Chapter Fourteen
Lia had to jog to keep up with Gard as he strode toward the movie theater.
He was doing an impressive job of appearing fine and in control.
It was the cop in him clearly that knew how to shut off the fear.
Even when he’d called someone at the police department, he’d sounded like he was in complete control.
But she also knew him well enough to know where to look. The tight jaw, the desolate look in his eyes, that was all worry and fear. Outside he might seem calm and in control, but inside he was a mess.
Then again, so was she. There was no reason she could think of that would make Sammy pull this kind of stunt. Particularly not without her phone. Lia couldn’t find a spin on the situation that didn’t involve Sammy being in danger.
So she held on to Gard’s outward calm as an example of how to be, even while her insides panicked.
Inside in the lobby of the movie theater, Sarabeth stood with her parents, and Izzy with hers. Everyone turned to Gard as he approached.
“Still no sign of her?” he demanded.
Everyone shook their heads.
“She was fine,” Izzy said quietly. “Nothing was out of the ordinary. She just didn’t come back.” There were tears in the girl’s eyes, and she leaned into her dad when he put his arm around her shoulders.
“I talked to the theater manager,” a tall man standing next to Sarabeth said in low tones. Presumably Sarabeth’s stepfather. “He was going to go see what kind of security footage they had.”
“Good,” Gard said in that firm, cop voice. “Do you know where he went?”
“I’ll show you.”
The two men walked off.
“She wouldn’t have left her purse if she meant to run away,” Izzy said, her voice an octave higher than usual. “She wouldn’t have. She specifically gave it to me to hold.” Izzy looked up at her dad like she was looking for reassurance.
“And nothing…happened?” Lia asked. “She didn’t mention anything upsetting her?” It was hard to believe Sammy would scare everyone, especially her friends, by just up and disappearing. But if she was upset about something, maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Maybe she’d just…taken a walk.
Still, leaving that damn phone behind? Why would she do that? She wouldn’t.
“No. She was in a good mood,” Sarabeth said. “I swear, everything was normal. She would have told us if it wasn’t. Not just…ditched us. With her purse.”
“Do you still have her purse?”
Izzy held it out and Lia looked through it. Wallet. ChapStick. Phone. Lia pulled the phone out and tapped the screen. The background was a picture of Sarabeth, Izzy, and Sammy—probably taken at the sleepover.
Lia wanted to cry at how sweet and happy they all looked, but she blinked back tears. Lia didn’t know her passcode, but no doubt Gard did. She started to walk in the direction he’d gone with Sarabeth’s stepdad, but they were already returning.
Gard held up a hand in a greeting and Lia looked behind her. A woman and a man were striding toward them. They didn’t wear uniforms, but Lia had a feeling they were cops just the same.
“Thomas.” Sarabeth threw her arms around the man, who gave her a reassuring pat on the back.
The woman approached Gard while this Thomas talked to the girls.
“I figured it would be quicker if we just came straight out rather than the extra step of a deputy. Hart’s got connections to the Thompsons and the Hudsons,” she said, gesturing at the man talking to the girls. “So he wanted to come in case anything needed smoothing over on that front.”
“Thanks, Laurel. I’ve got a kid trying to pull together the security footage to show us, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He put in a call to the day manager for help.”
“Good start,” Laurel said with a nod.
Lia didn’t want to interrupt, but she was still holding Sammy’s phone. She held it out. “Gard. Maybe you should look through her phone.”
He nodded, taking the phone and typing in the code without a second thought. He swore almost immediately and tipped the screen so Lia could see too. It was a text conversation between Sammy and…Mom. Dani.
While Gard explained the conversation to the detective, Lia read through the exchange.
I know you’re mad at me, but I want to see you.
No.
Pls, Sammy. PLEASE.
I’m @ movies w my friends. Leave me alone.
Meet me outside the theater. Out back. Just give me 5 mins. Pls.
Fine.
Lia’s heart seized. Oh…no. But she tried to smooth it over for Gard. “Well, she’s with Dani. That’s…not terrible. It could be worse. Maybe you could call Dani.”
Gard didn’t even look at her. He kept talking to the woman. A detective, Lia thought, if she was reading all the context clues.
“I called for help, Laurel, but I’m going to be looking for my niece,” Gard said, an edge of temper starting to creep into his voice. “You’re working with Beckett on that trafficking case coming out of Hardy, right?”
At the word trafficking, everything jangling around inside of Lia like fear and worry and nerves turned into cold, sharp ice.
“Trafficking?” she echoed.
But Gard was still ignoring her, or maybe he didn’t even hear her.
Deep in cop mode, he was ignoring everything except what he needed to do.
“Dani was with that guy in that security footage of the drug deal. I want to know everything about him, what connections he has. If Dani was with him, he has to know something about where she’s been and where she might have taken Sammy. ”
Lia thought back to everything Gard had told her about Dani’s disappearance. The job offer at the diner. The abandoned house with drug paraphernalia. But he hadn’t mentioned trafficking, and it made too many things click into place.
Particularly that text conversation that Lia couldn’t be convinced was actually from Dani now. Which made her blood run cold.
“Gard.” She curled her fingers into his shirtsleeve. “I need to talk to you.”
He didn’t respond. She didn’t think he was ignoring her on purpose. He was just deep in crisis, and she was just…a civilian in his way. He was used to shutting everything out that didn’t accomplish getting the job done.
Except she…she knew things, understood things. About everything they were talking about. And everything was starting to coalesce. The things he’d told her he’d found out about Dani the past few months.
The things she’d experienced years ago.
“Gard. Please.” She tugged on his shirt. “Somewhere private.” Maybe it was the please, or the fact her voice cracked, but he finally looked at her, blinked like coming out of a trance.
“Okay.” He took her hand and squeezed. “Get her description out,” he told Laurel.
Who nodded. “I will. Then Hart and I will interview theater employees after he’s done getting the girls’ statements. We’ll watch that footage too, once it’s ready. Get a read on anyone who might have been involved.”
Gard nodded and then let Lia pull him away from the hubbub into a quiet little alcove.
She should have told him the truth earlier, when they had time. But now there was no time.
Not if she was going to help Sammy.
Gard wasn’t panicking. He’d been a cop too long to panic.
Or so he told himself.
“I need you to listen to me and not worry about questions right now,” Lia said quietly, and very, very seriously. “We can answer questions later. Right now, we need to focus. This job offer Dani got. You know who offered it, right?”
He frowned at her. She sounded like…a cop. And he didn’t have the first clue why she’d be talking about Dani’s job offer. Still, he answered her since she clearly had some reason for pulling him aside. “I have a name, yeah.”
“You need to—or they need to—go get that guy too. He’s your target as much as whoever was with her in that drug deal. The guy who offered the job at the diner will know something. I guarantee it.”
He didn’t want to be curt, because he knew Lia meant well, but he didn’t have time for this. “Lia, no offense but—”
“I know a thing or two about human trafficking, Gard. I know what it looks like. That’s what it looks like. Job offers to the right targets. Addresses that are seemingly abandoned or vacant. Then pulling more people in.”
He blinked. She had a serious expression on her face and those words were hard. Knowledgeable. Cop-like.
I know a thing or two about human trafficking. Not like she’d read a book or seen a movie, like she knew.
“And the fact of the matter is,” she continued. “Those text messages might have come from Dani’s phone, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily came from Dani.”
He could only stare at her, those words not quite making sense in the way he knew they should. But this was… Lia. And… “Lia, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that this has all the hallmarks of a kidnapping. And if you’re working on a trafficking case, and Dani is connected, Sammy would be an obvious and easy target to be pulled into that.”
He was trying very hard not to think of all the worsts, but Lia’s calm, factual determinations made it impossible.
She reached out and grabbed his arms. “I need you to tell me everything about that case.”
His brain felt scrambled, because he needed to know how she knew all this stuff, but he didn’t have time. If anything she was saying was true, he had to find Sammy. Now.
So he told her what he knew. She stood there and listened. He’d never seen this expression on her face. So serious, so grim.
Laurel approached them, but he’d managed to tell Lia just about everything at that point.
“We’ve got Sammy on video going out the back of the theater, which points to her meeting your sister out there like the text message said.
But no one was caught on video in the back in the right time frame, so if it was Dani, she stayed out of sight.
We’re going to canvas the parking lot, see if we can find anyone who saw something. ”
Gard nodded. He glanced at Lia and that serious expression he’d never seen. “I want us looking for Roger Hamilton—the guy who used the Dry Road address. On top of anyone in that security video of the drug deal.”