by Elle Gray
“He just stopped us from doing our jobs,” Brock continued to complain. “We might have gotten somewhere by this point if we’d been given free rein. It was only because of our own initiative that we caught Craig. If we’d had our eyes peeled for the right things, maybe Hayleigh wouldn’t have been taken.”
“We don’t know how things could’ve been different,” Olivia reasoned. “We’ll never know now. All we can do is move forward with what we have.”
Brock smiled to himself, leaning back in his chair. “You don’t like criticizing the boss? Come on, it’s just you and me. You can be honest.”
Olivia’s lips twitched into a smile. “Alright, he’s kind of an ass.”
“Kind of?”
“Okay, he’s definitely an ass.”
“Well, well, well. I never expected to hear such rudeness coming from your mouth. Am I a bad influence on you?”
“Oh, sure,” Olivia said, rolling her eyes. “But I’m not saying anything else about Jonathan. He means well.”
“You’re too nice, Olivia.”
“And you’re too mean. He’s old and stuck in his ways—”
“Old? He’s only got about ten years on us. Now who’s being mean?”
Olivia laughed, genuinely, and she felt some of the stress of the day melting away from her. She’s beginning to feel so comfortable around Brock that she’d let her guard down a little. She couldn’t remember the last time she did that around anyone. Over those few weeks, she’d told him more than she’d told her closest friends. Sure, her friends knew that her mother had disappeared, and of course they knew about what happened to her sister, but she’d never told them how she felt about it. So she’d gone from talking about the serious stuff with Brock to laughing and joking with him. There were very few people she felt comfortable doing both with.
You’ve got it bad, Olivia tells herself.
They made their way to the town’s police station. Pine Woods was even smaller than Belle Grove, but it made Olivia even more sure that if something was amiss in the town, then they’d find out what it was.
Brock and Olivia headed inside together and found a man with a thick gray mustache sitting in the reception area, watching something on the computer screen that sounded like a sports game. He looked up and saw them, quickly switching off his monitor.
“Can I help you?”
Olivia badged him and stepped forward to shake his hand. “I hope so. Olivia Knight and Brock Tanner, with the FBI.”
“FBI, huh?” the man asked, putting his hands on his large hips. “You’re not here about those kidnapping cases, are you?”
“Actually, yes. We’re looking to extend our search and see if we can find anything out about the neighboring towns. We think that the young girl who escaped her captor might’ve come from one of the towns, but escaped through the forest.”
“You think she was held here?”
“Maybe. We’re in an unusual situation. Amelia Barnes is non-verbal, and additionally not even from the state. She hasn’t been able to tell us anything about the case. There are no residential homes in the forest where she could’ve been held, and the forest is so vast and overgrown that we don’t know whether she’d have been able to tell us anything about it even if she was able to speak,” Brock explained. “We’re just exploring other avenues. I assume people have been concerned here too?”
“Definitely,” the officer told them. “A lot of parents have been keeping their kids at home after school, not letting them go to their extracurriculars. Our town has always been very safe, the children are used to playing out on the streets and walking around in the evenings alone once they’re a little older. But the teenage girls in particular have been concerned for their own safety. In fact, I think the whole thing has created some unnecessary hysteria.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked, intrigued. The officer sighed.
“Well, for starters, lots of rumors are going around. Several people have reported seeing dark figures out on the street in the middle of the night. One young lady claimed that she saw someone standing outside her home, staring up at her window.”
Olivia shuddered at the thought. It was so creepy that it didn’t seem possible that it was true, but maybe their kidnapper was braver than she thought. They’d been under the radar this whole time, but maybe Olivia and Brock had just been looking in the wrong place.
“It sounds like suburban panic to me,” Brock shrugged, sounding unimpressed. “I mean, kids make up crazy ghost stories all the time. Some kid probably just heard about what’s happening over in Belle Grove and thought it would be funny to wind everyone up.”
“That’s what I thought too,” the officer nodded. “But people are getting nervous anyway. We’ve suggested that people should stay home if they can, so anyone out on the street looks suspicious to everyone else. Two days ago, we had a report of someone setting off a car alarm in the street and running away. Everyone’s been on edge lately.”
“Interesting,” Olivia said quietly. She knew that they were clutching at straws once again, hoping to make something out of nothing, but she did think it was a little strange that things were a little amiss in Pine Woods too. Maybe the kidnapper would even strike there next. But the question still remained: how were they getting inside the houses? The Roberts house had shown no signs of forced entry again. Even if Sophia had left the house on her own accord and been snatched, that didn’t appear to be the case for Hayleigh.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, but it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Brock told the officer. “Belle Grove has enforced a curfew. It might be wise to do the same here, and to increase police patrols. We’re having a hard time tracking down suspects, to be honest.”
“Well, I hope you manage to find some answers soon. We’re all a little on edge here too,” the officer admitted. “We have nothing concrete here. Like you said, kids make up things for fun all the time. It’s entirely possible that no one here has seen anything real. But if there’s someone out there terrorizing kids... then I want my neighborhood to be safe. I’ll try and enforce a curfew by tonight. I appreciate you coming up here to talk to me. We’re not used to things like this around these parts.”
Olivia nodded and handed him a copy of her card. “Call us if you have any trouble. Anything you see or hear, we want to know. Even if it turns out not to be relevant, you never know.”
“Will do. Thank you. This must be a tough case for you to handle.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Brock replied with a weary smile. As he and Olivia retreated to the car, Brock let out an overexaggerated shudder.
“Brrr. Just the thought of someone walking around the streets, waiting to strike, is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. Do you think there’s any truth to it?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully, if there is, the police patrols will make the kidnapper think twice,” Olivia said. “But stealing away a young girl in the middle of a sleepover... that was ballsy. I’ve said it before, but this person really seems to know what they’re doing. I think the towns will feel safer with police protection, but I wouldn’t put it past the kidnapper to strike again when we’re not expecting it. This is getting worse and worse.”
“I guess we’re just going to have to try and stay one step ahead. I think it was the right call to come here. But now, let’s head back and review what we have. We’ve got a lot of new information to work with. In the morning, we can check in with Maggie and see if the police had any luck overnight.”
Olivia nodded and got in the car. She felt more in control of the case now than any time since it started, but there was still a lot of work to do.
They needed to stay on their toes because Olivia could guarantee that the kidnapper was on theirs.
Nineteen
As Olivia and Brock cruised through Belle Grove, the town seemed different. Nobody was out walking between the little shops on the main streets. No cars were on the road. No children were playing bene
ath the setting sun out on the streets. Olivia had never seen so many parked cars safely stowed in their driveway spots, with people desperate to get home and locked away as soon as possible. A lone police car cruised through the streets, looking for trouble. Brock shook his head.
“I bet the people here never thought they’d have to live like this. It’s awful.”
Olivia nodded. “It’s for the best, though, if it keeps them safe. Though I’m not so sure that it will.”
“If our suspect tries again, we’ll definitely be able to get more evidence this time, right?” Brock mused. “Or at least an eyewitness. They’re getting more and more reckless. That last strike was bordering on crazy.”
“Maybe we need things to get a little crazier,” Olivia murmured. “Sometimes, crazy actions are easier to decipher than sane ones.”
Brock didn’t respond to that, but Olivia knew he agreed. That was the reason the case had been so difficult so far, she was sure of it. They were dealing with someone so level-headed that they were almost ordinary. Olivia didn’t think the suspect was some psycho-killer. But the kidnapper, whoever they were, was teetering on the edge of madness now, doing things that they should think twice about. That was a difficult thing to get used to. The case was evolving, and they needed to as well.
“I don’t think I want to head back to the B&B yet,” Brock admitted. “I want to feel like we’re being productive. Why don’t we take a shift on the patrol for a while? I’m sure they can use all the eyes they can get.”
“Sure. I’ve got nowhere to be,” Olivia shrugged. She didn’t want to admit aloud that had no issue with spending some extra time in Brock’s presence. As they drove around in silence, she felt comfortable in their quietness. Having him next to her made some of her anxiety from the day melt away. He was the only one who was going through the same thing that she was, and he was the only one who could comfort her through it. Having him at her side was quickly becoming the only piece of normality and happiness she could still cling to.
The windows were misting up a little as they drove around, making it harder for Olivia to keep her eyes peeled for trouble. They drove up past the Edwards home, where the lights in the house were already extinguished. Olivia’s heart ached for Alice and Elijah, trapped in their misery with no new information. She desperately wished she had something to tell them. She wished more than anything that she could solve the case just so that she could give them some good news. Brock seemed to know what she was thinking because he reached over to pat her leg.
“Soon,” he said gently. Olivia blushed. Was she really so easy to read? Or was Brock just learning her from her front cover to her back?
“Have you heard anything from the Barnes family?” Brock asked a few minutes later. “Has Amelia been okay?”
“She’s recovering fast, the last I heard,” Olivia told him, smiling a little. “She’s managed to put some weight back on. Her parents said she’s been eating a lot, and she seems to be in a good mood. Of course, she’ll never forget what happened to her, and without the ability to talk about what happened to her, she’ll always be alone in her experience, but her parents will take good care of her, I’m sure of it. She’ll be okay.”
“So I was thinking…”
“Did it hurt?” Olivia cracked. Brock made a face as if to pretend he was wounded.
“The kidnapper let Amelia escape, right? Either she got out of there on her own and the kidnapper didn’t track her down, or the kidnapper actively allowed her to leave. She was held for three weeks and then she ran off through the woods.”
“Okay…”
“What if the kidnapper will let Sophia and Hayleigh go, too? What if two or three weeks from now, they’ll make it back here, a little worse for wear, but otherwise unharmed?”
Olivia chewed her lip. “I mean, it’s possible. But I don’t think we can rely on that at all. The kidnapper has established a lot of patterns, but that might not be one of them. They might only have done that because they knew Amelia wouldn’t be able to speak about what happened to her, and because she was nowhere near home. Besides, I’m hoping somehow that we’ll find them before then.”
“Of course, that’s the hope. But I don’t know, I guess I’ve been clinging to the hope that they might somehow come back anyway. There have to be silver linings in a case like this, right? Even if we can’t solve it, maybe things are going to be okay. Maybe those girls will be fine in the end.”
Olivia felt something in her chest lift a little. Brock was right. It was a nice thought. She wanted to be the one to solve the case, to put the kidnapper away for good, but more than anything, she wanted those girls to make it home. She wanted their parents to be able to rest a little easier knowing their children were okay. She wanted to see some light at the end of the very dark tunnel they’d somehow been trapped in.
Brock’s theory suddenly made everything easier to process. She hoped it was accurate. She didn’t know how likely it could be, but nevertheless, the idea made everything easier to deal with.
They turned into the road where Hayleigh was reported missing and the heaviness returned a little to Olivia’s chest. It was hard to believe in that affluent neighborhood such as Hayleigh’s that something so awful had happened. She knew that it was often the poorer neighborhoods that were burdened by tragedy—and the police were never as interested in getting to the bottom of the issues there. Yet in a richer neighborhood, any kind of crime was taken very seriously.
Olivia wondered what had made the kidnapper go for those richer communities. It wasn’t for ransom, as their complete indifference to the Barnes’ family’s reward proved. Sophia’s family were very well-off too. Did the kidnapper want something that they had? Did they want to get a taste of the life of luxury, or steal it away from the people who had it? Or did they simply understand that while the rich felt untouchable, they were far from it, and wanted to shatter the illusion by stealing away their children? Olivia didn’t know. She found it very hard to get inside the mind of a kidnapper when she’d never had the urge to upturn someone’s life so completely.
“What’s going on there?” Brock asks suddenly, slowing down. Through the misted-up window, Olivia saw that they were outside the Roberts residence, but Brock wasn’t looking at her house. She saw Maggie standing outside of Susan Combes’ house, writing something down as Susan gesticulated wildly, telling a tale that Olivia couldn’t hear. She exchanged a glance with Brock and they both silently got out of the car, ready to investigate.
It only took Olivia a second to realize what the reason for all the fuss was. There was a huge hole where Susan’s front window used to be, with only a little bit of shattered glass still clinging to the window frame. Susan seemed very distressed by it all and her cheeks were even streaked with tears. Olivia and Brock joined Maggie in standing on the grass, ready to listen to Susan’s story.
“What happened?” Olivia asked gently as she faced Susan. The woman took a shuddering breath, her lip wobbling a little.
“Someone put a brick through my window!” Susan cried out. “Some little thug threw a huge brick through my window and now there’s no way I can stay here. I’m not safe. Someone has it out for me.”
Olivia bit her lip. Susan seemed even more manic than she was at the station. After Brock’s assessment that she was an alcoholic, Olivia could now see the signs that he’d pointed out to her. She was shaking like a leaf, and her nose looked red and blotchy. The rest of her skin looked a little gray, like the color had been sucked out of her. Her eyes were full of angry red stripes and she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Olivia’s first instinct was to feel sorry for her. Sure, the brick through the window was probably just kids messing around, but she had a right to be scared with so much going on in her hometown.
“I’m sure this was nothing personal, Susan,” Brock told her gently. “What reason would someone have to target you? It’s probably just a silly prank gone wrong.”
“But there’s a curfew,” Maggi
e pointed out. “I doubt any kids are running wild on the streets tonight. The strange thing is that no one saw anyone in the area after it happened. It caused a commotion for the neighbors, but none of them saw who did it. It’s like whoever did it just vanished into thin air.”
Olivia felt a chill run down her spine. Could this have been done by the kidnapper? Were they simply trying to play with them now, scaring them by hiding in plain sight after such disruptive actions?
“Someone’s got it out for me,” Susan cried once again. “I was trying to be helpful, giving the police information about what happened to Hayleigh, but now someone is giving me a warning. They know what I did. They want me to suffer for getting too close to the truth…”
Olivia sighed. Susan’s theatrics certainly weren’t helping the situation, but she was too far gone in her own interpretation of the truth to bring her back to reality. Still, she had to try.
“Susan... take a deep breath. I doubt anyone was watching you go to the station to give evidence.”
“Then why me?” Susan snapped. “Why my house? It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Where were you when the brick was thrown through the window,” Brock asked, trying to divert her back onto some kind of track. Susan looked at him with startling intensity.
“I was asleep upstairs. I’ve had a long day, so I decided to take a nap. But of course, I woke up right away when I heard the noise,” Susan sniffed, running her entire arm under her nose to wipe it messily. She was certainly looking a little worse for wear. It was then that Olivia noticed how untamed her hair was. Like she’d just woken up. It made the story seem credible, at least.
