by Sharon Potts
Smolleck’s eyes were still on her.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “Maybe Kevin and Kim decided it was time for Ethan to get to know his other grandmother.”
He picked up the photo of Ethan holding out his baby tooth. “It’s kind of interesting that they would trust your mother with Ethan after she was sued for negligence that led to a child’s death.”
Aubrey winced. “My mother was cleared of those charges.”
“Yes, I understand. But the timing seems odd to me.”
“If you’re trying to build a case against my mother, that’s absurd. Why would she kidnap Ethan now, when she and my brother are finally reconciled and she’s able to see her grandson freely?”
“An interesting paradox.”
“Not a paradox at all, since my mother didn’t kidnap him.” Her voice had gotten higher, the way it did when she was upset. She took a breath, trying to bring it—and herself—back under control. “Agent Smolleck,” she said, “I can appreciate that investigating the family is part of your due diligence, but shouldn’t the FBI be considering other possible abduction suspects? Sex offenders, that kind of thing.”
“There are several of us down here on the CARD team, Ms. Lynd. Excuse me, I mean Aubrey.” His voice had resumed its clipped formality. “We’re each investigating different areas. Does that answer your question?”
Her face got warm. She wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to this way.
“So let’s talk about this malpractice lawsuit,” Smolleck said, not waiting for an answer. “Are you aware of any threats against your mother from Ryan Cole’s family?”
“I’m not, but have you asked her?” She didn’t like that he was getting to her, causing her to respond irritably to his questions. He was on their side, she reminded herself.
“The lawsuit unsettled your mother quite a bit, didn’t it? I understand she resigned from her medical practice shortly after the trial was over.”
Aubrey pulled the wool collar of her sweater away from her neck. It was too hot in here. She should have changed clothes when she arrived.
Smolleck was staring at her with his damn iridescent eyes.
“My mother and her fiancé decided it was a good time for her to retire.”
“That’s right,” Smolleck said. “Her fiancé. Jonathan Woodward. He’s being considered for the Supreme Court nomination. Tough to have two strong careers in one family. Is that why she resigned?”
Was he trying to bait her again? She didn’t answer.
“You’ve met him, I assume,” Smolleck said.
“Jonathan? Of course.”
“And you like him?”
“Very much.”
“Did your mother ever mention that he has any enemies? Anyone they were concerned might be upset if he was appointed to the Supreme Court?”
Aubrey glanced out the window at the thick jumble of trees, then turned back to him. She had assumed Ethan’s kidnapping was a random child abduction or someone trying to get at Prudence Simmer’s money. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might be politically motivated. “You think someone kidnapped Ethan to get at Jonathan?”
“Do you think that’s a possibility?”
“I suppose, but I don’t have much to offer you on that. My mother never mentioned any concerns to me. Wouldn’t it be better if you asked her or Jonathan directly?”
“Good idea,” he said. “Moving on. Judge Woodward went to Columbia Law School right around when your mother and father were undergraduates there.” He tapped the pen against his chin. “Is that where your mother met him?”
“No. They met in Miami a couple of years ago.”
“Did your father know the judge at Columbia?”
“I have no idea,” Aubrey said. “Did you ask him? And what does this have to do with Ethan?”
“What’s your relationship with your father like?”
His questions whipsawed her. It was clear he was trying to catch her off guard. But about what?
“My father and I aren’t close.”
“Since the divorce?”
“That’s right.” Her mouth was dry. She needed some water.
“How often do you see each other?”
“Not very.”
Smolleck glanced at the yellow pad again. “Your father does quite a bit of work for Innocence Projects around the country. Has he made any professional enemies that you know of?”
“I doubt it,” she replied. “My father gets innocent men wrongfully convicted of murder off death row. He’s a hero. Everyone loves and admires him.”
“Except you.”
He had once been her hero, too. “Can children ever stop loving their parents?” she asked, more of herself than of Smolleck.
“I suppose you don’t like his girlfriend.”
“No, I don’t. May I ask where you’re going with these questions?”
He leaned back in the chair. “Did your father know about Ethan?”
“I’m not following you. Know what about Ethan?”
“That your mother was back in your brother’s good graces and Ethan was coming to spend a few days with her.”
“I suppose,” Aubrey said. “Kevin probably told him. But why is that an issue? What difference does it make if my father knew Ethan was here? It’s not like he kidnapped his own grandson.”
Smolleck sat forward and held the ends of the pen with his index fingers. “So who do you think took Ethan?”
His direct question took her aback. She picked up the photo from the desk.
One tooth missing and a big grin on his face.
One tooth closer to being an adult, but still a child. And here she was, unable to protect him. “I wish I could tell you that.”
She got up from her chair and put the photo back on the shelf with the others. Back where he was surrounded by family and loved ones.
At least she could do that for her nephew.
CHAPTER 7
Diana made it to the bathroom just in time to retch into the toilet. Nothing came up but bitter bile. She heaved again and again, until finally the nausea subsided, but not the sharp pain in her gut. She put her head down on the cold tile floor.
For the past six years, what she had wanted most was to be part of her grandson’s life. Now that she had finally gotten to hold him and kiss him and smell his sweet hair, someone was threatening to harm him.
Unless she murdered her fiancé.
She sat up and looked again at the note in her hand.
WE HAVE ETHAN. HE IS SAFE.
Focus on that. Her grandson was alive. He was safe.
She studied the small paper in her hand, probably from a notepad. She turned it over.
you have until midnight tues. if we don’t have physical proof of jonathan woodward’s death, ethan will die.
if you talk to the cops or fbi, ethan will die.
Ethan will die.
She gagged on another wave of nausea. Kill Jonathan, or Ethan would die.
And there was no one she could turn to for help.
She got up from the floor and caught her face in the mirror, pale and haggard. Her hands shook as she turned on the faucet and filled a cup with cold water. It spilled on her chin and chest as she drank.
The note had fallen to the floor. She picked it up and put it back inside the greeting card. The picture of a little boy on a red tricycle jumped out at her, this time its significance registering.
She grabbed the vanity top for support, as the room and memory whirled around her.
The little boy pedaled past her on a red tricycle. He was wearing a blue-and-white-striped sweater. He rode the tricycle around and around on the cracked sidewalk in front of the old brick brownstone, stopping to smile and wave at her. She hurried past him to the weathered oak door and banged hard with the brass knocker. She needed to talk to them.
“Let me in.” She pounded on the door.
A little boy on a red tricycle. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
; The note. The card.
If anyone saw them . . .
If anyone put it together . . .
She hurried to the bedroom, the walls closing in around her. Hide it. Hide it quickly. But where? In a drawer, the closet, a book?
Her heart was pounding. Aubrey or the detective—they might walk in at any moment.
She reached for her hobo bag beneath the nightstand and shoved the card inside.
Her cell phone was on the bed, on top of the pile of mail. She stared at it.
What choice did she have?
She picked up the phone and lay down, crumpling into a fetal position. Then she hit the speed-dial button that connected her to the first man she had loved in a long, long time.
He answered on the first ring. “Are you okay, darling?”
She closed her eyes, but the spinning wouldn’t stop.
“Please come, Jonathan,” she said, praying she was doing the right thing. “I need you.”
CHAPTER 8
Aubrey hated that he’d gotten to her. That he’d made her so defensive. She had fled her mother’s office after Smolleck had finished questioning her, given her his business card, and assured her the FBI and police were doing everything possible to get Ethan back safely.
She was surprised he hadn’t asked her to take a polygraph, but maybe he was saving that for their next conversation.
She didn’t know what to make of Special Agent Tom Smolleck. His line of questioning and confrontational approach made no sense. Her parents’ college years and Mama’s illness couldn’t possibly be connected to Ethan’s disappearance. And Smolleck’s harping on the family dynamics and relationships disturbed her. Even the Simmers—as disagreeable as she found them—loved their grandson.
She couldn’t imagine them or anyone else in the family staging a kidnapping.
She checked the time. A little after four thirty. Kevin and Kim were making a statement to the press at five at their hotel. It infuriated her that the Simmers didn’t want her mother to be there. Through the dining-room casement window, she could see a couple of black sedans, a police car, and her mother’s old red BMW in the driveway. All the news vans were gone and had left behind deep, black ruts in the grass. She wondered where her father was—whether he had been invited to the press event or had returned to his girlfriend, wherever they were staying.
And how was Kevin doing with all this?
Did he know about the Simmers’ directive, or was he expecting Mama to be at the press conference?
She checked her phone for messages. No response from Kevin to her earlier text. She speed-dialed his number. The call went to voice mail. “Call me, please,” she said, then sent another text. Mama and I want to be at press conference. Simmers say no. What do you want?
Kevin probably wouldn’t get her messages if the man who had answered his phone earlier still had it, but she had to keep trying.
She went to the kitchen to get her mother something to eat and was momentarily calmed by the familiar sight of the round, white kitchen table, sunset-colored chintz curtains, and glass-fronted wood cabinets that had been painted white long before Aubrey’s family had moved here. On a small shelf was a photo of Aubrey’s grandmother as a young woman. Nana had lived nearby and had always been here when Aubrey came home from school.
With Mama and Dad preoccupied by their careers, Nana was the one who provided most of the hugs, reassurances, and Mallomars cookies—always with a glass of milk.
Aubrey often missed her grandmother, but she especially could have used a hug and a Mallomars cookie now.
She opened the refrigerator, surprised to find it fully stocked. Whole milk, orange juice, containers of fruit salad, string-cheese sticks, hot dogs, and snack-size bags of baby carrots. Her mother rarely kept much food in the house.
This was all here for Ethan.
She picked up the bag of carrots. The last time she’d been with Ethan, he had taken two small carrots and stuck one in each nostril, pretending to be a dragon.
“Do dragons eat carrots?” she’d asked.
He’d taken them out of his nose, then said with a big grin, “Only carrots with boogers.”
It was one of his favorite words. Boogers.
She transferred fruit salad to a plate with a few cheese sticks and a bag of carrots, then went upstairs.
A vague smell like vomit hit her when she opened the door to her mother’s room.
Mama was in a fetal position on top of the patchwork quilt, eyes closed. She was surrounded by mail and magazines, her phone close to her open hand. Her shoulder-length dark hair was uncombed, and her white button-down blouse was badly wrinkled and damp, as though she had spilled water on herself. The blouse looked like the one her mother had been wearing the previous day in the photo at the carnival. It was Mama’s typical uniform—white shirt and jeans—but Aubrey wondered whether her mother had bothered changing her clothes since yesterday.
The scene before her reminded her of those times when she was a child, and then again when Dad left eight years ago—her mother curled up in bed, eyes squeezed shut against some terrible pain.
Aubrey would darken the room and put cool washcloths on her head, whispering over and over, Mama, please be okay.
“Mama?” she said softly. “Are you sick?”
Her mother blinked. She seemed to be trying to focus on one point, as though the room were spinning.
“Is it the vertigo?”
“I was a little dizzy, but it stopped.”
“I brought you some food.”
“No, thank you.”
“You have to eat.”
Her mother sighed, then propped herself up against the brass headboard. She took the plate and fork and fed herself a few bites.
Aubrey sat down on the bed. “I just spoke to Special Agent Smolleck.”
Her mother toyed with a cheese stick.
“He asked a lot of questions about our family. About Dad and Jonathan.”
“Jonathan?” Mama’s head swung up. “Why was he asking about Jonathan?”
She was surprised by her mother’s defensiveness. “It makes sense that the FBI would consider the Supreme Court angle,” Aubrey said. “Has Jonathan mentioned any enemies to you?”
Her mother shook her head, then put the plate of food on the nightstand.
“Smolleck also asked about the family of the little boy who died. Do you think it’s possible the Coles kidnapped Ethan to get back at you?”
“I don’t know, Aubrey.” She lay back down.
Something was definitely wrong. A half hour before, her mother had been sharp and alert, very much herself, despite the trauma of Ethan’s disappearance, but now she was exhibiting signs of deep depression.
“Did something just happen?” Aubrey asked. “Did Dad come in here when I was downstairs and say something that upset you?”
“Please let me be.” Her voice was flat. “I want to sleep.”
Aubrey glanced at the mail strewn over the bed. Bills, flyers, and magazines, but something was missing. She thought back to her mother aligning the envelopes earlier. A square white one had stuck out above the others. She had noted a stamp on the envelope, which suggested a personal letter or card, but hadn’t thought more about it.
Until now.
She surveyed the mail on the patchwork quilt, but the square envelope wasn’t on the bed with the others. Had there been a ransom demand? That would bring them a step closer to getting Ethan back.
“Mama?” she said. “Was there something in the mail?”
Her mother opened her eyes and searched Aubrey’s, as though she wanted desperately to communicate something. Then she shook her head.
Whatever had happened while Aubrey was downstairs with the FBI agent, it was clear that Mama wasn’t willing to talk about it—at least not here in the house.
Aubrey breathed in the smell of vomit. She needed to get her mother away from here to somewhere less toxic. To a place where her mother would feel safe and tell her wh
at was terrifying her.
For Ethan’s sake, she needed to do it quickly.
CHAPTER 9
They walked in silence toward the park, along the route Aubrey used to take on her bicycle, zigzagging through narrow streets of dense foliage, past old wood-frame and stucco houses, then down the gentle slope from the top of the bluff to South Bayshore Drive.
It was close to five and the shadows were deepening.
Her mother clutched her hobo bag against her chest like a shield, her face in a tense frown. As desperate as Aubrey was to find out whether Mama had received a ransom note, she had to approach her delicately. Rushing her mother might cause her to shut down, and that would be the worst thing for Ethan.
They reached the corner of South Bayshore and waited for the traffic light as cars streamed by. Mama stared straight ahead, lips moving, as though she were working out a complex problem. The light changed and they crossed to the bay-front park, passing young people who were working out on the fitness circuit and running along the jogging path. The sky was a rich blue, the air sweet and crisp. It seemed incongruous with the anxiety Aubrey felt inside.
She and her mother sat on a shaded bench near where the water lapped against a low wall of coral rocks and they could see the boats docked at Dinner Key. Behind them, a dog barked plaintively in the fenced-in dog park.
Where was Ethan now? Crying for his mom or dad, or even Aunt Aubrey to come and rescue him?
They had to find him.
“Talk to me, Mama,” Aubrey said. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”
Her mother held her bag more tightly against her chest but didn’t answer.
“You can’t do this alone.”
“Let it go, Aubrey.”
“What are you so terrified of?”
“Don’t you understand? I have to protect Ethan.”
“Protect him from what?”
Mama stared at the water sloshing against the rocks. “They said . . .” She shook her head.
Aubrey took in a sharp breath. “They?”
“Nothing. I’m not thinking clearly.”
“Mama, did you get a ransom demand?”
