Chapter 10
Sophia didn't sleep.
She lay in the dark and did the math over and over and got the same answer every time, and eventually she gave up on sleep and got up and made coffee and stood at the kitchen window watching the sky go gray at the edges.
The house was quiet. The girls wouldn’t be up for hours. Sophia held her mug and watched the canyon. She was still standing there when her phone buzzed on the counter at five-forty-seven.
Angie.
She answered before the second buzz. “Tell me.”
“Bree isn’t there.” Angie's voice was flat and careful.
“How can you know for sure so fast?”
She didn’t know why she was asking. Of course, Angie knew for sure. Of course, she had found out that fast.
“Bree has two grandmothers. One lives in a nursing home in New Hampshire, the other is Elaine Bowman, aged sixty-eight. She lives on Ponderosa Drive, retired fourth-grade teacher. Elaine is currently on a singles cruise in the Bahamas. She sailed out from Florida three days ago.” There was a long pause. “I’m sorry, Sophia.”
“Mary has her.”
“No, that’s not my take at all,” Angie disagreed.
“What do you mean?”
“Mary is just the conduit. She’s the one who gets in close, applies pressure. She does not get her hands dirty.”
Sophia set down her mug.
The canyon was turning gold at the edges now. She watched it happen.
“I talked to Kayla after you and Lydia left,” she said. “Bree was at school on Wednesday.”
“So they’ve only had her for two days max. That’s good.”
“Angie, how can you say that? Forty-eight hours without knowing where your daughter is? If she’s alive or dead?” Sophia whispered into her phone as she turned to look at the stairs, ensuring that neither of her girls could hear her.
“I’m not saying it’s a good thing. I know that it’s hell. But we’re getting in on this early. That’s a good thing.”
“But getting in on what?” Sophia demanded to know.
“Somebody is putting maximum pressure on Lettie for something to do with the new helicopter proto-type.”
“Yeah, we know. It’s Mary.”
“Mary is a nobody. She’s a fake. She’s a—”
“I don’t care what she is. I need to go and find out what is really going on. I need to help them.”
“I’m stunned Tom hasn’t taken this to command,” Angie said.
“Are you kidding? Lettie is keeping this from Tom. The only reason Peggy knows, is that she’s going through the same thing.”
“You think she’s protecting Tom?” Angie asked.
“I think that she’s protecting Bree, and doing everything she can to keep her daughter safe. I think she is deliberately not telling him.”
“Yeah, that tracks.”
Sophia stood up straight and headed to the refrigerator. “I have to go and see her.”
“Sophia, what in the hell is that going to accomplish?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is she needs to know she has someone on her side.”
“You’re going to scare the hell out of her.”
“Not if I do this right.”
“They could have her under surveillance.”
Sophia pulled a plate of lemon bars out of the refrigerator, then grabbed a box out of a cupboard. “Then all they’ll see is a friend delivering baked goods in the morning. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Sophia—”
“Angie, I have to! I'm not going to push her. I'm not going to say what I know. I just need to see her face. I've seen what this kind of fear looks like, Angie. I've worn it. She needs to know that somebody sees her. That's all.”
“You’re going to push.”
“Only if I think I can help.”
“Call me after you leave.”
“I will.”
She got the girls out the door first. Lisa remembered at the last possible second that she needed her science project, which she had left on the back deck for reasons she couldn't fully explain, and Kayla's permission slip was already signed and on the counter because Kayla had thought of it three days ago and Kayla was not Lisa.
By seven-forty, the house was quiet again.
According to Angie, Tom Bowman left for North Island before seven. She picked up her box of lemon bars and was out the door by eight.
The Bowman house was in a quiet cul-de-sac three neighborhoods over. Tom's truck was gone. The driveway was empty. The curtains in the front room were closed.
Sophia knocked, then waited. She was debating ringing the doorbell when the door was opened.
Lettie looked terrible. Her eyes were tired in a way that neither sleep nor make-up was going to fix. She was holding the door like she needed it to stay upright.
“Sophia.” Genuine surprise. “I wasn't expecting—”
“I'm sorry to show up like this.” She held up the box. “Lemon bars. I had extras and I remembered you liked them.” She smiled. “I can just leave them with you, if now is a bad time for a visit.”
Lettie looked at the box. Then at her. The calculation behind her eyes was fast and tired and resigned.
“Come in,” she finally said.
The house was spotless. Where Lettie looked haggard, the house was immaculate, like she had won the ultimate cleaning service from Molly Maids. It took Sophia a moment to catch on. Lettie needed something to do with her hands while she worried. Something that she could understand and control.
Lettie set the box on the counter and moved toward the coffee maker without being asked, and Sophia sat at the kitchen island and waited for Lettie to say something.
“How’s Lisa?” Lettie asked with her back toward Sophia as she stared at the coffee maker.
“She’s doing well.”
“That’s good.”
When it was clear that Lettie wasn’t going to say anything more, Sophia figured it was time.
“How's Bree liking Temecula?” Sophia asked.
Lettie's hands stilled on the mugs she was pulling from the cupboard. Just for a moment. “She's having a good time.” She turned and placed the two mugs on the island in front of Sophia. “Bree loves her grandmother.”
“She must.” Sophia kept her voice easy. “Kayla's missed her at practice.”
“She'll be home soon.” Lettie poured them both coffee.
Sophia wrapped her hands around the warmth and looked at her. Not demanding. Not pressing. Just… looking.
Lettie's eyes filled….
She blinked it back. Fast. Turned toward the counter again.
“Lettie.”
“Don't.” Her voice came out barely above a whisper. “Sophia, please.”
“I'm not going to ask you anything.” She meant that. “I just want you to know that I see you. Whatever you're carrying right now? I see it. And you don't have to be alone in it.”
A long silence.
Lettie's shoulders rose. Her hand pressed flat to the counter. She stood that way for a moment, very still, like she was deciding something she'd already decided against a hundred times.
“You can't help me.” She turned around. Her face was composed. It cost her something to make it composed. “Nobody can. And if you try… if anyone tries —” She stopped. Pressed her lips together. “Please. For your own sake. For Kayla's sake. Let. This. Go.”
Sophia looked at her.
For Kayla's sake.
She felt something go cold and still inside her. She kept her expression exactly the same.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I hear you.”
Lettie's breath came out slowly, like a pressure valve releasing.
“Thank you for the lemon bars,” she said.
Sophia finished her coffee. Made small talk for two more minutes, the easy kind, the kind that let someone feel like they could regain their footing, then let herself out.
She sat in her car at the curb and did not start the engine.
For Kayla's sake.
Lettie hadn't said that by accident. She'd said it to make Sophia stop. To make her understand the reach of whatever this was. To tell her, in the only way she could, that it wasn't just the mechanic families in the circle. That this could easily go bigger.
Sophia stared at the Bowman house.
She started the car and headed to the bakery.
Sophia called Angie as soon as she pulled her car into her spot at the bakery.
“She's been told that asking for help would make it worse,” Sophia said. “Those were her words. 'Nobody can. For your own sake, don't.'“
“That's control,” Angie said immediately. “Classic leverage. Whoever has Bree is keeping Lettie afraid and isolated. Any deviation, they've told her, blows back on the people around her.”
“It's working. Angie…she said for Kayla's sake.”
A beat.
“She named Kayla specifically?”
“Yes.”
The line was quiet for a moment.
“I need to run something down,” Angie said, and her voice had shifted. Flat. Professional. “Give me until noon.”
“Noon,” Sophia repeated. Then she headed inside.
The work routine helped. Hands in dough, eyes on timers, the warm, close smell of butter and sugar. She'd been doing this for more than twenty years and her body knew the motions completely, which meant her brain could move independently.
She shuddered as she realized that just five blocks from her was a woman named Mary who knew where Bree Bowman was. Who was holding a fourteen-year-old girl against her will. It made her sick.
Her phone rang just before noon. Lydia, not Angie. She rushed to her office and closed her door.
“I found something.” Lydia's voice had its flat, careful quality.
The one that meant she was being precise because what she was about to say mattered.
“I've been looking at how Mary's digital identity was built.
It's sophisticated. It would pass casual scrutiny.
But there's a pattern to the construction that Rylie recognized. Certain choices in how the backstory was anchored.”
Sophia sat down behind her desk. “Where have you seen it?”
“We've been cross-referencing. The pattern matches a set of constructed identities we've tracked in connection with West African militant networks. Not definitively. There's no direct line. But the signature is there.”
The bakery was quiet around her. The Boko Haram. How many times had their men gone on missions against that terrorist group? Five times? Ten times? Was it a coincidence? It had to be, this had nothing to do with the Midnight Delta team.
“Lydia, what do you think of all of this?”
“The Boko Haram is not known for espionage. But someone could be using their models. It’s possible this has nothing to do with them.”
“What’s your gut say?”
“If you want a gut response, ask Rylie. I look at facts. Let me track this down some more.”
That was right. That was Lydia.
“Okay. What are our next steps?”
“We find the girl,” Lydia said simply.
“Right. Can you do that?”
“Yes. Give us just a little bit of time.”
“What can I do?” Sophia asked.
“Sit tight.”
“Wrong answer.”
“Sit tight until tomorrow. Can you do that?”
Sophia considered Lydia’s request. “Yes.”
“Good. That’s good. Remember. This is what we do. We’re damn good at it.”
“I know.”
Sophia hung up the phone, and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t stop seeing Bree that last time at the lacrosse game. They had to find her.