Not Our Daughter

Seven

Cole pulled his gray 1998 Dodge Ram pickup into a parking spot outside the Safeway grocery store near his home. Shifting into park, he turned the key and listened to the struggling engine sputter and cough for several seconds before finally shutting down. It did the same thing when starting up. The disturbing noises had grown worse over the past month. He wasn’t sure how much longer the truck would survive without putting in a whole new engine—which probably wasn’t worth it on a vehicle with more than 250,000 miles on it. He’d purchased the pickup with cash when they’d first moved to Colorado. It had been a trusted ride for a long time. He just wanted it to hang in there for a little while longer. Every extra dime they had needed to be reserved for Jade’s surgery expenses—although accessing the offshore account had helped with that stress.

His cell phone buzzed. A text message from Lisa.

Can you also pick me up a tub of cookies & cream?

He responded with a thumbs-up and smiled. This had been a good day. He hadn’t felt this content in a long time. He’d loved spending so much time with Jade on her birthday. Quality time had been harder to find lately as she became more independent. She was always off with friends now. But she at least still seemed to enjoy hanging out with her parents. His teaching job put him around young adults and their families all the time. He knew teenagers wanting to spend any time with their parents was an anomaly. Maybe he and Lisa could somehow sidestep the moody-teenager-hates-her-parents stage. He laughed to himself. Unlikely. He knew it was coming. Especially when he started enforcing stricter boundaries around the whole “boy” thing—as if he didn’t know where Jade had sneaked off to this afternoon. Tyler seemed like a good kid. But even good kids couldn’t be trusted. Cole knew he’d have to keep close tabs on that situation. Lisa seemed to have forgotten how they’d behaved when they first started dating back in high school.

It was difficult to believe that had been more than twenty-five years ago. Their courtship began as juniors, when they paired up in science lab. He fell for her almost instantly—the eyes, the smile. But it was mostly her calming demeanor. Cole could be controlled by his big emotions. Sometimes too high, sometimes too low. But Lisa had a way of steadying the ship inside him. After high school, they’d both headed to Arizona State. They were never apart. Lisa was all he knew—and all he ever wanted to know. They got married right after college graduation. That was an incredible day with lots of friends and family. His older brother was his best man. Her two younger sisters were her maids of honor. His mom cried. Her dad even shed tears. Cole sighed just thinking about it. All people they loved so dearly whom they hadn’t seen or spoken to since the night they’d disappeared.

That had been the most brutal part of their thirteen-year journey. They could never risk contacting family. They’d learned that the hard way their second year on the run, when Lisa had called her mother from an old pay phone at a random convenience store. Four hours later, the police had shown up at their apartment building. The Feds clearly had her parents’ phones tapped. Fortunately, Cole and Lisa weren’t at their apartment at the time. A neighbor had texted Lisa and asked why the cops were banging on their apartment door. She said there were four police cars in the parking lot with lights swirling. Cole wasn’t sure how the FBI had tracked them to the apartment so quickly. But they hit the highway with Jade within minutes of that text message and never looked back.

Lisa had made the phone call to her mother that day only after monitoring social media channels and finding out her father had gotten very sick and was in the hospital fighting for his life. Unfortunately, her dad passed away, and when he was put to rest a week later, Lisa wasn’t there. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. She didn’t get to hug on her sisters or mourn with her mother. She’d cried herself to sleep for two weeks straight afterward. It was a gut-wrenching experience. One of many they’d endured.

Cole got out of his truck and headed toward the front doors of the grocery store. He rubbed his arms. It was a crisp night, and he wore only a Denver Nuggets T-shirt and blue jeans. He should’ve grabbed a light jacket or hoodie. The parking lot was about a third full. Mostly trucks and SUVs. If you didn’t want to slip and slide in the winter, you’d better have four-wheel drive. The snow could dump fast and heavy. You might not be able to get out of your own neighborhood some days without it.

Cole stepped out of the way as a black Ford Taurus pulled up his row and slowly passed by him. He gave a casual glance at the driver and then paused to give a quick look back. The driver looked oddly familiar. Was it the same guy who’d been over in Grand Lake taking photographs earlier today? He watched for a moment as the driver parked five spots over from his truck. But he didn’t get out right away. What was he doing? It didn’t look like he was on his phone or anything. He was just sitting there. Cole squinted but couldn’t tell for sure if it was the same guy, so he turned and continued into the store.

He grabbed a small grocery basket near the front and navigated back to the frozen dessert section. He found a tub of Jade’s favorite vanilla ice cream, then a tub for Lisa, and began heading toward the front. When he turned the corner of an aisle, he stopped, stepped back. The guy from the parking lot had entered the store and now stood across the way near the front. Cole quickly backtracked. Then he peered around the end of the aisle again. It was definitely the same guy. Cole had never seen him before today. Was it only a coincidence he was there inside this store with him right now? Perhaps. These were small towns. You tended to run into the same people all the time.

But this man didn’t seem local. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on earlier: white button-down, black dress pants, black dress shoes. If he was local, wouldn’t the guy have gone home to change into something more casual? It had been more than eight hours since they were at Grand Lake. He was just standing there, his eyes intently bouncing all around, as though he were searching for someone. Cole wondered if that someone could be him. Had the guy actually been taking photographs of him earlier? If so, why? This didn’t sit well with Cole. He’d become an expert over the years at monitoring those who gave him second looks or stared at him a bit too long. He was always paranoid the next stranger he encountered could be the one to destroy his family. Maybe it was nothing. But he needed to figure this guy out fast, or at minimum it would leave him unsettled and ruin the rest of his night.

Cole set his grocery basket down and briskly walked in the opposite direction, away from the guy. He couldn’t go straight out the front doors. From the guy’s current position, he would be able to see that. Instead, Cole found a swinging door in the back of the store where employees entered and exited. He pushed through the door, nodded confidently at a store worker, whose eyes narrowed while looking up at him, and kept on moving—like he belonged back there. He entered a stockroom with huge metal shelves filled with various boxes and wooden crates. He quickly shuffled through that area until he spotted a massive, open garage door, as well as a cargo truck currently being unloaded. Hurrying over in that direction, he stepped around some of the workers, then hit a set of concrete steps outside. Safely on the pavement, he took off running, swiftly circling around the outside of the grocery store, until he was finally up to the front again.

Peering around the building’s corner, Cole made sure the guy in the black slacks was not standing directly out front. There was no sign of him anywhere, so Cole rushed into the parking lot, staying close to the edge, tucked out of view, then finally came in from the back of the cars. Cole hesitantly approached the black Ford Taurus, making sure he didn’t miss someone else who may have also been inside the vehicle. The car sat empty. He leaned into the passenger window. There was a Starbucks cup in the cup holder. A name was scribbled with a black marker. Todd? He now had a first name. There was a pack of cigarettes in the middle console, along with a package of wintergreen gum. Sitting in the front passenger seat was an accordion folder of sorts with rubber bands around it. He couldn’t find anything written on the outside of the folder.

He tried to open the car door, but it was locked. He moved to the back window. A couple of fast-food bags lay wadded up on the floor. One was for a chain they didn’t have in Winter Park. A black duffel bag sat in the back seat, unzipped, but Cole couldn’t see what was inside it. He quickly circled the vehicle and peered in from the opposite back window. That’s when he felt a level of panic hit his chest he hadn’t felt in more than ten years. It nearly dropped him to his knees. A feeling he’d hoped to never experience again. But it was here, nevertheless. A dark-blue jacket was folded up in the back seat, and he could clearly see three familiar, bold yellow letters emblazoned on the back. FBI.