Chapter 23 Grayson
GRAYSON
Ican’t fucking believe it. Cameron is alive.
As the footage of her first appearance in seventeen years plays for the umpteenth time, I take in all her features.
The recording is grainy but unmistakable.
Her face. Her eyes. Her top lip that’s slightly bigger than its bottom counterpart.
They’re all exactly the same, and they scream the same thing.
Cameron June is alive.
Goose bumps break out across my arms when I zoom in on a frozen frame until the pixels blur into a mosaic of color.
Even from this angle, I still know it is her.
The curve of her jaw is a dead giveaway, so I won’t mention the way she twirls her dead straight hair before she tucks it behind her ear.
I know that gesture well because I witnessed her do it a thousand times when we dated.
My heart slams against my ribs as if it is moments from breaking free.
She’s alive, but she ran.
I called her name. She looked right at me—and then she fled.
Why would she do that? Shouldn’t she be running to me, not away from me?
A heavy feeling settles low in my stomach as I struggle to unjumble everything. Theories crash into me, though none of them stick. She’s meant to be relieved that I finally found her. Grateful.
She didn’t appear to be either of those things.
It is like she’s confused, and something much more perverse.
Fear was the first expression that crossed her face. I don’t believe it was for me. It was something else. Something bigger.
But what would I know? I’ve imagined this moment for years, pictured every possible scenario. This afternoon’s event didn’t come close to the thousands of scenes I’ve played out in my head.
Perhaps I’ve finally crashed from exhaustion? Maybe I fell asleep on the couch again, my body squashed against a stack of old files, and this is just another cruel trick of my subconscious.
When my hand balls, my clipped nails dig into my palm. The pain is real enough, and the scent of the recently brewed pot of coffee and the faint trace of Macy’s perfume in the air are real too. I’m awake. It just feels like I’m in a dream.
My inflated chest sinks as I punish the keyboard with my fingers.
I need answers, like where Cameron has been all these years and what she has been through.
But most importantly, I need to know why her sudden appearance hasn’t stopped me from constantly licking my lips, seeking a smidge of Macy’s lip gloss on my mouth.
Before guilt can surface, fear takes its place. I jump out of my skin when Brandon’s face fills the screen of my laptop. He’s been trying to get my attention since I returned from the Lamaze class, but I have too much work to do to break it down for him.
Furthermore, I’m clueless as to what the fuck is happening, so how can I explain it to anyone else?
Cameron is alive, and for now, that is all that matters. Everything else can wait.
Except, perhaps, Kendall, and the many other women in her predicament.
While shrinking the box holding Brandon’s concerned face and moving it to the corner of my screen, I remind myself that bringing Cameron home could lead us to Kendall’s abductors.
He misses my wave of the white flag. “Grayson, slow down. We need to tread cautiously with this.”
I don’t look at him while dragging a frame of the footage into the bureau’s facial recognition program. “It’s her.”
“I know,” he agrees. “But we don’t know what we’re walking into here. She ran—”
“For a reason!” I snap, my nostrils flaring. “She’s in danger. You saw her face. She looked terrified.”
Brandon’s noisy breath whistles through the speakers. “I’m not saying don’t pursue this. I am merely saying not to let your emotions cloud your judgment.”
I scoff. It’s too fucking late for that.
The system whirrs as it runs Cameron’s face through thousands of matches. I tap my foot, impatient. Seconds have never felt like hours until now.
“Come on,” I mutter, pissed that the advancement of technology hasn’t quickened the process of facial recognition.
Brandon watches me like a hawk tracking its prey, but he remains quiet. He’s trying to be the voice of reason. It isn’t working. Not when Cameron is in the same state as me, waiting for me to slot in the final piece of the puzzle.
My laptop pings, sending a surge of adrenaline racing through my veins.
The system found a match.
I click open the folder, my heart hammering like when Macy’s lips parted after only the briefest lash of my tongue.
The profile is sparse, but it gives me enough information to work with—a new name, a local address, and an old Myspace username.
There are no employment records and no current social media presence.
That isn’t surprising. Even women freed from the madness for a year or two find it hard to follow the grain.
Katie still doesn’t have a driver’s license.
I also don’t believe Cameron is out of the woods yet. A quick investigation of her previous residence reveals that the building had an above-average number of female occupants under thirty when she lived there, and their combined birthrate last year was higher than that of some rural communities.
Something shady is happening, and I am determined to find out what it is.
As my fingers flex, I scan the metadata of her file. A local law enforcement officer attached a note to Cameron’s alias after a surveillance sweep flagged her as a subject of interest two months ago. No charges were filed, and the department conducted no follow-up interviews.
After scooting closer to my makeshift desk, I pull up flagged footage dated almost eight weeks ago.
It is clearer than the footage we secured today.
Cameron is walking through a busy market.
She has her head down so her hair, which is several shades darker than when she was abducted, covers her beautiful face, and an oversized hoodie hides her body.
I watch the footage three times before something catches my eye.
Her stomach is swollen. Not quite as round as Macy’s, but I’m skeptical that the curve in the lower half of her stomach is a food baby. It looks too firm and is beach-ball shaped.
As Macy places a recently refilled mug of coffee on the desk, I freeze the frame where a brisk gust paints Cameron’s hoodie to her body, and then I zoom in.
“She’s pregnant,” Macy murmurs, reading the footage in the same manner as me.
My breath catches as I nod. I was not anticipating this development.
Brandon rejoins the conversation as if he has always been a part of it, though he only says one word. “Jesus.”
“Could this be why she ran?”
I’m spitballing, but Brandon answers me as if I asked a question. “Possibly.” His expression morphs, the caution switched for something else. Understanding. Maybe even guilt. “But we won’t know anything until we talk to the detective who first questioned her.”
“She’s been under surveillance?” When an agreeing murmur vibrates on my lips, Macy’s brows join. “So her location has been compromised, but they didn’t move her. Why?”
I shrug, lost.
“Maybe she’s bait.” Brandon’s low tone is eerie, like he’s cautious of how I will react. “Or maybe they’re waiting to see who comes looking for her?”
Needing to pace, I push away from the desk. I feel fucking useless, like I’m sitting on my hands instead of responding as any agent should in a situation like this. I have Cameron’s current address, so why the fuck am I still here, twiddling my thumbs?
“We need to get her out. Now.”
I’m not looking at Brandon, but the whoosh of his nod tapers out of the speakers of both my laptop and the television.
“We’ll need a plan. Something clean. Quiet.
” His sigh is loud enough to be deafening.
“But every angle is blocked. Her building is worse than a fortress. There are cameras everywhere. I doubt we will find a way in without triggering something.”
We’re stuck… until Macy’s lips twist like she isn’t about to drop a bomb. “Why don’t we just knock on her front door?”
I’m too stunned to speak, so Brandon picks up the slack. “What?”
Macy’s smile hides the hurt in her eyes.
I don’t believe her pain is physical. She’s been quiet since I identified the mysterious brunette from the surveillance footage.
“Tobias always encouraged an old-fashioned approach. I’ll walk up and pretend to be a neighbor.
People let their guard down when they think you’re harmless.
” She waves her hand at her stomach, which I haven’t gotten around to unwrapping yet. “This makes me appear harmless.”
Brandon’s frown draws lines across his forehead. “That’s risky.”
“It’s simple.” Macy overemphasizes her last word. “And sometimes simple is all you need.”
With Brandon mute, Macy wordlessly gauges my opinion of her suggestion. I’m torn. She’s already spent hours on her feet today. I don’t want her to go into premature labor for me. But I’m also desperate.
After a beat, I say, “Let me think about it—”
“Time isn’t on our side, Grayson. This needs to happen tonight.”
“Tonight?” Brandon and I shout in sync.
Macy nods, hope flickering in her eyes when she spots the concern beaming out of mine.
“Why tonight?”
She fetches a coat from the back of the couch and heads to the door while saying, “Because it’s dinner time and I’m starving.”
Forty-five minutes later, Macy stands outside Cameron’s building. She’s dressed in the outfit she wore during our sting, so we didn’t have to wire up anything new, and she pulled her hair back in a low-riding bun. She is also holding an empty plate as if it is a perfectly normal thing to do.
Brandon and I undertake surveillance from a van parked down the street.
He hacked into every camera in Cameron’s building and three blocks over, but my focus is on the one in Macy’s brooch.
It doesn’t just show me everything she sees.
It also announces her pulse and blood pressure, which I am pleased to say are in a safe range.