5. Oz
OZ
T he call I get from River is really not the one I want.
I’ve been spending every night scouring the dark web for any sign of Freya.
I’ve looped in all my contacts, but no one has seen her since she left Danville.
No one’s even heard whisper of where she might be.
She’s a ghost. And I hate that I can’t find her, not least because every day that passes without her, we lose Jude a little more.
He was hanging in there to start off with, dead set on getting Freya back, on catching Zach so she’d be safe. But then a little girl went missing. Millie Morand.
I take my glasses off and rub my tired eyes.
We dropped everything to find her, worked the case harder than any case before, Jude more so than any of us.
Millie was found dead two weeks ago.
Jude’s withdrawn more and more every day since.
So yeah, the call I get from River is the last thing I want to hear. But doing this job I got used to bad phone calls a long time ago, so I drag a hungover Jude off the couch and chuck Eli the car keys.
The arcade is a weird sort of empty. There must be at least two dozen police officers present but crime scene tape blocks the mall entrance, keeping the general public out.
The machines are still running, lit up and playing arcade music. We duck under the crime scene tape and walk past a shooting game, the character on screen taking a bullet to the head.
“Well that’s fucking morbid,” Eli mutters.
Jude just stares straight ahead, his hoodie pulled up, masking his face.
Jeez, we’re quite the crack team, aren’t we?
River waves us over to the dance machines before turning back to Captain Roarke. We’ve been working closely with her since Millie was abducted. She looks as put together as always, her uniform buttoned up at the collar but the toll this case is taking on her is written in the lines of her face.
Jude leans against the dance machine like a bored teenager.
A couple of the officers give him the stink eye and to be fair to them it does look like he’s slacking, but Jude’s brain works differently.
He doesn’t need to do anything more than he’s doing to catalogue the entire room and recreate the most likely scenario as to what happened here.
“Have you got an Amber alert out?” River asks.
The captain nods. “I sent word ten minutes ago.”
I look at my watch. “When was she last seen?”
“An hour and forty minutes ago. Mom thought she’d just wandered off until they found this.” Roarke signals one of her officers who passes her a plastic baggie. She hands it over to me. There’s a business card inside, blank except for four words.
The Little Star Catcher
I grit my teeth. It’s the same calling card we found where Millie was taken.
“A witness said they saw a girl with ginger hair leaving with a man out into the mall. I’ve got my tech guys going through the security footage as we speak to see if they can find them.
The mall got word out pretty quickly there was a lost kid so there’s a chance they didn’t make it out and are hidden somewhere in the mall.
” Roarke’s gaze darts over my shoulder. “Heads up, the mother’s coming our way. Jennifer Lockry.”
I turn to find a woman with mussed up blonde hair and skin white from shock making a beeline for us.
She brushes off an officer who tries to stop her, her gaze set on me.
“Are you the FBI? They said they were calling the FBI. It’s him, isn’t it?
It’s the man who took that other girl. Oh god.
” She presses her hand to her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
River steps forward. “Mrs. Lockry. We are going to do everything we can to find your daughter. An Amber alert has already gone out and we have officers blockading the roads out of here. They’re stopping every single vehicle.
Right now though, I need you to stay as calm as possible.
It’s important we know exactly what happened here and you are the best person to tell us, alright? ”
Jennifer’s breath catches, her chest hiccupping as she gulps down air. Tears glaze her eyes but she hugs her arms and nods.
“Where did you last see your daughter?”
“Harley.” Jennifer sniffles but determination flashes in her eyes.
“Her name is Harley. She was on the dance machine with her friend Josie. Josie cut her finger so she came over to me. I put a band aid on it and took her back to the dance machines but Harley…” Her voice cracks, tears running down her cheeks.
“Harley was gone. She’s only ten years old. Please. You have to find her.”
“Where was the card found?” I ask.
“On the dance machine. I didn’t notice it at first but when I went back it was there.” Jennifer points at one of the pink tiles.
Jude pushes away from the machine and stares at the tiles. He frowns then walks around the game before turning in a full circle.
“What’s he doing?” Jennifer asks, eyeing Jude.
River holds up a finger. “Give him a moment.”
Jude paces over to the fire exit corridor.
He looks up at the security camera facing out into the arcade, positions himself behind it, then turns to face us.
His hand disappears inside his pockets, coming back out with a piece of paper he folds into a small rectangle.
He flicks his wrist, throwing the paper like a frisbee.
It flies through the air before landing on the dance platform, skidding to a stop on top of the tiles.
I look back at Jude, my gaze catching on the fire exit sign above his head and the door at the end of the corridor. “He didn’t take her out the front.” I turn to Captain Roarke. “I need access to the security cameras. Now.”
Jennifer steps forward. “But there was a witness that saw them leaving.”
River shakes his head. “There would have been dozens of kids coming and going with adults and witnesses are unreliable.”
I give River a nod and follow Captain Roarke through to the security office at the front of the arcade.
One of the local PD’s tech guys is fast-forwarding through the footage from the entrance cameras, but he moves aside when Roarke tells him to.
I take his seat and fiddle with the controls to switch cameras to the one in front of the fire exit.
The camera is positioned too far forward to show the corridor itself, but it’s angled low enough to capture anyone entering the corridor. I rewind through the footage, back to the time Harley disappeared. A flash of gold crosses the screen, and I hit play.
Knots twists inside my stomach. I don’t need to get confirmation that the girl on screen is Harley, even through the crappy security camera I can see that she’s the spitting image of a young Freya. My chest aches as the footage plays out.
Harley picks something up off the floor. She frowns at someone off screen then steps into the corridor and out of sight of the camera. I run the footage forward, but she doesn’t come back out. No one does. “The fire exit,” I mutter.
The tech guy shakes his head. “Security said the fire doors are alarmed.”
“Did you check?” I spin to face him. “Because unless they’re still in that corridor, they left through the fire exit.”
Captain Roarke curses but I’m already on my feet, striding back into the arcade and down the corridor. Jude’s beat me to it though. He pushes the door open with a gloved hand. Nothing. No alarm.
I follow him out the fire exit into a maintenance yard.
There’s a delivery entrance right in front of us that leads straight out onto the road.
I look around for cameras but the only one in sight is above the fire exit and it’s been knocked off kilter, staring straight up at the sky. This is bad. Really, really bad.
Jude looks over at me. “He’d have been gone before they put the roadblocks up.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Two hours is one hell of a head start.”
I push my glasses up with my fingers, my temples aching. “I’m going to get my laptop, see if can pick them up on the traffic cams.”
Jude shakes his head. “He’ll have been careful. You won’t be able to track them.”
I glare at him, hating this new pessimistic Jude with every bone in my body. I know my chances of being able to track them are slim, but I have to try.
I may have failed at finding Freya and Millie, but I won’t fail again. I can’t, because if we don’t save Harley, Freya will never forgive us.