by Elle Gray
“We’d be happy to help you,” Amelia’s mother said kindly. “Take a seat. I’m Evelyn, by the way, and this is my husband, Gabriel.”
“We really appreciate you helping our baby girl,” Gabriel added. “And if this can help in catching whoever did this, you can talk to us as much as you want.”
Olivia grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and took a seat close to the foot of Amelia’s bed. She’d dozed off again, for which Olivia was grateful. It would give her a chance to speak to the parents undisturbed. Olivia glanced over at Brock to see if he was joining her, but he just gave her an encouraging smile and kept his distance. She guessed he was comfortable giving her the lead while he observed.
“So, there are definitely some things I’m curious about,” Olivia started, extracting a notebook from her bag. “As I said... it’s highly unusual that someone was able to get into the house without anyone noticing. What time does Amelia usually go to bed, and what time do you both head off to sleep?”
“Amelia is always in bed for nine. We usually follow suit around eleven,” Gabriel told her. “I got up in the night to use the bathroom and checked in on her, but she was fast asleep. That was probably around one A.M.”
“And when did you discover that she was missing?”
“I always get up at six,” Evelyn said. Her face paled a little. “I went downstairs and made breakfast. Amelia’s very picky about what she will eat, so I make her pancakes every morning. She usually smells them and comes running down in her pajamas... but I knew something was wrong when she didn’t come down.”
Evelyn sniffed and Gabriel reached for her hand across the bed, squeezing it gently. Olivia offered them a sad smile.
“It’s okay. I understand this is hard to relive. Take your time.”
Evelyn nodded, taking several deep breaths. Then she steeled her shoulders and set her face, as though making a conscious choice to decide that she was okay.
“I went upstairs to check if she was still asleep. The room was dark, and for a moment, I thought she was just tucked away under the covers. But when I switched the light on, she wasn’t there.”
“What were your first thoughts when you noticed she was gone?”
“Well, I checked everywhere, of course. She wasn’t in the bathroom, and she hadn’t somehow snuck past me to the kitchen. I couldn’t find her anywhere, and I knew then that something had happened.”
“And you didn’t entertain the possibility that she’d simply run away?”
Evelyn shook her head with pressed lips. “Not even for a second. Amelia is autistic and non-verbal. She gets very anxious leaving the house anyway. She would never go out alone, and she’d never go anywhere near a stranger.”
“Non-verbal?” Olivia raised an eyebrow, her heart thudding. It explained a lot. How Amelia hadn’t seemed able to communicate with her back at the cabin, and how she still hadn’t said anything since she woke up. Olivia had put it down to shock, but now it seemed that Amelia would never be able to tell her what had happened to her.
“Yes. She’s never been able to communicate beyond more than a few words,” Gabriel added gravely, his forehead creasing. “She’s never hurt a fly. We can’t understand who would want to take her away from us.”
“Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to why people do these things. But the more we know, the more we might be able to piece it together,” Olivia told them, scribbling a few frantic notes down on her notepad. “It might be something that’s not obvious. Has she ever gotten into trouble at school? Upset another kid somehow?”
“Definitely not,” Gabriel replied, his tone a little sharp. “For one thing, she goes to a special school. She’s not mixing with neurotypical kids of her own age at all, so there’s no chance she’s managed to somehow get into trouble with anyone. And secondly, she’s the sweetest kid you’ll ever meet. She might not talk, but she has a good temperament. Why is this relevant anyway? You don’t think some teenager snatched her and brought her three thousand miles away from home, do you?”
“I’m just exploring all avenues. Sometimes kids get into fights at school and the parents get way too involved. You never know. But now that you’ve explained Amelia’s circumstances, it does seem very unlikely. We can move on from there. How about yourselves? Do either of you have any enemies or people you might be in some sort of conflict with?”
Gabriel straightened up. “Well, I’m a lawyer. I guess I’ve had a fair share of people who don’t like me much. But no one specific.”
“Evelyn?”
“I spend most of my time at home, caring for Amelia,” Evelyn said. “She has needs beyond those of neurotypical children. When she’s not in school, I spend all my time with her, and while she’s there, I spend a lot of time at support groups and doctor’s appointments. I don’t know when I’d have time in the day to make enemies.”
Olivia chewed her lip, beginning to wonder whether they would ever get any further with the investigation. It seemed that the poor family in front of her had just been the victims of a strange, random assault. But she had to press on. She had to hope that they’d be able to tell her something useful.
“Okay, let’s go back to how the kidnapper got inside the house. The break-in must have happened at some point between one and six A.M. That’s a large window of opportunity. And speaking of windows... they were all closed?”
“And locked,” Evelyn confirmed. “The whole house is childproofed, just in case. Amelia does exhibit strange behaviors from time to time, so we have to make it as safe as possible. We check every window and door before we go to bed every night.”
The comment made the whole situation even more baffling to Olivia. She took a deep breath and pressed on.
“Strange behaviors?”
“They’re very inward ones,” Evelyn explained. “She will sometimes lock herself into her room for days at a time, only coming out to use the restroom. We have to slide food under the door for her. Or sometimes she will hide in a closet if she’s feeling overstimulated.”
“Her therapist said it’s a way of hiding herself in a place she feels safe,” Gabriel added, stroking Amelia’s hair as she slept on the bed. “Which only worried us that much more. Whoever… took her, cut her off from her one sense of comfort.”
Olivia nodded, noting that it about seemed the opposite of what she’d expect for a teenage girl running away. “There are only two doors that could be used to enter the house?”
Gabriel nodded. “We have a door heading into the garden and the front door. That’s all.”
“Does anyone else have a key for the house who might possibly have tried to get in?”
“Amelia’s grandmother has a key, but that’s it. We don’t trust many people with things like that.”
“Do you have a security system that would have been triggered if someone was to enter the house?”
Gabriel and Evelyn exchanged a look. Olivia frowned.
“What is it?”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “We do have a security system, but it’s...unarmed. We used to have it active, but it used to trigger a response from Amelia. She hated the noise it made. It could take her hours to calm down after hearing it. So for the past few years, we just haven’t bothered. We never thought it would be an issue.”
Olivia nodded and jotted down a few more notes. Finally, a fact of interest. If there was no security system active, then someone capable of picking a lock might have been able to get into the house. Olivia felt like that was the key to the case. No pun intended, she thought to herself.
“That’s really helpful, thank you. Just a few more questions to round this off. It interests me that the kidnapper was relatively quiet for the three weeks that your daughter was missing. From what I understand, the kidnapper never reached out to you?”
“No. We didn’t hear anything,” Gabriel said solemnly.
“Just to confirm... they never tried to contact you regarding a ransom, or to try and collect the reward money?”
“No,” Amelia’s mother said quietly. “We waited a week and put out an appeal to see if anyone had seen her. We just kept hoping that someone would know something, but when she didn’t show up, we decided to offer the reward. We were told it wasn’t a good idea. The police told us that showing our cards, showing that we had money, might make the kidnapper ask for more. But we didn’t care. We just wanted her home. We would’ve paid anything.”
Olivia’s heart ached. Paxton had been right about the family. They were clearly good people. Olivia wished that she could take them back in time and make it so that they didn’t have to endure the horrors of those last three weeks. They’d had their worlds turned upside down, and Olivia was still no closer to figuring out why. She had asked so many questions, but none of the answers satisfied her. It was like trying to scratch an itch that was just out of reach. She got the feeling that she must be close to something that would help her crack the case wide open, but as she grasped at the air, she caught nothing.
“Can you think of anything else that might be of use?” Olivia asked, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. “Anything at all? Something that seems insignificant might actually be of real help.”
Evelyn shook her head. “I can’t think of anything. Gabriel?”
“No, me neither,” he admitted. “I’m sorry if that wasn’t very useful…”
“No, that was great,” Olivia insisted. “It’s just a tricky one. I’ll be honest, there’s a lot we still don’t know, and it may take some time. But I give you my word that I’ll work tirelessly to try, anyway. I hope that I can find out what happened and bring some peace to your family.”
“You’ve already done enough,” Evelyn said, reaching out to squeeze Olivia’s hand. “You brought our little girl back to us. We’ll forever be in your debt.”
“Please, allow us to give you something,” Gabriel said, pulling out a checkbook. “We want to give you some kind of reward.”
“Absolutely not. I was happy to help,” Olivia said, standing up and handing Evelyn her card. “But I will take your number. I’ll call if I come up with anything new. And if you think of anything that might help me out, call me right away. Night or day, I’ll make sure I pick up.”
Several handshakes and kind words later, Olivia was ready to leave. Brock was still leaning against the doorway, waiting for her as she filed out of the room. She finally let her shoulders relax, feeling them drop as some of the tension left them—though she wasn’t sure why she was allowing herself to relax. Apart from a few small details that she’d managed to glean, she still felt just as clueless on the case as when she’d first entered the room.
“You did well in there,” Brock commented as they walked through the hospital. “The family likes you a lot. At least you know they’ll trust you if they figure out any more details.”
“I get the sense that they’re a dead end now,” Olivia admitted. “That must have been their third interview. I don’t even know if they told us anything that wasn’t already covered in the other interviews.”
“Well, you asked all the right questions. No one can ask more of you. It’s an impossible case.”
“Not impossible,” Olivia said with determination. “I’m going to get to the bottom of it if it kills me.”
“Now that’s more like it!” he whooped. “Them’s fighting words!”
Olivia sighed despite his enthusiasm. “I just can’t get my head around any of it. I feel like we must be missing something big.”
“Maybe. But we’re clearly dealing with someone smart,” Brock offered. “And if they want to play cat and mouse, I guess we’ll just have to play along.”
“I’m not interested in playing games with a psychopath,” Olivia replied firmly. “They’ll show themselves soon enough. And when they do, I’ll be ready for them.”
Six
“Ever been to the most luxurious B&B in Belle Grove?” Brock asked Olivia as the pair of them got back in his car. She raised a tired eyebrow.
“Gee, buy me a drink first, at least.”
Brock laughed raucously and even Olivia managed a small smile.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to say that. No, I thought you could come back to the B&B with me and we can take a look over the case notes together.”
Olivia checked her watch. The sun was tilting low in the sky and she was feeling the weight of sleep deprivation from the last couple of nights.
“I don’t know... I could really use some sleep.” She didn’t add that she wasn’t sure how she felt about being alone with Brock in his hotel room. She’d only just met him, after all, and she’d never been the best at one-on-one interactions with people she didn’t know well. She knew she had to work with him and not against him, but her social awkwardness paired with her tiredness made her feel like it was a terrible idea.
“You can take a nap in the room while I catch up on the notes. Then when you wake up, we can maybe talk it over. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re sleeping on the job.”
Olivia tutted. Typical of Brock to turn it into some kind of joke. But she had to admit, it wasn’t a half-bad idea. They had no time to lose with such an important case. She couldn’t afford to slack off just because she was tired, but she’d feel better resting if Brock started making progress. “Alright, let’s do it.”
“Nice,” Brock grinned, starting up the car. The music blared through the speakers once again, but he turned it off right away. He was done messing with her, at least for a while. “Take a nap if you want. I’ll wake you up when we get to the B&B.”
Olivia didn’t argue with the idea, pressing her face against the cold glass of the window. Her eyes closed and she fell asleep so fast that when she woke up again, she was jarred to discover that the world had gone completely pitch black.
She panicked for a moment, wondering why she was still in a car and unable to see. But as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she realized that Brock had parked the car somewhere and was now sitting in the backseat of the car, reading over the case notes by the light of his phone. Olivia twisted around in her seat to look at him. His feet were propped up on the seat and he was slumped like a rebellious kid at school, his expression more serious than Olivia had ever seen it so far as he read the notes. His grin returned when he noticed her staring.
“Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakes.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Oh, my mistake. It’s Sleepy the Dwarf.”
“Brock!”
“Oops. Maybe you’re Grumpy the Dwarf after all…”
“I will be in a minute if you don’t tell me what I’m still doing in the car. What time is it?”
“Eleven. I didn’t want to wake you up when we arrived. I thought it might be dangerous, and I think maybe I was right. Not a morning person, huh?”
“It’s nearly the middle of the night and I’ve been sleeping in a stranger’s car for six hours. Yeah, I’m not in the best mood.”
“Oh, come on. We’re partners now. Next time, you can read case notes in the dark while I snore away. And by the way, I’ve never known anyone to snore quite so loud. I’m impressed, actually.”
Olivia rolled her eyes, feeling completely done with Brock’s jokes. She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Alright, let’s go inside and take a look at the files together.”
“You don’t want to nap a little longer?”
“Absolutely not. That’s the last time I fall asleep anywhere near you,” Olivia griped, not considering the implications of what she was saying until it was too late. Brock smiled to himself as he stepped out of the car.
“Never say never, Olivia.”
Olivia took a deep breath. Brock seemed to know exactly how to push all of her buttons. But then again, maybe it was just that she was still coming out of sleep. She had a headache forming and her mouth was dry, but at least she was better rested. She needed to be sharp if she was going to make any headway with the case.
As she followed Brock into
the building, she checked her phone. Her screen, which was usually empty of notifications, was flooded with messages. Amelia’s family had sent her a text, and Paxton had clearly been unable to resist texting Olivia for details. She had texts from her friends Sam and Emily, too. They must have heard about the case through the grapevine because they’d texted to wish her luck. Olivia sighed to herself, grateful for it in a certain way. With this case, she felt she was going to need all the luck she could get.
“You alright?” Brock asked her as they climbed the stairs inside the B&B. “Got a lot on your mind?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ve had plenty of time while you were sleeping to get up to speed. You’re not on your own in this. I’ll be as useful to you as I can.”
Brock produced an old-fashioned key and inserted it into a door at the top of the staircase. Olivia found herself staring at it as it turned in the lock. She still couldn’t fathom how someone broke into the Barnes family home without a key. Plenty of people made picking locks look easy in the movies, but in reality, it was a skill that not many could master. Especially not amateur kidnappers. Did that mean they were dealing with a professional? It didn’t seem like it, considering that they hadn’t done their job well enough to stop Amelia from escaping.
In a daze, Olivia followed Brock into his room and rubbed at her temple. She reached in her bag for an aspirin and a bottle of water to wash it down.
Olivia definitely felt a little strange standing in Brock’s bedroom. It wasn’t just that she barely knew him, but it was also a pretty intimate place for them to start working together for the first time. It didn’t seem professional in the least, but she watched as Brock kicked off his shoes, undid the top button of his shirt, and collapsed onto the bed, reopening the manila folder which contained the case files.
“Alright, I guess we should start by cross-referencing everything you got from the interview with the notes in here. See if there are any recurring themes.”
“Sure.”
“You want some coffee? I think there’s a machine in the room.”
