Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
Nora and Austin chose a pew near the back.
The sanctuary filled quickly. Most people appeared to know the Daltons, and conversations carried the easy anticipation of an audience expecting to enjoy itself.
Nora barely heard them.
She watched Linda take her place onstage beside her husband and three adult children.
The pianist began the opening notes, and the sanctuary quieted.
Nora had expected the music to pull her into the present.
Instead, the first harmony carried her backward.
She was sixteen again, standing beneath hot stage lights while Wren adjusted her microphone and Marlowe tried not to laugh about something. Mom waited beside the piano. Dad watched from the wings with Christian tucked against his side.
Her hand tightened around the program.
Onstage, Glen told a story about traveling through three states in two days when the children were young.
Austin shifted beside her. His arm rested close enough that his sleeve brushed hers.
Nora didn’t move away.
She had felt safe with Jacob too. Austin hadn’t given her a reason to doubt him, but she couldn’t let herself mistake wanting him close for knowing she could trust him.
She thought of her parents beside the bonfire, laughing with the boy they believed was their son. For three weeks, the Loveless family had stopped counting because they thought everyone was finally there.
They had been wrong.
The music swelled around her. Nora closed her eyes, but the DNA report remained at the forefront of her thoughts.
The folder was thicker than Austin expected.
Glen Dalton placed it on a table inside a small Sunday school classroom after the concert. The blue plastic had cracked near the spine, and a large rubber band had been wrapped around it twice to keep the contents from spilling out.
Nora sat beside Austin while Linda closed the door. The rest of the Dalton family remained in the sanctuary talking with people from the church, their voices carrying faintly through the wall along with the scrape of equipment being moved from the platform.
Glen removed the rubber band. “I started collecting these after Zander disappeared.”
“You never believed he ran away?” Austin said.
“Not for one second.” Glen opened the folder. “Zander loved traveling with us. He wouldn’t have left without saying anything, and he certainly wouldn’t have stayed gone.”
Linda rested a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “The police disagreed.”
“So I started looking for other cases.” Glen glanced toward the closed door. “Linda knows. We never told our children how much time I spent on it. I didn’t want them believing I’d become obsessed with something I couldn’t prove.”
The first clipping came from a Kentucky newspaper. The yellowed headline announced that a fourteen-year-old boy had disappeared after a revival service. His school photograph showed a thin teenager with braces.
Beneath it was an article about a boy who had vanished from a North Carolina campground where several ministry families stayed between performances.
Another was eleven and had last been seen near a church parking lot in Georgia.
A fourth disappeared while his family loaded equipment after a concert.
Every missing child was a boy.
Austin read the dates and locations while Nora studied the photographs.
One boy had supposedly run away. Another disappearance was blamed on a custody dispute. A third child might have wandered into the woods and suffered an accident.
The cases would have remained separate forever if no one had a reason to place them side by side.
“How many do you think are connected?” Austin asked.
“Seven. Possibly eight.” Glen tapped the folder. “Five traveled with ministries. The others lived near churches where traveling groups regularly performed.”
Seven boys. Possibly eight.
Austin looked again at the photographs spread across the table. Seven families had spent years waiting for answers, each believing their loss belonged to them alone.
Christian and Zander hadn’t been isolated victims. Someone—or several someones—had been using churches and traveling ministries to identify boys for years.
This went far beyond what they’d already heard from Roscoe and Nora’s dad.
“This isn’t one person,” he said.
Nora looked at him. “How can you know?”
“Someone identified the boys. Someone arranged the routes and payments. Then someone made them disappear without leaving an obvious connection between the cases.” Austin shook his head. “That takes more than one person. It’s a network.”
Nora’s expression tightened. “Human trafficking?”
“Possibly. I wouldn’t rule it out. But we haven’t found a profit motive. So far, the money appears to have been used to put these families in certain places before the boys disappeared.”
“Then why take them?”
Austin looked at the photographs again. “I have no idea. But I don’t think these boys were random. I think someone chose them.”
Nora’s face had gone pale. “This is bigger than Christian.”
“Yes,” Austin said.
Her gaze moved across the photographs. “And if Preston is somehow connected—”
“Then whoever started this hasn’t stopped.”
Nora’s fingers stilled on the photograph. “What about Jacob? And Mason?”
“Jacob told Wren this wasn’t just about him. He said ‘we’ and never said who.” Austin met her eyes. “He also said Roy Callahan was his uncle.”
Nora said nothing for a moment. “Roy and Jacob.” Her voice thinned. “I never put them together.”
“I don’t know why Jacob took Mason.” Austin tapped the folder. “But Roy booked your family onto these routes, and Jacob was inside your family before Christian came home. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
Voices drifted through the wall from the sanctuary, people laughing and talking as equipment was packed away. The ordinary sounds felt wrong beside the photographs of so many missing children.
“Did the same groups appear at all the locations?” Austin asked.
“Mostly.” Glen turned another page. “But the singing groups weren’t the only names that kept appearing. Traveling evangelists worked those same revival circuits.”
Nora leaned closer as he ran one finger down a list of performers and speakers.
Then he stopped on a familiar name.
Reverend Whitfield.
Austin looked at Nora. “Isn’t that your pastor?”
“It’s his father, actually.” Nora studied the dates beside his name. “Our family shared several revival services with him. We called him Brother Whitfield back then.”
“I remember him,” Glen said. “Good preacher. Churches liked booking him with family groups because the music drew people in and he gave the invitation afterward.”
Austin examined the page. “How often did he appear on the same routes?”
“More than once.”
Glen turned several pages before stopping at an old missing person flyer.
Zander Dalton stared from the center of it.
The photograph was clearer than the grainy images Austin had found online. Zander had been seventeen, with short brown hair, a narrow face, and an expression too serious for a school portrait.
Something about him tugged at Austin’s memory.
The feeling was faint, gone almost as soon as it appeared.
He’d spent part of the previous night searching Zander’s name and studying old photographs. That had to explain it.
“Can I photograph these?” Austin asked.
“Whatever you need.” Glen’s shoulders sagged. “I’ve been praying for a long time that someone besides me would finally see enough of a pattern to investigate.”
Austin photographed the clippings, the notes Glen had made, and the list of ministries that appeared more than once.
Last, he photographed Zander’s missing person flyer.
His attention lingered on the boy’s face.
That strange sense of familiarity returned, stronger this time, but Austin still couldn’t place it.
He slipped his phone into his pocket and told himself he was remembering the photographs he’d seen online.
But as Glen closed the folder, Austin found himself looking at Zander one more time.