Chapter Six #2
Randall noticed her looking and spoke quietly. “I painted it. A tribute to the son I never got to hold.” There was bitterness in his tone, but muted, tempered in a way that Leah’s anger never was.
Leah’s heels clicked across the polished marble as she led them into a vast living room with pale furniture and towering windows that flooded the space with light. She didn’t gesture for them to sit. She simply turned on them, her chin lifting.
“What’s going on?” Leah demanded. Then, with a flick of her gaze, she added, “Is this about the shooting at the foster ranch last night?”
Isla wasn’t surprised Leah had already heard about the shooting. What riled her was that Leah didn’t even ask how Trudy was doing.
“What have you heard about the attack?” Garrett asked.
“I’ll answer that at the sheriff’s office, not here in my own home,” Leah said, her voice sharp enough to cut.
Her gaze locked on Garrett, hard and accusing.
“I’ll answer to the law. Not to some civilian black ops soldier who’ll never admit the truth.
And that truth is the woman who raised him was recklessly negligent.
She left a vulnerable newborn in the care of two teenagers, and look what happened. ”
The air in the room seemed to tighten, pressing in around Isla. Heat surged through her veins, anger spiking so hot she almost stepped forward to defend Trudy. But Garrett spoke first.
“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice cold enough to slice straight through Leah’s fury. “It wasn’t on Trudy. It was on me. I was negligent. I was the one who failed Harris.”
The words hit Isla like a blow. She had known he carried the guilt, had felt the weight of it between them for years, but hearing it spoken out loud like that left her throat tight. He meant it. Every syllable. And the ice in his tone told her he had no intention of ever forgiving himself.
Garrett’s words left a raw silence hanging in the room, one that scraped at Isla’s nerves. She couldn’t let him shoulder it alone. Not when she knew the truth.
“It was me, too,” Isla said, her voice low but steady. “I was there. I was supposed to be watching Harris. I failed him just as much as Garrett did.”
Leah’s eyes sparked with fresh fire. “So you admit it. Both of you. You failed him, and Trudy failed him. I was troubled, yes, just a kid myself, but instead of helping me fight to get my son back, Trudy handed over his care to the likes of you two and let someone walk in and steal him. She let someone kidnap him right out from under your noses.”
Her voice rose, sharper with each word, the sound rattling through Isla until it felt like the walls might shake with it. Leah’s rant poured out, her fury aimed at them, at Trudy, at the past.
But Randall eased between them, lifting a hand in quiet peace, his voice calm as silk. “Let’s not do this.”
Again, he got a nasty glare from his wife, making Isla wonder about this obvious tension between them. Maybe Randall didn’t approve of his wife’s anger-blast approach to figure out what had happened to their son.
Randall shifted, his attention turning toward his daughter. “Anais. Tell them why you asked them here.”
Anais hesitated, her eyes darting toward her mother before settling back on Garrett and Isla. “I didn’t want to talk about this in front of Mom. I know how upset she gets.” She drew in a shaky breath. “She has a really hard time with the anniversaries of Harris’s disappearance.”
Her voice dipped lower, soft with confession. “We all do. My parents never got to raise their son. And I never got the chance to know my brother.” She swallowed, her gaze bright with determination. “But I believe he’s still out there somewhere.”
Randall’s features softened, a wistful ache passing over him. “I’m always looking,” he admitted. “At the faces of young men who’d be about his age now. I can’t help wondering if one of them is him.”
Isla felt the weight of his words sink deep, heavy and aching. His grief pressed against her chest, stirring another twist of guilt in her gut. She had failed Harris too, and that guilt never left. But she would not let that blame fall on Trudy. Not after everything the woman had given them.
Anais shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her hands twisting together. “Do you think the attack on Trudy was because of Harris?”
The question caught Isla off guard. She straightened. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe Trudy knew who took him,” Anais said, her voice unsteady. “And the abductor wanted to make sure the truth never came out.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have someone specific in mind as Harris’s abductor?”
Anais lifted her chin, her gaze steady now. “Yes. Paula Benton. The social worker.”
Isla wasn’t exactly surprised. The name had been on her list from the beginning, and hearing it from Anais’s lips only tightened the knot of suspicion in her chest.
Anais’s words came in a rush, her green eyes sparking with determination. “I think Paula has Harris. She wants everyone to believe my parents took him, but they didn’t.”
“Why do you think that?” Isla asked.
“Because I’ve been watching her,” Anais said. “I’m a data science major. I know how to track people online, through their posts, their patterns. Paula doesn’t have a real life. She doesn’t travel, doesn’t socialize, barely even shops outside of the basics. Everything about her is… hidden.”
Isla’s chest tightened as Anais kept going.
“She lives on a piece of property that used to be a campground. Dozens of acres, cabins scattered all over. More than enough space to keep someone out of sight. She was denied adoption right before Harris went missing. What if she took him? What if she raised him there all these years?”
The theory sounded wild, but the kind of wild that Isla couldn’t and wouldn’t dismiss out of hand.
Of course, she couldn’t dismiss another theory either, that Leah had been the one to take Harris.
Too bad they couldn’t ask Leah about that trip to her safe deposit box, but maybe Sheriff Raines would get that info from Leah during her interview.
Anais pulled her phone from the pocket of her hoodie. “There was a guy flying a drone near Paula’s property. He uploaded the footage online, just landscape stuff, but I downloaded it and went through it frame by frame. This was taken right over her land.”
She hesitated, her gaze flicking toward her parents. “I didn’t want to tell you, not until I was sure. Not until I saw something.”
With a quick swipe, Anais brought up an image on her phone screen. The photo was grainy, the figure little more than a blur of arms and legs against the backdrop of cabins.
Anais tilted the phone so Isla and Garrett could see.
Isla’s stomach dropped. Her breath caught hard in her throat, the sight hitting her like a punch. The figure was shadowy, indistinct, yet the shape, the size, the very possibility carved into her chest like a blade.
Her voice slipped out in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, God.”
Because she knew. She could very well be looking at Harris.