by Elle Gray
“We’re going to need to ask some questions,” added Brock. “If this is related to the case of Amelia Barnes, we need to check for similarities, and also see if there’s any further evidence that might lead us closer to the kidnapper—”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, young man,” Alice cut him off. Olivia hadn’t seen anyone have such a negative reaction to Brock and his charming smile before, but something about him seemed to have rubbed Alice the wrong way. “It’s not related to whatever other case you’re talking about. The only reason we’re here is because Officer Stone insisted I come here.”
Olivia raised an eyebrow, surprised at that. She could tell from only a few minutes in the presence of Alice and Elijah that they were likely strict parents, judging by their stern demeanor, but she couldn’t imagine what would possess a fifteen-year-old to run away, especially more than once. “Can you tell us a little more about that, please?”
“Sophia is spoiled,” Alice sniffed, cutting through Elijah’s attempt to speak. “She doesn’t know how lucky she is to have a good home, to have parents who care about her. She’s been acting out this past year. She just wants to run wild with that boyfriend of hers.”
“Boyfriend?” Brock asked. “Have you called him to check he’s not with her?”
“I don’t have that low-life’s number,” Alice snapped. “But I guarantee you that’s where she is. He’s practically twice her age. We’ve told her that she can’t see him anymore, but she doesn’t listen to us. She thinks she knows better than us.”
Olivia felt a surge inside her. It sounded like the boyfriend might be a lead for them. If he was an older guy preying on younger girls, then he was certainly a suspect. “Can you give us his name?”
“Craig. Craig Carter,” Alice said stiffly, like it pained her to say the name. “You tell me, Agents, what business does a nineteen-year-old boy have with a fifteen-year-old? It’s sick.”
Olivia nodded, not really knowing how to respond. She noted that the age gap was strange, especially given that Sophia was underage. “Do you have any reason to believe that Craig is grooming her? Or engaging in any illegal activity?”
“She comes home stinking of pot when she’s with him,” Alice snarled, her words spitting like acid. “She tells me that she doesn’t smoke it, but she’s a seasoned liar as far as I’m concerned. She’d do anything just to try and disappoint me. She wants me to suffer. Isn’t that what all teenagers want for their mothers?”
Olivia felt a pang of sadness as she glanced at Alice’s weathered face. It seemed like she might be younger than she looked. Perhaps her late thirties, even. Olivia wondered how many families thought it was normal for their children to want to get away from them so badly. Olivia had certainly never had the urge to hurt her parents. The idea seemed foreign to her—but maybe she was more sheltered than she thought.
“We’ll need to speak to Craig as soon as possible. But before that, anything else you can tell us about what happened in the night might be useful. I know you said that you don’t think this is connected to what happened to Amelia Barnes—”
“I don’t know what I think,” Alice said, again cutting off Brock mid-speech. “All I know is that she’s been sneaking out more and more lately. I used to try and stop her, but she always leaves no matter how much I shout at her. I used to track her GPS to see where she went, but now she always leaves her phone behind. It’s still on her nightstand. I’ve started leaving her to it because I figured that if I don’t... maybe eventually she’ll just stop coming back. And now... now…”
The first emotion finally cracked through Alice’s hard exterior. Elijah, who had been silent the entire time, placed a comforting hand on her knee. A tear slipped from Alice’s eye and she shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said earnestly. As much as she thought Alice Edwards was approaching parenting completely wrong, at least she was trying her best. Alice shook her head again.
“I went into her bedroom to check on her this morning. I sometimes do when I think she’s asleep. Teenagers are so much less of a nightmare when they’re asleep.” She forced a laugh, though no one else joined in. She choked a little. “But she wasn’t there. And I decided that enough was enough. I can’t do this anymore. I need help. So that’s when I called the police. I hadn’t even heard of this Amelia Barnes until Maggie mentioned her to me.” Alice sniffed and looked up at Olivia. “Do you think we need to be concerned?”
Olivia chewed the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. How was she supposed to tell this woman that her daughter might be caught up in something far worse than she already feared? She swallowed.
“If you say this happens a lot, then maybe she’s just holed up with her boyfriend somewhere. If we can track him down, then that’ll answer at least one question. But if she’s not with him or with her friends... then there might be cause for concern.”
Alice nodded, her lip wobbling. “Alright. Alright, okay. Well, I suppose we have to cross that bridge when we come to it. You’ll take care of it, won’t you? You’ll find her?”
“We’ll do our best, ma’am,” nodded Olivia, but she was much less sure than when she’d first arrived. She wanted to promise Alice and Elijah that their daughter was just acting up again, because it was better than the alternative. Far better. But the truth was, her gut was telling her that something darker was at play. Two blonde girls had already disappeared in the dead of the night in eerily similar circumstances. She didn’t want a third to confirm the pattern.
“I just have a few more things to ask,” Brock said, stepping forward. Alice’s lips pursed once more.
“Alright.”
“Where is it that you live?”
Alice frowned. “We live close to the hospital. It’s a little quieter than being in town, which is why we picked it. It doesn’t stop Sophia gallivanting off into the forest in the middle of the night, though.”
“You know where she goes?”
Alice blushed. “Well, I suspect she goes to the same place every time. I know that I shouldn’t have done it, but I followed her once in my car. I wanted to make sure she was safe. I heard her leave the house around midnight. Her deadbeat boyfriend picked her up in his truck, and I followed them. The boy is so dumb he didn’t even notice he was being followed. They headed through to the town to the edge of the woods. They passed up near the old forest ranger’s cabin, and then I lost sight of them. I couldn’t follow any further without getting caught.”
Olivia had to resist the urge to let out a deep sigh. The story of the Edwards family was getting wilder and wilder by the minute. Olivia wasn’t sure who she felt more sorry for: Alice and her wild desperation to keep control of her daughter, or Sophia, who was clearly digging herself a hole she might not be able to climb out of.
“We should really go and see if we can speak to Craig,” Olivia said. “But if he’s a dead end, then I think it would be wise to set up a search party. Maybe the forest is the place to start. That’s the common link between both cases. In a small town like this, there aren’t many places to hide. If she’s still in town, I think it’s likely that she’ll be there.”
“You think... you think she might have been kidnapped?” Alice asked anxiously, biting her nails. Olivia cringed, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
“I’m not ruling anything out, but jumping to conclusions will get us nowhere. For all we know, Sophia is back at home now. We understand your concern, but we won’t rest until we find her. You can be sure of that.”
Alice nodded, looking satisfied. Maggie offered the couple a smile, though Olivia could tell her heart wasn’t in it.
“Why don’t you head home and see if she’s come back? We’ll handle the rest. If you can think of anything that might be useful, you can get in contact with us.”
Olivia nodded, passing Alice her card. “Brock and I will go look for Craig. Do you know where he lives?”
Alice nodded with a guilty look in her eyes, giving Olivia a sneaking
suspicion that she had followed him back there at some point. “Yes. He lives close to the gas station. He works there for his father. I can write down the address for you.”
Olivia took down the details of Craig’s home and thanked the Edwards family before leaving the police station, Brock on her tail. She handed the address to Brock.
“Do you think it’s him? Are we getting close?”
Brock pressed his lips together. “I don’t know. Something is telling me that this is a separate issue entirely.”
“Me too. Alice said he’s dumb, but is he really dumb enough to kidnap another blonde girl and hold her for three weeks while he’s already having so much trouble with Sophia and her family? If he’s even attempting to keep Sophia at his place, then surely he knows that Alice won’t allow it?”
Brock sighed and opened his car door. “Who knows. You’re the one who lives in this bonkers town. If your gut is telling you this doesn’t make sense, then trust it.”
“I just can’t see how it can possibly make sense,” Olivia continued as she slid into the passenger seat. “There’s a vague outline of a motive, but the logistics of it seem wrong. Amelia was taken from Seattle, so if he’s got a thing for young blonde girls, then why would he go all the way there to find one?”
“Maybe he thought we wouldn’t sense the connection. Maybe he has some connection to Seattle and was up there for a while. That would explain the distance.”
“But he’d have to know exactly where to find Amelia. And then if he wasn’t aware that she was non-verbal, why even take her in the first place? Why commit to such a high-risk operation? I don’t know. I think this is wrong.”
“Well, best-case scenario, we head over to talk to Craig and we find Sophia with him. Worst-case-scenario…”
“Worst-case scenario, the kidnapper is someone else. Worst-case scenario, they took Sophia.”
Eight
“Craig Carter, this is the FBI,” Brock announced for the third time as he banged on the door to his house. Olivia stood close behind him, her arms folded. “We just want to talk.”
“I don’t think he’s here, Brock. There’s no car in the driveway.”
“Then he might have known we were coming,” Brock growled. “Great. Our first possible lead and he’s already slipped away.”
“We don’t know that. It’s a small town. If he’s around, we’ll find him,” Olivia insisted. “From what Alice said, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“We should search the house.”
“You know we can’t. We need a warrant. Do you want to get yourself suspended? Leave it and get back in the car. We can drive around and see if we can spot him. If we can find out what car he drives, that will help too.”
“Well, where the hell are we meant to start?”
“The forest. That was their meeting spot, right? If he’s there waiting for her, then maybe he’s not a suspect. Or maybe he’d go there to look like everything’s normal. It seems like the first place he’d look. We should at least give it a shot.”
Brock’s face softened a little, some of the anger sliding off his expression. “Alright. You’re probably right. I guess I’m just a little wound up about this whole case.”
“Me too.”
As they walked back to Brock’s car, Olivia let out a sigh of relief, glad she’d managed to talk Brock down. He’d seemed so level-headed since she first met him, but she couldn’t afford for him to start slipping. This case was stressful enough without one of them losing their grip. They needed to stay sharp if they were going to run down this kidnapper before he struck again.
As they drove back toward the forest, Olivia texted Alice Edwards to ask about Craig’s car. She replied almost right away, letting her know that Craig drove an old black Kia with a crude bumper sticker. When pressed further, Alice admitted the sticker depicted a naked pinup girl. Olivia announced this to Brock, and for the first time in hours, he let out a hearty laugh.
“Well that’ll be a piece of cake to find,” he snorted. “I’ve never wanted to see a bumper sticker so bad before.”
“Wow, you must be really starved of romance.”
They drove around the edge of the woods, looking out for Craig’s car. Brock leaned over the wheel, straining to see further as they cruised slowly.
“The trees are pretty thick. Do you think he might have driven into the forest?”
“I doubt it. Didn’t Alice say that she followed him to the ranger’s cabin? So he would’ve parked up by my house…”
“Let’s try there then.”
They continued driving, but they saw no sign of Craig or his car. After a full circuit, they came up to Olivia’s driveway and parked.
“I think we should go out into the forest on foot,” Brock told her. “If Craig has any sense and is on the run, that’s where he’d go, right? He’d ditch the recognizable car and go to a terrain that’s not easy to navigate. That’s what I’d do, at least.”
“Craig is a nineteen-year-old boy who works at a gas station. I don’t think he’s thinking that logically.”
“Well, we’ve driven all over town. There’s no sign of the car. At this point, he’s either miles out of town or he’s hidden in plain sight. We should call Maggie for backup and get some volunteers to cover the ground in the forest. We can look for signs of Sophia and Craig, or maybe even some evidence that Amelia might have left behind. Don’t you think the forest is likely to have something to tell us?”
Olivia considered it for a moment. “You could be right. I just don’t want to miss anything. Maybe we should split up for a little while. I could take another drive around the town while you look here?”
Brock shrugged. “Alright. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m sure I’ll manage. I’m a big girl.”
Brock rolled his eyes with a small smile. “Alright, alright. You know where to find me if you want to join the search here later.”
Olivia nodded and got out of the car. She headed inside her house to grab a quick coffee for the road and change into some fresh clothes. Then she grabbed her car keys and headed out for a drive. It was quiet on the road without Brock, and it made it easier for her to think, but she found that she missed his presence in the car.
The thought occurred to her that maybe she’d miss him when he went back to DC, whenever that would be. It had only been a day, but the case already felt like it was going to be endless. She had this awful feeling that the kidnapper was playing a game with them. Someone smarter than their only suspect so far. As she scanned the town for signs of Craig, she felt more and more sure that he wasn’t involved. Sure, he seemed like a strange young man, but from what she’d heard, he didn’t seem like a calculating mastermind. Was she wasting her time even looking for him?
Olivia spent another hour trawling up and down the town before deciding to give in and join the search party in the forest. When she drove back up to her cabin, she found that she had to squeeze past a whole bunch of other cars on the shoulder in order to park. Clearly, there had been a fair few volunteers willing to join the search for Sophia and Craig.
It took a little while for Olivia to find the rest of the search party. The wilderness was a little more trampled than it had been a few days before, where people had picked their way through the brambles and bushes. But after a while, she caught sight of a group of people crunching through the undergrowth, their voices distant as they called out for Sophia. Maggie was a little further ahead, shouting some instructions to the volunteers. Only Brock was holding back, standing beside a tall tree and scanning the land ahead of him with a frown on his face.
Olivia joined him at his side and he sighed as he noticed her.
“I’m not sure what to make of all this,” he admitted. “There were a few sets of footprints, and some of them looked like they might match a young man like Craig, but the undergrowth is too thick to pick up the footsteps after a point. And since then, it’s felt kind of useless. We haven’t seen a single th
ing.”
“It was always a long shot,” Olivia told him. “The forest here has a mind of its own. Sometimes, living in that cabin, I feel like it’s swallowing me whole. If there was anything here, it could be long gone.”
“Then what do we do next?”
Olivia didn’t have an answer to that question. Craig was their best shot of a lead, and they hadn’t been able to track him down. The thought ran through her head once more: what were they missing?
“Hello?”
Both Olivia and Brock whipped around at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. A young boy was standing in front of them, his floppy blond hair falling in front of dull eyes. He wore ripped jeans and a camouflage jacket, and the distinct smell of marijuana wafted from him. Olivia wrinkled her nose. The kid didn’t look nineteen, but she knew who he was immediately.
“Craig Carter?”
He nodded, avoiding eye contact with Olivia. She took a step toward him. Her dislike for the man was overwhelming, but she knew she needed to keep a level head, even if he was a predator.
“FBI. We’ve been looking for you.”
“I know,” he muttered awkwardly, his gaze on the ground. “I went for a drive to clear my head. I thought I did something wrong…”
“No, you think?” Brock snapped. The comment made Craig raise his head in anguish.
“No! I didn’t do anything!”
“Why don’t you walk us through what happened last evening, Craig?” Olivia asked stiffly. He sniffed, letting out a long, slow shrug.
“Well... I was waiting for Sophia in our usual spot in the forest,” he began slowly and deliberately. “She told me not to go near her house anymore. She thought her mom would kill me if I showed my face there again. But she said she wanted to see me, so I thought, why not? I like her company. So I drove up here and waited. I waited for hours and hours and hours. I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. I thought maybe she’d ditched me…”