Blood of Eden (26 page)
Authors: Tami Dane
Mom's car was still parked where it had been. I peered in the window as I walked past.
No Mom.
Where'd she go?
Mom, not again. Not now.
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
âLao Tzu
22
A million possibilities flew through my mind as I searched the area around my mother's abandoned carânone of them good. Her car was exactly where she'd parked it, but she was nowhere to be seen. She could have wandered off somewhere and gotten lost. She could have tried to follow me on foot and collapse somewhere.
She could have been attacked by the killer, who liked brunettes in their midthirties. Mom was in her forties; and her hair was black but at a distance she could pass for thirty-fiveâish. Had I led her right into the path of a serial killer?
My stomach did a flip-flop, and I bent at the waist, wrapping my arm around myself, squeezing my eyes shut and willing the nausea to ease up so I could keep looking. Now was not the time to get all queasy.
“Are you okay?” JT was behind me.
I turned to face him. “Mom's not here. I don't know where she's gone.”
JT glanced at the car, then at my face, which was probably as white as a nearby delivery van. “Maybe she had to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh. God. I hope you're right.” Able to breathe a little better, I dashed down to our borrowed house. There were still several police officers standing outside the garage. I described my mother to one of them, asking if he'd seen her. He hadn't. I raced inside, making a beeline for the half bath on the main floor. The door was hanging open. “Mom?” I called out. “Are you here? Mom?”
No answer.
I headed into the kitchen, thinking maybe she got thirsty and came in for a glass of water.
No Mom.
“Mom!” I shouted, unable to keep the panic from my voice. “Are you here? Please answer.” I ran from room to room, growing more desperate with every second that passed. She wasn't on the first floor. I stomped up the stairs, clinging to the railing, breathless, dizzy. “Mom!” I checked my bedroom, the spare, the master bath, the main bathroom.
No Mom.
“Sloan,” JT called from downstairs.
Hoping he'd found my mother, I flew down the steps. I met him in the foyer. “Did you find her?” I asked between heavy gasps.
“Not yet.”
“We have to find her. What if the unsub has her?”
“It's a little too soon to be jumping to those kinds of conclusions, Sloan. She could have just gone for a walk. Or ... something.” He gave me a you-know-what-I-mean look.
I knew exactly what he meant. “JT, we have to find her.”
“We will. It shouldn't be too difficult. She's probably somewhere nearby... .” He gave my shoulder a rub. It was a well-meant gesture, but for some reason, it irritated me. “Tell me what you want me to do. You can't file a missing persons report until after she's been gone twenty-four hours.”
“I know.” I stared at the door, wishing she'd come wandering through. “But there's a killer out there somewhere, and even if she's just meandering around the neighborhood, chasing pink monkeys or elephants or rhinoceroses, she could be in danger.”
“We can search faster by car.” JT steered me toward the front door. “I'll drive.”
We cruised up and down the subdivision's streets. I practically hung out the window, trying to peer between houses, behind fences, and around shrubs and trees. When we didn't find her, JT turned out onto the main road, following the route I'd jogged. Just as I was about to give up, I caught sight of some movement at the rear of the school.
“Stop!” I shouted.
JT turned into the school's parking lot and threw the car into park. We clambered out. “Where?” he asked.
“This way.” I sprinted along the west side of the school, my feet pounding on the paved drive, which circled the building. By the time I reached the rear of the building, I was in dire need of oxygen. I stopped, my gaze sweeping back and forth across the playground. Blue-and red play structure. Steel swing sets. Trees. No Mom. No people. “I swear I saw someone.”
JT, who wasn't breathing hard at all, wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “She's not here. Let's go back to the car. I want you to sit down before you pass out. And I think you need some water. You've run close to seven miles by now.”
My knees felt a little Jell-Oâish, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from looking for Mom. That was what I always did. I took care of herâno matter what. She didn't have anyone else. “I'm okay.” I stepped out of his hold, heading toward the closest door, painted cherry red. Identical doors lined the face of the building at regular intervals, entries to each classroom, I guessed. “Maybe she went inside the building.”
“I'm sure the doors are all locked.”
“But suppose one wasn't? I think it's wise to check, just in case.” The first one was locked. I cussed silently and headed for the second one, vaguely aware of JT tailing me. That one was locked too, but that didn't stop me from trying door number three.
“I'll go check the doors around the other side!” JT called.
“Thanks!”
Doors five, six, and seven were also locked. I circled around the north and then east sides of the school, finally turning toward the front, searching the area for a sign of people. Still, nothing. Not Mom. Not anyone. I followed the curved sidewalk, which wrapped around the front of the school, approaching the west side again.
No JT.
Where'd he go?
I jog-walked down the west side of the building again; my gaze lurched from one red door to another as I passed them. The last one, I noticed, was wedged open slightly. Either it hadn't been open earlier when we'd run this way, or I had been too distracted to notice it. I pulled it open and peered inside. Whiteboard. Little tables with chairs stacked on top. Lights off. No voices, no people, no JT.
I gently eased the door shut behind me and moved deeper into the classroom, senses alert, muscles tense. My ears caught every tiny sound, the hum of a fly buzzing around the room, the whirr of the air conditioner, the drip of a leaky faucet.
The echo of footsteps.
Someone was coming.
I flattened myself against the wall, hiding behind a file cabinet. The footsteps came closer. Closer. The person was right on the other side of the steel cabinet. I held my breath.
“Sloan?” the person whispered.
“JT?”
“Yeah, it's me. I checked the building. There's a janitor polishing the cafeteria floor. Nobody else.”
“Okay.”
We headed back outside, squinting against the glaring sunlight. The sun was hanging high overhead. I guessed it was getting close to noon.
“Wow, where'd the morning go?” I muttered.
“Are you hungry?”
“No. I'm too worried to be hungry.”
JT gave me what I guessed was meant to be a reassuring look. “We'll find her.” We started back to the car. Too desperate to give up, I kept looking, everywhere, at everything, hoping I'd see some clue. Not far from the front sidewalk, something caught my eye, a flash of metal in the grass. “Where are you going?” JT asked as I dashed toward the reflection.
“Checking something.” The grass hadn't been mown in a week or two; it was a little on the thick and tall side. I combed my fingers through the blades, searching in the area where I thought I'd seen the glittery thing. “Found it.” I plucked the silver chain from the long grass. At the end dangled one of those silver medical-alert badges. My mother wore one. I'd purchased it for her years ago, after she almost died. An ER doctor had given her a medication that interacted with her prescription drugs after an accident, causing an almost fatal heart arrhythmia.
What was the likelihood of this medical alert being hers?
Letting it fall into my palm, I checked the engraving. It wasn't Mom's. But the name was familiar. Deborah Richardson. A series of letters with pluses and minuses follow. Her blood type was very rare. I handed it to JT.
He read it, then met my gaze. “Damn, you're good!”
“It was a lucky find. What do you think it means?”
“It means we need to call the Baltimore PD so they can get a CSI team over here pronto and get this area cordoned off. I think we're standing in the middle of a crime scene.” He patted his pockets. “Damn, I left my cell in the car.”
“Me too.”
We ran back to the car and dove for our phones. Mine was playing “The Entertainer,” indicating I'd just received a message. Hoping it was from my mother, I dialed voice mail to retrieve it. Meanwhile, JT called the Baltimore PD to tell them what we'd found.
The message, I discovered, wasn't from Mom. It was from Gabe, and it sounded urgent. “Sloan, you need to get down here to the hospital now. It's about your case.”
Our case. My case. Damn.
What to do? Keep looking for Mom? Or head to the hospital?
If there was ever a test for an agent's commitment to her job, this was it. I didn't want to go. I wasn't ready to give up looking for my mother yet.
This was an impossible choice.
I tried calling Gabe back, hoping he'd give me the information over the phone. No answer. JT ended his call as I shoved my cell into my purse and muttered a few expletives.
“Detectives are on the way.” JT took a step closer. “What's wrong?”
“Gabe left me a message. He's at the hospital. Said I need to get down there. It's about the case... .”
“But you'd rather stay here and keep searching for your mother.”
I shoved my fingers through my hair, practically yanking it out of what was probably the world's messiest ponytail by now. “What would you do?” I could feel my eyes tearing up, a sob choking me. I inhaled slowly, then exhaled.
“If your mother's disappearance has anything to do with the unsub, then you need to find her.”
“Exactly.”
“But maybe driving around isn't the best way to do that. Maybe going to the hospital will give you the lead that'll crack this case.”
“Good point.” Also, in my current state, I trusted JT to be sharper and more capable than me.
JT waved toward the road. “Go. Take my car. Once I'm done here, I'll go back to searching on foot.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I thought about giving him a hug, just because he was being such a good friend. But with the thing going on between us, I figured that wasn't the best idea.
He handed me the keys. “I'll keep you posted.”
“Thanks.” I jumped into the car, made some adjustments to the seat and mirror, cranked the engine over, and bounced and sputtered away. During the herky-jerky drive, I tried to guess what Gabe had found out about our case. He'd followed the missing girl to the hospital. Had her disappearance been linked to the murders, after all?
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled JT's car into a parking spot and cut off the engine. I snatched up my laptop bag, double-checking to make sure I had my cell phone, and headed inside.
Lucky me. The emergency room lobby was in chaos. I tried to get the attention of a couple of security officers, but they were both busy talking on radios. One snapped, “If you're not a patient, you must go to the waiting room”; then he went back to his radio conversation.
This was one of those times where I wished I had a badge. I tapped on his shoulder. “I'm an intern with the FBI. I'm here about a case.”
“Do you have any ID?”
“Just my driver's license. I'm an intern. Not an agent.”
Wearing a totally believable security guy's stern face, he said, “Sorry, then, I can't let you back.”
“Okay.” I checked my cell. No bars. I headed outside, waited for my phone to connect, and tried Gabe's phone again. No answer. “Damn it.”
“Sloan!” Gabe called out.
Relieved, I whirled around. “What's going on?”
“I've been waiting for you. Come on.” He rushed me back inside.
Following him, I explained, “I tried to get into the ER to look for you. Without a badge, I couldn't get past the security guards.”
“Yeah, I know. The hospital had to step up the security. There was a problem with some drunk asshole brought in by the police.” Gabe paused at the registration desk and flashed a badge, pointing at me. “We're with the FBI.”
The woman at the desk waved us back.
“Where'd you get that badge?”
“It's the chief's. She wanted to make sure we'd be able to get back in.”
“What if they'd looked at the name on the ID? Or the picture?”
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