“I’m Betty Wade. You must be Detective Chandler and Hope. I’m so glad you made it.” She studied Bailey with shrewd hazel eyes. “I read about you in People magazine. To think you might have a connection with Anna!”
Seth scanned the shabby but neat living room in a way that would have looked casual to anyone who didn’t know he was a cop. “Anna knows we’re coming?”
Her smile dimmed slightly. “Oh, yes. I don’t think she’s decided how she feels about it.”
Bailey totally understood that.
The house felt like someplace she’d been before. Not been, lived in before, she corrected herself. People who took in foster kids were rarely well-to-do. Some probably fostered partly for the money, although not all. She thought maybe Betty Wade was one of those who wasn’t much interested in the stipend.
“Come on back to the kitchen,” the woman said, leading the way past a narrow, steep staircase and a couple of closed doors.
The kitchen was at the back of the house. Beyond a general impression of yellow painted cabinets and aging appliances, Bailey saw only the teenage girl who jumped up from a chair at a table by a sliding door that looked out at a backyard as sun-browned as the front.
Long, blond hair hung in a braid that flopped over her shoulder. Clear blue eyes fixed right on Bailey, guarded but unwillingly fascinated, too, Bailey thought. Her face was thin, her chin arrowing to a point, her forehead high. She was skinny, long-legged and taller already than Bailey. She wore a shirt large enough to disguise her body, and the way she hunched her shoulders made Bailey suspect she might have breasts big enough to make her self-conscious. God, I remember that age.
She didn’t really look like Bailey, and yet... I know her, Bailey thought with sudden clarity. What they had in common was so immense, it made their differences unimportant.
Betty was talking, but the words flew right past Bailey and she didn’t think Anna was listening, either. They only stared at each other.
In an instant, her nerves and stomach settled. “Anna,” she said softly. “I’m Hope Lawson, although I go by Bailey now. I really wanted to meet you.”
“They said...” She cast a nervous glance at Seth. “Um, that my father might have been yours, too?”
“That’s partly what we came to talk to you about. He...made me call him Daddy. But he wasn’t really my father, and if he’s the same man, he wasn’t yours, either.”
The hope in this girl’s eyes was painful to see. “You mean, I might not be related to him at all?”
Bailey felt the prickle of tears, but she also smiled. “I think the chances are really good you aren’t.”
“But...we look like we might be sisters.”
“That’s because he liked blonde, blue-eyed little girls.” Or maybe she shouldn’t have used the past tense. Likes. No, nothing she could say to this girl. She bit her lip. “Can we sit down, Anna?”
Betty took over, pouring everyone glasses of lemonade and offering slices of cake neither Seth nor Bailey felt they could refuse. Bailey introduced Seth to Anna. They chatted for a few minutes, Bailey and Anna assessing each other the whole while. Seth asked if she’d lived with Mrs. Wade long, and she nodded, looking down at the table. “Ever since...you know.”
Then she’d been lucky, Bailey couldn’t help thinking. At this age, she had already been wearing too-tight clothes and too much makeup. She’d needed the boys to be mesmerized by her, because otherwise she hardly existed. She’d been moved from the two foster homes before the Neales because of that overt sexuality. Nobody knew how to deal with it.
Anna looked like a child still, despite the figure. Maybe, thanks to her foster mother, she didn’t feel the need to use her body to garner attention.
Finally Seth showed her the two pictures he’d brought: Hope’s only school photo, and then the age-progressed drawing. Betty studied them, too, shaking her head and murmuring her amazement.
“Do you go online?” he asked Anna.
She tore her gaze from the pictures to look up. “I have a Facebook page,” she said shyly.
He smiled at her. “Well, I did my best to get these pictures out on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else I could think of. Eventually, somebody recognized Bailey.”
Anna scrutinized the pictures again, then Bailey’s face. She nodded.
Bailey said, “We think the man who abducted me might be the same one who took you, even though he called himself Les Hamby when I was with him.”
Her expression changed. It was as if she’d just seen a ghost. “Les,” she whispered.
“Was that his name?” Seth asked in the gentle voice that Bailey found so soothing.
After a moment, she gave a jerky nod.
“Do you remember anything from before you were with him?”
She was shaking her head frantically before he finished. “No!”
Bailey reached across the table and took her hand. “I didn’t, either,” she said quietly. “He...hurt me when I did. After a while, you’re so afraid of being hurt, you just...don’t. Even now, my stomach ties itself in knots when I have even the faintest whiff of a memory.”
Anna stared at her with huge, haunted eyes. “But...you know your real parents now,” she whispered. “Don’t you remember them?”
“Things are starting to come back to me,” Bailey admitted. “It’s slow. I guess I’m still scared.” She took a deep breath. “If we can find your family, I think it might be easier for you. It hasn’t been as many years since you’ve seen them. He took me away from mine twenty-three years ago. That’s a long time.”
“Did he leave you, like he did me?” she asked timidly.
Bailey managed a sort of smile. “Yes. I kept thinking he’d come back, but he didn’t.”
“Sometimes I still think I see him,” Anna said, a tension in her voice. “A car will go by and I think it’s him. Or...or I see someone at the mall.”
Seth was watching her unblinkingly. Was he wondering if Les Hamby really was watching Anna?
Sneaking a look at them, Anna continued, “Betty doesn’t make me wait for the school bus, because I’m the only kid on this block and I don’t like to be alone. You know. In case he does come back for me.”
Bailey nodded, tears stinging her eyes. “I do know.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
Bailey shook her head. “No. At first, I kept thinking I did, too, but I knew it wasn’t really him.” She hesitated. Anna had never been willing to provide a description of her “daddy.” Sergeant Riser had said she didn’t talk at all in the early days, then wouldn’t talk about the man at all. But maybe now... “Anna.” She squeezed the girl’s hand. “Can you tell us what he looked like? So we can be sure it’s the same man?”
“I don’t really remember that well,” she said, voice almost inaudible.
Seth stirred. Bailey shook her head at him.
None of them moved after that. If the room hadn’t been so silent, they might not have heard her at all.
“He wasn’t that tall. I was almost as tall as him when...” She chewed her bottom lip. She looked up fleetingly, her eyes catching Bailey’s with a kind of desperation. “I wanted to grow so much. I thought if I got bigger than him I’d be so strong I could yell ‘Don’t touch me’ and he wouldn’t.”
“Yes,” Bailey whispered, too.
Anna frowned a little. “His hair was brown.”
“Was he turning gray?”
“Uh-uh.” Her forehead creased. “He had kind of awful teeth.”
Bailey’s breath caught. Sometimes her stomach would heave when he ground his mouth on hers. Her shudder was involuntary. “And bad breath.”
“Yes!”
They stared at each other.
Seth started asking questions, much the same ones he’d asked her not so long ago. What did Les Hawley do to earn money? Did Anna remember any of the towns they’d stayed in? Had he ever been pulled over by the police when she was with him?
She frowned at that. “O
nce he had to stop because a taillight was out. He was really nervous, but he didn’t get a ticket or anything.”
“Any other time?”
“I think he got arrested this once. He didn’t come back to get me for, like, two days. He was really mad. He yelled about how this— Um, he said a lot of bad words. This other guy started the fight. And...something about a drunk tank. I don’t know what that is.”
“Do you recall where you were when that happened?”
“The town had a funny name. That’s why I remember it. It was Truckee. We were only supposed to stop for one night because it was winter and he didn’t have chains if it snowed very much, and it did snow while he was in the drunk tank so we turned around and went back the way we came instead of going to Reno the way he wanted. He was mad about that, too.”
Listening to the small voice giving a matter-of-fact, almost-dry recitation, Bailey felt something unfamiliar. Rage on someone else’s behalf. The idea of him taking out his anger on this slight, vulnerable girl infuriated her in a different way than did her memories of him hurting her when he got mad.
Tangled in the rage was guilt. But she didn’t say anything. She only held Anna’s hand and listened.
Finally it was time to go. When Seth said so, Anna’s head shot up in panic, her eyes fastening on Bailey.
“Will I see you again?”
Bailey hesitated. “I don’t know. I hope so.” Inspiration struck. “I’ll write down my phone number for you, so you can call me. Anytime you want to talk, okay? I mean that. And if Mrs. Wade doesn’t mind, I’ll take your number so I can call, too.”
Anna relaxed slightly. “Okay. I’d like that. Even if we aren’t sisters, like I thought.”
“We are in a way, though, aren’t we?” More sisters than real ones, she thought. It was something like the way she identified with Eve. What they had in common was huge.
Saying goodbye was hard. She hugged Anna, who hugged her back. Tears in her eyes, Mrs. Wade hugged her, too. Bailey was blinded with tears as Seth steered her out to the rental car. I don’t cry.
You mean, you didn’t used to cry.
New reality. Caring about other people sucked, she thought fervently.
Seth started the car, but didn’t put it into Drive. He wrapped his arm around her and tugged her toward him. “Come here.”
“I’ll get snot on you!” she wailed.
He only chuckled. “I didn’t think to bring any tissues, so my shirt is as good as anything to soak up your snot.”
She tried really hard to keep the weep-fest brief, even though being enclosed in his arms and laying her head against his chest was so comforting. Finally she did wipe her cheeks and nose against his soft cotton shirt before she pulled back. She hated knowing how awful she must look, with her eyes swollen half-shut and her skin probably blotchy. And, yes, big, wet splotches now decorated his shirt, and not all of them were tears.
He smiled through her apologies. “One minute out in the sun and I’ll be dry.”
Well, that was probably true.
Guilt rose to the top of her cauldron of stormy emotions. “If I’d described him to police and told them what he did to me, he might have been arrested. And then he couldn’t have done it again.” She closed her eyes. “He couldn’t have done it to Anna.”
“You could just as well say Anna should have told, so he didn’t have a chance to go on and abduct another girl.”
She stared at him, shocked at hearing that from him. “But she was—” Seeing his expression, she made a face. “All right, you’ve made your point. I was scared, too. I know I was. But still.”
“There’s no still.” He leaned over to kiss her lightly, then finally released the emergency brake and pulled away from the curb. “I need to talk to Sergeant Riser. How would you feel about taking a nap while I do that? I know you didn’t sleep last night.”
“You had something to do with that.”
He flashed a grin. “Guilty. But I was trying to wear you out so you could sleep.”
“Totally altruistic.”
“That’s me.” His mouth had a satisfied curl that made her melt.
“You don’t want me to hear what you tell him?” she asked.
His eyebrows rose, showing his surprise, and he cast her a quick glance. “What could I tell him that you don’t already know? No. I just thought you need to recharge.”
Bailey thought about it. “God. We have to fly back to Seattle tomorrow.”
“First thing,” Seth agreed, sounding cheerful.
“Fine. Drop me off at the hotel.”
He caught her hand. “I won’t be gone long.”
“I’m a big girl. Just in case I can’t sleep, I have a book.”
He disarmed her utterly by lifting her hand to his mouth and pressing the softest of kisses to her knuckles. “You’re something, you know that, Bailey Smith?”
Having him say that so very seriously made a lump rise to her throat. She’d never told him, but she had a 3.95 GPA so far at USC. For the first time in her life, she’d begun to feel some pride in herself. She didn’t fully understand what Seth saw in her that made him think something like that, but she couldn’t help feeling warmed.
He made the turn into the hotel parking lot and stopped under the portico. “Bailey?”
The different note in his voice had her pausing with the car door half-open. “What?”
“Do you think you ever really did see him after he left you?”
Silenced for a moment, she finally shook her head. “No. It was just...paranoia. I think he drove away and never looked back.”
“Okay.” He grimaced. “I didn’t much like the idea that he hung around for a while.”
“Why would he?”
His jaw went taut. “To terrorize you into silence.”
She closed her eyes. “There’s a thought. Ugh. But no. I really don’t think he was there. He’d terrorized me sufficiently already. Anna, too,” she said more softly.
“All right, sweetheart.” He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and squeezed. “Sleep. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.”
She hugged his last smile to her as she hurried up to their room and let herself in. She didn’t know if she really could sleep, but the bed looked tempting.
* * *
THERE WERE A couple of obvious possibilities on the list of missing girls who’d be in Anna’s age range, but Seth and Riser both knew finding out where she came from might not be that easy. Hamby might have expanded his territory and snatched a girl from Texas or North Dakota or who knew where. Some small police departments still weren’t good about adding their crimes to the FBI database. She could conceivably never have been reported missing at all because her parents lived off the grid, or nobody gave a damn—or, most horrifyingly of all, because a parent had sold her.
Riser cursed himself for not considering the possibility back then that she’d been abducted rather than abandoned by a parent.
“She might have been able to go right home,” he growled.
Seth understood where he was coming from. He, too, wanted a happy ending for her. He wanted it with a ferocity that shook him. A cop couldn’t function if he let himself care this much very often. He knew he’d have cared no matter what, but in this girl, achingly vulnerable, he’d seen a young Bailey. Watching Bailey’s face, he’d been able to tell how powerfully she’d identified. How could she help it?
If only she had been restored to her parents when she was as young as fourteen, she’d have been saved from years of isolation. He might have met her sooner. Yeah, he couldn’t help thinking, but she wouldn’t have been Bailey. She’d have been Hope. Still wounded, but maybe lacking the many layers that gave her such depth and complexity. She wouldn’t be self-made. He’d still have been physically attracted to her, he had no doubt of that, but would he have fallen for her the same way? Seth didn’t know.
He ended up leaving the search for Anna’s family in Riser’s hands, al
though he had every intention of pursuing Les Hamby or Hawley or whatever he wanted to call himself to the ends of the earth. They agreed to keep each other informed.
What Seth couldn’t forget was that Hamby had undoubtedly long since replaced Anna. Somewhere out there, another blue-eyed blonde girl was being sexually molested and terrorized. He gritted his teeth. That was the right word for what this monster did to his captives.
Seth might find he’d died or gone to prison for killing a man in a bar fight sometime since he dumped Anna. Either were possibilities. Part of him hoped neither was true. He wanted the pleasure of seeing him arrested. He wanted to give Bailey and Anna the satisfaction of looking the bastard in the eye as they testified in court. He wanted them to hear the jury foreman declare him guilty as charged, see him shuffle out of the courtroom in shackles.
He let himself into the hotel room quietly, doubting that Bailey had really slept and happy to see that she had. The bedside lamp was on and the same paperback book she’d been reading on the plane lay open beside her. She wasn’t very far into the book, confirming his suspicion that she’d been reading a few pages over and over again as an inadequate distraction.
For a minute he stood beside the bed looking down at her. Her lips were parted and her face relaxed in a way he’d rarely seen. Even in sleep, she often looked tense. In the few nights they’d shared a bed, he’d held her half a dozen times as she came out of nightmares. The confident woman she tried to present herself as, wasn’t.
I want to make her happy. He thought he could, if she’d give him the chance.
What he felt was too much, too soon, he knew, but it was real nonetheless.
Bailey sighed, stretched and opened her eyes. Then her mouth curved. “You’re back.”
“I am.” He sat on the edge of the bed and bent over her, bracing himself with a hand planted on each side of her. “Are you in a hurry to get up?”
She laid her hand against his jaw. “You want company while you nap?” she teased.
“Something like that.” His voice had come out hoarse. He bent lower and kissed her. For a minute it was gentle, because he’d been thinking of her at Anna’s age, so vulnerable and alone, but her response was immediate. Her lips parted and the hand on his jaw slid around to his neck to pull him down to her. He tilted his head to take her mouth more thoroughly, stroking her tongue with his, drowning in her taste, her heat.
Yesterday's Gone (Two Daughters Book 1) Page 20