stopped bugging her and left well alone.”
“Did you see him after you left school?” Riley waved someone over, a man wearing a bright pink shirt with piercings in both ears and his nose. “Write this all down, Johnny. Did you ever see him again at all? College?”
“No, never.”
“All right. Please excuse me for a moment.”
Before Reagan could blink, Riley had turned on his heel and was striding purposefully towards an office with his name emblazoned on a gold plaque adorning the door. Reagan sank into the chair somebody had righted, breathing as though he’d just run a marathon. As the residual adrenaline leaked from his body he looked up to Peter, his gaze so heart-wrenchingly sad that his friend found it difficult to look at him.
“It was him, Pete. Smith,” he spat the man’s name coated in venom, “is responsible for all this.”
Peter and Reagan had been friends since they were teenagers. They’d struck up a friendship despite their six-year age gap and it had lasted a lifetime. It was through Reagan and Penelope that Peter had met Karen. The women worked together at a nursery while Reagan and Peter began their own construction business. Archie and Indie had been christened as Peter and Karen’s godchildren just as their three daughters had become Reagan and Penelope’s.
As Reagan glared hatefully at the photo of the FBI’s suspect, he found himself questioning every decision, everything he’d said. In a startling, terror-filled moment the agonised father wondered…is this my fault? Could I have stopped this? Did I provoke him?
“Stop beating yourself up, Ray. It’s not worth blaming yourself. It’s not your fault. We need to concentrate on getting our girls back.”
Saying the words felt surreal, because even though Peter had wanted it for so long, it had never been so close. In all the time the girls had been missing, their goal had been to get them back safe and sound, but there had always been a niggling worry.
They might not.
Their case could have been one of those remaining unsolved. Their daughters might never have been found. There was also the very real fear the girls would come home, but not alive or well—a notion nobody allowed themselves to dwell on.
~ oOo ~
For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Reagan, Peter, Riley, Laker, and one of the agents—the pink-clad man named Johnny—spent time going over every new detail. The link between the suspect and the victims’ family threw a completely different spin on the investigation. A far more personal spin than they had anticipated. They also discovered a possible, albeit tenuous, motive.
With Reagan’s limited memory of Garrett Smith from their school years, they uncovered a strange obsession with his late wife. The connections the FBI had were unprecedented and they managed to access records of therapy sessions he’d briefly attended during his final year at school. It wasn’t strictly legal, but Riley was keeping it on the down-low and had made the men promise to never breathe a word of his actions.
According to the notes, he often spoke about a ‘P.W.’ although he never mentioned who he or she was to him or their full name.
Now, it was obvious. Penelope Wallis.
He also showed signs of mental instability, something Reagan, Peter, and Laker didn’t want to hear. It made the scar on Indie’s face seem far more sinister.
Could he be the one responsible for the mark on Reagan’s daughter’s once-flawless face? The idea was chilling.
Riley showed the men more pictures taken by his undercover agent on the ranch. Two shocked fathers and one proud childhood friend learned of Indie’s and Grace’s bravery in using a ranch hand’s truck to get away, and they were relieved to finally discover that the man in being protected by Riley’s agents was, in fact, the man who’d helped them.
Tension crackled in the air around the group as Riley showed them a candid shot of a silhouette in the window in the dead of night. It was taken from a fair distance and slightly blurred by sheets of rain, but the shape of a woman in the darkened room was clearly visible. The soft glow of her hair said it was more than likely Indie, the colouring only just too light to be Grace’s, though they couldn’t be a hundred percent sure because of the poor photo quality.
Riley hesitated as he sighed and pointed to the silhouette again, drawing attention to the lump at her side. Reagan and Laker leaned closer, Peter hanging back a little with a frown.
“What is it? She’s holding something?” Reagan asked, peering up at Riley from beneath knotted brows.
Riley wore an impassive expression, though inside he was feeling far from impassive.
“I have something to tell you, Reagan. Something that you might find shock—”
“Sir! I’ve got an agent on line one; he needs to speak to you. It’s urgent!” someone hollered from the chaos.
Riley’s head snapped in their direction. He clearly knew the distinct voice because he apologised and told the trio of confused men to wait before disappearing into the melee.
While they waited, Laker held the photo up to his face, trying to make out the grainy shapes. It was almost definitely Indie. But what was that she was holding? It looked lumpy, possibly a pillow or stuffed toy?
But no…it appeared to be wrapped around her, maybe?
Laker shook his head and grumbled a curse, annoyed.
As he did so, the bright lights above caught the photo just right, and he thought…he thought he saw a small face. Twisting it this way and that, his heart began to race. He felt sweat slickening his hands.
“Reagan…Reagan, look. I think…I think this is…”
“All right, I’m getting us on an earlier plane. I need you to grab your stuff and get moving.” Riley blew through the small area they’d taken over like a whirlwind, scooping sheaths of paper into an open messenger bag before shooting Reagan, Peter, and Laker the stink-eye. “Are you coming?”
They jumped into action, tugging on coats and stumbling over each other to follow Riley. They all-but ran through the FBI building, all three British men relatively fit but panting by the time they fell into the back seat of John’s black car as it effortlessly joined the flow of traffic.
“What’s going on?”
“That thing I needed to tell you about that I thought you’d find shocking? It’ll be easier if I just show you, I think.” With that, Riley fished his high-tech phone from his woollen coat pocket, pressing a few buttons and zooming in on something before hesitating for a beat. He peered at Reagan, seeming to be assessing him. “I need you to understand, we don’t have any answers for you regarding this just yet, but we’re working on it, okay?”
Reagan looked at his best friend, who nodded reassuringly despite his worry, and to Laker, who shot him a small smile and gestured for him to take the phone being held out to him. Inhaling a deep breath, he nodded and reached out a shaky hand. He kept his eyes on Riley until the phone was facing him, but as soon as his eyes fell to the screen his mind went blank.
Nothing about the image on the screen made sense. He recognised the child staring back at him through wide, blue-green eyes—but he didn’t know her. He was sure he’d never met or seen her before, but there was something
that called to him deep in his heart...something about her large doe eyes, Cupid’s bow lips, and the tilt of her head.
He felt her—somehow, some way, he felt the connection between himself and this child without ever having set eyes on her.
“Who? Who…who is this? What’s going on?”
“Her name is Marley. She’s five-years-old, apparently, and she was left at a medical centre an hour ago in central Montana. We have strong reason to believe that she’s your granddaughter, Reagan. She’s Indie’s daughter.”
chapter nine
Sinking. That’s what she was.
Indie was sinking.
She thought she’d be okay. She thought she’d be able to drop Marley, safe and sound, with a healthcare professional, and it would all be fine. Marley would be able to give them the note, and she’d be able to concentrate on sorting this mess—on working out if they’d ever be able to go home to join her precious baby.
She was wrong.
She couldn’t eat.
She couldn’t sleep.
She couldn’t breathe without pain tearing her lungs in half.
All she did all day and night was empty her stomach into a bucket, rinsing and repeating only to feel the nausea taking over once again a short while later. Eventually it was just bile which burned her throat on the way up, each time more painful. She cried until her eyes were dry, shivering under a mountain of blankets, as mute as her daughter and wracked with painful sobs. Nothing Grace did helped.
Indie was so wrong. She couldn’t deal with being away from her baby. But she’d made that decision for Marley. Not herself. And, boy, was she paying for it.
~ oOo ~
On arrival in Billings, Montana, there was yet another nondescript black car with tinted windows to take the group to the prearranged hotel. En route, Riley took a phone call from a colleague. He barked a new set of directions to the driver, then informed Reagan, Peter, and Laker that the girls were still AWOL, but there had been a possible sighting of the truck. Agents were already following it up.