Three Days Missing

by Kimberly Belle

  And then I met Sam.

  It happened at a Falcons game, where my father had dragged me to a VIP suite high above the field. Dad was a busy, busy man. If he could knock out a business deal while also celebrating his daughter’s thirtieth year on the planet, the night was a win-win for everybody—except me.

  Just after halftime, I felt someone sink into the seat behind me.

  “It’d sure be nice if the D could get some stops during garbage time instead of letting the other team run their asses ragged.” He leaned forward in the plush chair, pointing over my shoulder with his long arm. “We thought we had a blowout on our hands, see, so the Falcons sent in the second-string team. But being too cocky is never a good thing. Makes you sloppy. The defense is paying for it now.”

  My answer was an uninterested hum. I’m not a football fan, have never understood the appeal of grown men fighting over a piece of leather and air.

  He didn’t take the hint. He reached his arm around to offer a hand. “Sam Huntington.”

  I hadn’t been in Atlanta long, but even I knew who Sam Huntington was. Old Atlanta royalty and rising political star, the youngest deputy attorney general ever appointed in Atlanta, a city that bore his last name on more than one street sign. Sam’s great-great-grandfather thought Atlanta might be a good spot for a railway terminus, and the long line of Huntingtons have been profiting from his vision ever since.

  But there was his hand and I had no other choice but to shake it. He had a warm, firm grip. A politician’s grip. The grip of a guy who would go far.

  “Stefanie Lawrence.”

  “Nice to meet you, Stefanie Lawrence. I take it you’re not a fan.”

  “I couldn’t care less about football,” I said, turning back to the field.

  “I meant of me.” I looked at him in surprise, and he grinned. “Reading people is my superpower. A necessary one in my line of work, but still. People tell me I’m pretty good at it. Right now, it’s telling me you wish I’d go away so you can finish pretending to watch the game.” He reclined in his chair, sweeping an arm over the back of the empty seat next to him. “So? How’d I do?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Who’s cocky now?”

  Sam laughed.

  “And for the record, I’m not not a fan. I’m just...I don’t know, trying to make it through the game, I guess.”

  “Still. I’d prefer you were a fan.”

  “Surely you don’t need another.” My tone was teasing but firm. Looks and money and the Huntington name—of course I could see the appeal. But the combination was too heady, too dangerous for someone on her way out of town. With a polite smile, I turned back to the game.

  “All right, fine. I can take a hint. I’ll leave you alone, but only if you tell me something about you.” He leaned far forward, his head coming flush to mine. “I don’t care what.”

  I gave him a sidelong look. “One thing?”

  He lifted a single finger. “Just one. And then I’ll clear out, I promise.”

  I could have told him about the discovery I’d uncovered in my research, that the depictions of Margaret in the cathedral of Chartres were tailored to each window’s location in the church and the surrounding imagery. I could have told him I missed my friends, my Manhattan apartment, that sidewalk café on Columbus Avenue where they make the most perfect macchiato. What came out surprised even me: “Today’s my birthday.”

  Sam looked disappointed. “I guess I should have qualified that with the word truth. Tell me something about you that’s true.”

  “It is true.” His frown didn’t clear, so I added, “Do you want to see my driver’s license?”

  “Why would you spend your birthday watching a sport you just told me you hated?”

  “I do hate it. My father, however—” I pointed over his shoulder, to where my father was talking to a man so tall he could only have been a basketball player “—does not.”

  Sam smiled, but the gesture looked a little sad. “Well, now, that is a goddamn shame.” He unfolded his long body from the chair, leaning in to whisper in my ear, “Happy birthday, Steffi. I hope you get everything you could ever wish for.”

  The tears were pretty much instant, though I didn’t let Sam see. At the time, I blamed them on homesickness and hormones and hearing the sound of my nickname in a strange city, rolling off a stranger’s tongue, but the truth was, it had been a shitty birthday. My best friends were thousands of miles away. My mother was pissed I was spending the day with my father, whom I rarely saw and who had flown in for the occasion. My father had brought me to the last place on earth I wanted to be, and was now too busy schmoozing the bigwigs to pay me much attention. So far that day, neither of my parents had wished me a happy birthday. Sam’s words hit me like an unexpected gift.

  He surprised me again two days later, when he showed up at the High with a slice of cake and two forks. He lit the birthday candle with a silver lighter that looked like it belonged in the case of antiquities on the museum’s bottom floor. Our first kiss tasted of sugar and vanilla.

  Sam was easy to fall in love with. I did it that very day.

  * * *

  Muffled voices make their way up the stairs, prodding me across the bedroom to the closet, where I peel off my T-shirt and slip into a silky tank. I pull a pair of hot-pink pumps from the shelf, step into them one by one. At the bathroom mirror, I take down my ponytail, run my fingers through my hair, dab on some under-eye concealer and lip gloss. When measuring yourself against anyone, even if it’s only your former self, high heels and makeup always help.

  I find Sam seated behind the Italian desk in his study downstairs, a masterpiece of walnut and smoky glass. This room is Sam’s domain, with modern furniture and leather wall paneling and burgundy velvet curtains that pool like blood on the black oak floor. All dark and sleek and masculine like him, all but the silver bowl on the corner of his desk, which I filled with gardenias from the backyard. They scent the air with a sweet perfume that sticks out like an escort in a boardroom.

  Across from Sam, in one of the matching blue swivel chairs, sits Brittany, his director of communications. A police officer stands to her left.

  None of them look happy.

  “What’s wrong?” I say from the doorway.

  Brittany twists in her chair, giving me a perfunctory smile. “Good morning, Mrs. Huntington. Sorry to disturb so early on a Saturday.”

  For some reason I can’t quite explain, her formal greeting makes me hate her just a little. Maybe it’s because she’s still clinging to her twenties, and the further I get from that decade, the more I resent girls as pretty and smart as Brittany. The entire world is her oyster—what is she thinking, wasting her youth here in Atlanta?

  Sam gestures across the desk to the empty chair next to Brittany. “Come sit down.”

  Something about the way he says it makes my heart beat faster, and not in a good way. I glance at the cop, then Brittany, whose all-business expression doesn’t match her outfit. Salmon-colored shirt; purple running shorts; long, bare legs with just the right amount of muscle. This was supposed to be her day off, too, and she looks like she came straight from the gym.

  I move to the chair, but I don’t sink into it. “Just tell me. What’s going on?”

  “One of the kids from Sammy’s class went missing last night,” Sam says. “A little boy named Ethan Maddox. The police are working on the assumption he was taken.”

  My eyes go wide, and I press a hand to my stomach. Poor Ethan. Poor Ethan’s parents. “Taken as in kidnapped?”

  Sam defers to the police officer, who nods.

  My legs give out, and I fall into the chair. “Oh my God. Do they have any idea who?”

  I have an idea who: Ethan’s wife-beater felon father. I’ve heard the schoolyard rumors about their divorce, have watched the video some eyewitness uploaded to YouTube. Any man
capable of assaulting his wife in a CVS parking lot in broad daylight, with dozens of iPhones pointed at his face capturing every blow in full-color, high-definition, is capable of kidnapping his own child.

  “The Lumpkin County Sheriff’s team is looking at a number of possibilities,” the officer says carefully. “Folks connected to the school, to the child’s family, as well as any locals listed on the offender registries.”

  My gaze zips to Sam, whose expression turns to stone. He’s thinking the same thing I am: a sexual predator lurking at the edge of the camp, surveying the kids like a starving man at a farmer’s market, selecting the ripest fruit. It could have been any kid. It could have been Sammy.

  I am suddenly thinking about where I left my car keys. Thinking about navigating morning traffic to hightail it to Dahlonega. I am desperate to see my child.

  “Call Josh,” Sam says to Brittany. “I know he’s visiting his sister but haul his ass back up to the city. I need his input on how we can best respond to this. The school hasn’t finished alerting the parents yet, and we’ve got to be careful how we approach things. We don’t want to incite panic or step on the sheriff’s toes, but I want to have a statement ready as soon as he gives us the go.”

  Brittany swivels back and forth in her chair. “I’ve left Josh like a hundred messages already. Apparently, they don’t have reception wherever his sister lives.”

  Probably not far from the truth. I don’t remember the name of the town, but Josh’s sister lives in the backwoods of southern Georgia, a tiny blip on a bright red map. No streetlights, no Walmart, just a couple of neighbors sitting on lawn chairs, waving Confederate flags.

  “Keep trying, will you?” Sam says. “In the meantime, let’s you and I put our heads together and come up with a plan.”

  She slides a laptop from the bag at her feet and begins clacking away. The police officer stands pressed against the bookshelves, his hat clutched in his hands, awaiting orders.

  Sam turns to me with a pained look, and I stop him with a shake of my head. An Atlanta child is missing. There’s no need to apologize.

  I turn to the police officer and Brittany. “How do you two take your coffee?”

  The last thing Sam needs to worry about is me.

  KAT

  5 hours, 24 minutes missing

  Ever since the dogs screeched to a stop at Black Mountain Road, the game plan has changed, something that becomes clear when the dining hall fills with rain-soaked bodies, shouting orders with a new sense of urgency. They see me and avert their eyes, a sign of respect that hits me like a cold, hard slap. Dawn notices and hauls me out of there, guiding me outside to a cabin across the clearing. She parks me on a tiny two-seater couch.

  “Why don’t I make us some tea?” she says. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a little warming up.”

  It’s then I notice that my teeth are chattering. I bite down hard until the noise stops. “Tea would be great, thank you.”

  The cabin is dark and tiny, a square space with a round table, a musty-smelling couch and the most basic of kitchenettes lining the back wall. The glass of the lone window is filthy, coated with cobwebs and crud and framed with two strips of faded floral fabric. The air in here is just as cold as outside, just as damp, and I shiver.

  Dawn flicks on the electric teapot, then settles on the couch next to me. Her eyes are kind.

  “We’ve told you why we are taking a good, close look at Andrew. Why don’t you start by telling me why you think we’re mistaken.”

  Her question surprises me more than a little. From the second the detective showed up at my door, I’ve been trying to talk myself out of the possibility Andrew would have anything to do with this, and my denial hasn’t gone unnoticed. Do I think they’re mistaken? Maybe, but I also never thought Andrew would hurt me like he did, either.

  “I suppose you know what he did.” I can barely push out the words. My mouth is a desert, my tongue sandpaper against my teeth.

  “I’ve read the police reports, yes.” The kettle turns off with a sharp click, the water bubbling into a rolling boil. Dawn pushes up from the couch. “But I’d really like to hear it from you.”

  I hesitate, trying to summon the strength to rehash all that ugly drama. The thing is, I’ve spent a good part of the past half year trying to not think of Andrew, and I still cringe whenever his name tunnels unintentionally across my consciousness. The way we broke apart was messy and painful, and I’m still fighting to find forgiveness—for him and for myself, for the way Ethan has unwittingly ended up in the middle.

  “Things had been bad between us for a while,” I begin, my breaths coming fast and hard, like I just jogged up three flights of stairs. “At least a year, maybe more. He was drinking too much. He was under all sorts of stress at work, and he took it out on me and Ethan. When Andrew attacked me at the CVS, I had just filed for divorce.”

  I don’t bother cataloging my injuries—a black eye, two broken fingers, a bloody scalp from where he ripped out big chunks of hair—or the way Good Samaritans pulled him off me, a couple of tourists in town for a Falcons game. They told the cops he’d threatened to kill me. As a police officer, Dawn would know all this, as well as the way he took off before the police could get there. They arrested him the next day at work, marching him in handcuffs past his staff, the office security guards and dozens of wide-eyed witnesses.

  “Sounds like a pretty ballsy guy.” She hands me one of the mugs and sinks with hers back onto the couch, watching me with clear blue eyes.

  “No, just the opposite, actually. I saw his face when those men pulled him off me, and Andrew was just as surprised as I was. Surprised and humiliated. I’m sure he regretted it immediately.”

  Actually, I’m positive Andrew regrets the aftermath the most. Gossip has a way of dancing around, and Andrew lost clients and friends because of what he did. He tarnished his precious reputation. He lost every last bargaining chip he could have cashed in for the divorce. Proof in point: when the judge heard about the attack, when he saw all but the tips of my right-hand fingers confined to a hot-pink cast, he granted me temporary full custody without question.

  Dawn reaches for a legal pad on the table and digs a pen out of her bag on the floor. “Still. Andrew lost control.”

  “With me. Only ever with me. Never with Ethan.”

  “Prior to the attack at CVS, had Andrew ever hurt you physically?”

  A familiar sick rises in my throat, because what do I say? Yes, but never enough to leave a mark? That I slapped and shoved him right back? There was that time when he grabbed my arm too hard or when he shoved me into the fireplace or when he held me down on the bathroom floor, but none of his outbursts hurt me that much, and they always ended in a more loving, considerate Andrew. They call it a cycle for a reason.

  “Yes. Never at that level, but yes. I knew it was abuse.”

  “Did you ever threaten or attempt to leave?”

  Even now, six months later, the question still hits me as judgment, and it reminds me of some of my former girlfriends, loose-tongued women who cloaked their questions about the attack under a mask of compassion. Dawn might as well have said if you knew it was abuse, why didn’t you just leave? My former friends certainly did. Everyone but Lucas and Izzy.

  “It’s not that easy. We had a child together, one I gave up my job to stay home and care for. I didn’t have any money, no family to depend on or move in with. I knew exactly how difficult leaving would be, and that Andrew would never let me walk out of there with half of anything, especially Ethan. I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m only trying to explain why I didn’t bring it up, not even once.”

  “Not until he attacked you in broad daylight.”

  I lift a shoulder. “As awful as that was, at least it put me in a position of power. Everybody, including the judge, knew what he did.”

  “So far I have
n’t heard any reason to think he wouldn’t be capable of taking Ethan.”

  She says it with a soft smile, which does nothing to soften her words. No woman wants to think the man she once loved—the father of her only child—capable of such evil.

  “Okay, then how about this—because he loves Ethan.”

  “Maybe Andrew wants more time with his son than a few hours every other weekend.”

  I throw up a hand in frustration. “Then why not just keep him one Sunday night? Why come all the way here to do it?” I’ve already had this conversation today, and the more I have it, the harder it is to talk myself out of my suspicions.

  Dawn’s answer gets cut off by the unmistakable thud-thud-thud of helicopters—more than one—swooping over the camp, shaking the air and rattling the cabin’s wooden walls.

  “Why are you trying to talk me into this?” I say once the sound fades. I feel jittery, keyed up, like I have to restrain myself from jumping off this couch and running out there to join them in the search for my son. Every second we sit here, yammering on about Andrew, is another second Ethan is not found. “Andrew would not try to steal his own son.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that Ethan’s disappearance could have nothing do with your son...” She pauses, and that ever-pleasant half smile she’d been wearing disappears. “And everything to do with you?”

  My skin goes cold, a chill snaking down my spine. “With me, how?”

  “Let me put it this way. If Andrew were angry and hurt and looking for revenge, what do you think he would do? What would he see as your one biggest weakness?”

  And just like that, I’m a believer. My one biggest weakness is Ethan.

  KAT

  5 hours, 57 minutes missing

  Outside the cabin, a big body in work boots comes clomping up the stairs with a gait I’d recognize anywhere. Dawn looks up expectantly, but I pop off the couch, lurch to the door and yank it open, right as Lucas raises a fist.