Three Days Missing

by Kimberly Belle

  “No, he knew about Roy Perkins because Roy Perkins is a sanctimonious ass.”

  He’s also former chair of the Atlanta Faith Alliance and one of Sam’s loudest advocates. A self-proclaimed family man, vehement Bible beater and outspoken backer of traditional family values—or he was until he was photographed dirty dancing with a very young, very shirtless man. Sam got wind of the scandal and started working to distance himself from Roy, but Nick broke the story before Sam put enough space between them. Even now, months later, the connection follows Sam around like a bad smell.

  But whatever accusations Josh is fishing around, I have to give him at least a little credit. I did try to talk Sam out of this life, starting on our second date, at a little dessert place in Virginia-Highland. I told him I couldn’t see myself living in Atlanta forever, couldn’t imagine being the first lady of anything. I didn’t want it for me, and I didn’t want it for my future children. Sam laughed because that’s what you do when a girl talks about your future together on a second date—you laugh. Either that, or you run.

  And Josh is right about another thing. Sam was born for this life. His looks and his smile and his name and his charm, everything about him is built for the camera and the campaign trail. I knew it the first time I met him, when he reached over my shoulder at that Falcons game and took my hand into his. This man is a first-class politician, I thought in that very first moment, and then I went and fell in love with him anyway.

  “Tell the truth,” Josh says. “Those feds running through here is what you’ve been waiting for all this time. Finally something that’ll extinguish that damn spotlight and bring Sam home. You won’t have to share him with me or the people of Atlanta any longer. Though, how long do you really think that’ll last? I’m sure Sam’s got a run for Senate in him at some point. Governor, too.”

  I struggle to keep my face neutral. Yet again, Josh is right.

  My gaze drops to Josh’s glass, already half-empty. “I think there’s half a loaf of Mom’s bread still in the cabinet. You should probably use it to sop up some of that bourbon before any more of it gets in your bloodstream.”

  “Or how ’bout we just cut to the chase. I know you’re the mole.” He says it slow and flat, almost as if he were bored.

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, you are. I’m the mole?” I laugh, light and sincere. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Prove it how? Do you want to see my phone records? Do you want to search my laptop?”

  “What do you think Sam’ll say when he finds out?”

  I throw up my hands because this conversation is no longer entertaining. “I’m not the mole, Josh. And it would be a far better use of your time and energy to figure out why Sam seems to think it’s you. That’s what he meant when he brought up the money, you know. He was accusing you of selling information to that reporter.”

  “He’s wrong.”

  “Maybe. But you might want to get yourself a lawyer anyway. If the FBI were here, you better believe they’ll be banging on your door next.”

  “They won’t find anything.”

  I open my mouth to respond, but it’s Sam’s voice that slices through the air.

  “The cops might not, but I’m pretty sure I just did.”

  KAT

  57 hours, 44 minutes missing

  Mac punches through the streets of my neighborhood and hurls us into a thick soup of traffic lumbering down all six lanes of 285. We’re stuffed in Mac’s unmarked sedan—Lucas and Andrew on the backseat, their big bodies taking up all the space, me on the passenger’s seat next to Mac.

  “What’s going on?” I say. “Where are we going?”

  Mac swerves onto the shoulder and flips on the siren, whizzing past the sea of cars at dizzying speed. “An Xbox uses the same technology to get online as a computer, with the exact same protocols. In order to communicate with other devices on the network, every machine has an IP address, which is good because an IP address can be traced.” He glances over, one brow raised. “So far so good?”

  I nod. “My company verifies the IP addresses of any claims that are filed remotely, just to make sure the person filing is who and where they say they are when they file the claims. It’s part of our fraud prevention department.”

  Mac dips his chin. “Right. Only problem is, these IP addresses aren’t exact geographical locations, and this one will likely lead us to the office of the internet service provider rather than to the device using the IP address. Also, a savvy criminal will know how to mask the IP. They’ll use anonymizers, spoof another IP or hide behind a proxy. Things like that.”

  “Can’t you call the ISP for the IP address?” Lucas says from right behind me. “They should be able to give you an exact address, no?”

  “We did. They are. But we need a warrant, and it’s Sunday.” Mac dodges an abandoned tire, then guns the gas. “Unfortunately, these things take time.”

  Time we don’t have. As we were piling into the car, Mac told us the last message was sent at just after eleven, which means Ethan—or whoever has logged in with his credentials—has been offline for over an hour now. By the time the police haul some judge from the golf course and get his signature on the warrant, Ethan could be long gone or worse.

  Lucas is thinking the same thing. “Surely a city like Atlanta has a judge on call. There’s got to be a way to get around the red tape.”

  “There is, and we’re doing it. Someone is hand-delivering the warrant as we speak. As soon as they trace it back to an address, I’ll know.”

  I glance onto the backseat, where Andrew has gone silent. He punches at his cell phone with both thumbs, texting when he should be paying attention. It makes my skin go itchy with new suspicion. “Who are you texting?”

  He glances up. “Nobody you know. It’s business.”

  “Then why do you look so funny?”

  He jerks his head at the back of Mac’s. “Because this guy is driving like a maniac.”

  I make eye contact with Lucas, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. What kind of father handles a business email while racing to rescue his missing son?

  Lucas plucks the phone from Andrew’s fingers. “Dear Mr. Blanchard, while I appreciate your willingness to negotiate my debt, I can only settle with those creditors who are willing to meet my terms. At this time, I do not have sufficient funds to pay blah blah blah.” He tosses the phone back onto Andrew’s lap. “Sucks for you.”

  Which explains Andrew’s fierce opposition to paying a dime more than the judge ordered him to. His cheeks bloom red with both anger and embarrassment.

  “If you don’t have the right address,” I say, turning back to Mac, “then where are we going? And how do we even know for sure it’s him?”

  “Because Ethan left us a trail of crumbs.”

  I think about the trail Lucas found in the Dahlonega forest, gemstones and hairs and candy wrappers that all led to nowhere. By the time he and the dogs tracked it to the road, Ethan was long gone.

  Lucas scoots forward on the seat, leaning his head between us. “What kind of crumbs?”

  “About half a dozen Xbox messages he sent to you over the course of yesterday and this morning, with a decent description of who took him, the car he drove away in, the direction they were going, how long they drove before getting there. And get this, Ethan even remembered the license plate number.”

  “Ethan has a photographic memory,” Andrew says.

  I roll my eyes out the window. If Ethan were here, he’d argue that memory is a learned skill, one that can be honed by the right technique. Techniques like visualizing the letters and numbers around his bedroom, for example, imagining them painted on his wall, lined up across his desk or strung in blinking strobe lights from his ceiling. Anyone can have photographi
c memory, he’d say. All you need is a good system.

  But at least now we know for sure it’s him.

  Chatter comes from the police radio in fits and starts.

  That they got a hit on the license plate.

  That the warrant resulted in an address.

  That the local police are arriving now.

  Mac plugs the address into his GPS and the system points us to an exit just south of the airport, twenty minutes away. Plenty of time for Ethan’s captor to find him online, to fly into a rage, to force him to log off in a hurry—or worse. I lean into the dash and try not to scream. What good are crumbs if we’re twenty minutes too late?

  The highway loops us south of the city, and the road before us clears like magic, the trucks fading into shiny shapes in the rearview mirror. The GPS dumps us onto a winding two-lane road that looks oddly similar to the one Mac and I drove down the first time I sat on his passenger’s seat. There’s a lone police sedan parked at a turnoff by the road like the one to the camp, the back bumper pushed into thick brush. Two uniformed passengers stand in the sunshine, leaning against the side. Behind them, a steep driveway, more pothole than dirt, disappears into a sea of brown and green.

  We pull onto the grass, and Mac hits the button for the window. “What’s going on?”

  One of the cops shakes his head. “False alarm. Nothing up there.”

  False alarm. The words are like a fist to the neck, and I want to howl with frustration. After all this time, all this worry, for a false alarm. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. I reach for the door handle, ready to tumble from the car and take off running if Mac doesn’t hit the gas this second.

  “Mind if we look for ourselves?” He doesn’t give the cop a chance to answer, just punches the car up the dirt drive.

  STEF

  57 hours, 59 minutes missing

  Josh twists on the lounger, turning to where Sam stands at the entrance to the living room wearing his mayor’s mask. If I didn’t know him so well, if I didn’t see the hard set of his chin or the ticking vein low on his neck, I’d be hard-pressed to detect any sign of distress without a blood pressure cuff.

  “So I’ve been on the phone with the attorneys—”

  Josh stops him with a finger. “Before you go any further, I’m not sure we should be discussing this in front of your wife. I hate to tell you this, Sam, but Stef’s the mole.”

  Sam’s gaze lands on mine with an almost audible thud.

  I roll my eyes. “He’s drunk. Don’t listen to him.”

  He just poured himself a third glass, and his eyes have gone glassy.

  Josh’s tone is adamant, his slur getting sucked up by enthusiastic insistence. “She has both access and motive. One hell of a motive. If you lose this election to Nick, she’ll be the second-happiest person in town. You know how much she wants you here at home with her and Sammy, instead of working for a bunch of people you’ve never met and who probably don’t appreciate you. Ever thought about that?”

  Sam’s frown doesn’t clear. I don’t like his expression, the way his eyes have narrowed into a squint.

  “Sam,” I begin, but he gives me a look. Not now.

  He sinks onto a chair at the far end of the couch, settling in and crossing his legs like this is any Sunday afternoon get-together. “As I was saying, the attorneys and I have a hunch. They thought there was something fishy going on with that election day voting-security operation you keep pushing us to donate more money to, but I told them they’re wrong. That initiative is legit.”

  “Damn skippy, it is.” Josh slurps from his glass.

  I’m only half listening. The way Sam just scowled at me, the way he’s studiously avoiding my gaze now...it’s almost as if he believes Josh. Does he really think I would do such a thing? Run to his opponent and betray him that way?

  “Which is why I told them to take another look at the Marietta deal,” he says.

  I force myself to focus. Marietta, the LEED-certified mixed-use development downtown. The details of which someone leaked to a reporter.

  “The thing is, last night I started thinking. What is it with Josh and Marietta? Why does he love that deal so much? You’re a Republican, for God’s sake. You think recycling is for hippies and liberals. What fucks do you give for sustainable, carbon-neutral living?”

  “Zero. But I give plenty for how people are looking at Marietta as the flagship development for the South. This project is going to change the way people live. It’s going to define your tenure as mayor for years to come, long after you’ve passed on the baton. You’re going to be the most talked-about man in town.”

  “Right. Me and Marty Seabrook.”

  Seabrook. The name hits me like a tuning fork, and I rack my brain but come up empty. Sam and I don’t talk about the details of city business. He usually only introduces me to a partner after a deal is done, nine times out of ten at the groundbreaking ceremony. Now that I think about it, maybe Josh had a point when he called me Sam’s pretty Barbie doll. As much as I rail against the label in private, I’ve never really made much of an effort to show people there’s more than what they see, that I’m not just a pretty face.

  Sam looks over, explaining like we’re the only two people in the room. “Marty Seabrook is a developer out of Charlotte. He was an early donor to my reelection campaign, but when he submitted a bid for the Marietta project, I ordered Josh to refund every penny he gave us. I can’t have even the slightest whiff of misconduct when it comes to who’s awarded city contracts, or why. The city’s procurement process can’t be compromised.”

  This makes sense, and giving back the money sounds like something Sam would do. I nod.

  But Seabrook. I watch the back and forth, trying to pinpoint where I’ve heard that name before.

  Josh’s eyes narrow into tiny slits. “What are you getting at here? We checked Marty’s background. He’s squeaky-clean.” His tone is almost petulant.

  “Maybe you’re too drunk on my hundred-dollar bourbon to understand what’s going on here. The FBI just raided City Hall and my home while dozens of reporters down at the gate filmed their every move. They don’t do that unless they’re pretty damn sure they’re going to find something. What are they going to find?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Because you’re the one who brought Marty to the table. And you’re right. Marty looks great on paper. His references all check out. Everybody who’s ever worked with him has only positive things to say.”

  “But?”

  “But then I started calling around, and I found that the reason everybody loves Marty is because he’s so generous. He’s known for greasing palms with promises of a stake on the back end.”

  Greasing palms. The very definition of a kickback.

  And that’s when it hits me. “Wait. Is his company Seabrook Investments?”

  Sam nods, and the conversation replays in my head. Me, blathering on about how I didn’t understand. The caller’s distorted voice, telling me to shut up and listen, repeating himself over and over, eating up the minutes. The memory crystallizes into a moment of perfect clarity.

  “The caller mentioned them. He said Seabrook Investments would push back against the Bell Building but not to listen. He said it’s all for show, that they can’t walk away from this deal any more than Sam can.”

  “They can walk away,” Sam says, “but they won’t. They think they have me in their pocket because Josh didn’t give back the donation.”

  Josh’s face hardens, and I catch a flash of alarm in his eyes. “Yes, I did. Check the bank records. I gave it back to Marty weeks ago.”

  “No. You didn’t. The forensic accountant I hired found—”

  Josh swings his feet onto the floor, swiveling on the lounger to face Sam. “Forensic accountant? Since when?”

  “Since last month. I hired him
the end of April.”

  Josh’s eyes go wide in slow motion. “And you’re just now telling me? Why?”

  Sam doesn’t move. Not a twitch or a breath, and I read the answer in his silence: because he suspects Josh of something.

  “Unbelievable.” Josh plunks down his glass on the carpet, next to the bottle and the cell phone, and pushes to a shaky stand. “You...are you really accusing me of stealing that money? After everything we’ve been through? I thought we were a team.” His doughy chest puffs in indignation.

  Sam lurches to a stand, his cheeks pink with fury. “I’m not accusing you of stealing it. I’m accusing you of hiding it in the discretionary funds. That’s where the forensic accountant found it, by the way, but only after the AJC called yesterday, asking why we were spending Marty’s donation on campaign posters.”

  “Why the hell would I hide Marty’s money in the discretionary funds?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  Josh looks away, shaking his head in disgust. “You Huntingtons are all the same, you know that? Accusing us of the very thing you’re doing yourself. Family means nothing.”

  “Jesus, this again?” Sam throws up his hands. “My grandfather paid Ned good money for his shares.”

  “Back then, maybe. But what are those properties worth now?”

  “That’s what real estate does, Josh. It increases in value over time. If your grandpa had been thinking with his brain instead of his dick, he would have invested all that cash in some real estate of his own. That’s your problem. That you can’t see it was his own stupid fault.”

  The argument only goes downhill from there. Josh calls Sam spoiled and entitled and likens his side of the family to Atlanta’s version of the mob. Sam says Josh has always been bitter, and that it’s just like a Murrill to be looking for a handout. They go at each other at the far end of the couch, hurling insults and accusations in shouts loud enough to break the windows. My gaze starts scanning the room for breakables, my mind prioritizing which ones to gather up first, because it’s only a matter of time before one of them starts shoving.