Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Austin leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Roscoe removed a thick three-ring binder and dropped it onto the table. Yellowed calendars filled the plastic sleeves, each one crowded with handwritten dates, venues, and notes.
“Jeff asked me the same thing.” Roscoe opened the binder. “So I told him about this.”
He flipped to a calendar from the year before Christian disappeared and pointed to several entries marked COMP.
“One of those dates belonged to your family,” he said. “Another to the Renshaws. Another to the Daltons.”
“What does COMP mean?” Austin asked.
“Complimentary. Somebody else covered enough of the expenses that the promoter could offer the group more money.”
Roscoe turned another page. More COMP notations appeared beside the same names.
Nora studied the locations. “These are all in the same part of Tennessee.”
“Exactly.” Roscoe tapped two dates several days apart. “Look here. Thursday night near Knoxville. Saturday night outside Crossville. Both paid better than usual.”
Austin studied the empty square between them. “Nothing on Friday.”
“Nothing on the calendar,” Roscoe corrected. “But once a group accepted both dates, they needed somewhere to stay in between. A church member’s home. A ministry property. Somewhere free.”
Cold slid through Nora. “They weren’t paying for the performances.”
Roscoe’s expression sobered. “That’s what Roy eventually decided. Somebody was paying to put certain families on certain routes.”
“Who arranged the places where they stayed?” Austin asked.
“Sometimes Jimmy Vance. Sometimes Roy. Sometimes a pastor or promoter called and said they knew somebody willing to host the family.”
“Would Jimmy have known who was behind the money?”
“He might have.” Roscoe’s expression shifted. “But he died six years ago.”
Austin stared at the markings. “Did Roy ever talk to you about this?”
“Once. Not long before Christian disappeared. He asked whether I’d noticed that the same groups kept being pulled through the same areas.” Roscoe ran one finger down the page. “He said somebody wasn’t funding ministries. They were moving families.”
“Did Roy know why?” she asked.
“If he did, he didn’t tell me.”
Austin turned another page. “What made my father connect the routes to the children?”
Roscoe’s humor disappeared. “Zander Dalton.”
Nora’s heart kicked harder. “The boy who ran away?”
“That’s what people believed. Zander was seventeen, and everyone said he was rebellious. But his parents never heard from him again.”
“And his family had followed one of these routes?” Austin asked.
Roscoe nodded. “Jeff wanted to know which other groups had children traveling with them.”
Nora pictured Christian asleep across two seats in the church van. Doing schoolwork at folding tables while she and her sisters rehearsed. Wandering through unfamiliar churches and parking lots where everyone assumed someone else was watching him.
One missing teenager and one abducted seven-year-old didn’t prove a connection. But both families had been steered through the same area with expenses someone else had paid.
And both Roy Callahan and Jeff Donnelly had begun asking why.
Now both men were dead.
Roscoe closed the binder. His expression brightened with obvious effort. “Before you leave, I have something for you.”
“If this is another attempt to reunite me with my sisters—”
“It’s history.” He pulled a CD from the shelf.
Nora froze.
Homecoming appeared across the cover in gold script. Beneath it, the three Loveless sisters smiled in matching dresses.
Austin studied the younger Nora. Her smile came without the guardedness he saw in her now. She had no idea her brother would disappear the night that album was released.
Roscoe handed her the case. “I was honored to work on your record. It was a terrible production, but I was young.”
“You were at least forty-five.”
“I was practically a child.”
A faint smile touched her lips.
“Christian slept through half those sessions on the couch in the control room,” Roscoe said. “Kept insisting he’d play guitar on your next record.”
Nora’s fingers tightened around the case.
Roscoe’s voice softened. “I heard he came home. I’m glad, Nora.”
“Thank you.”
He allowed the silence to hold for a moment before adding, “A Christmas reunion album would sell beautifully.”
“No.”
“Acoustic?”
“Goodbye, Roscoe.”
Austin noticed the SUV about ten minutes after they left Southern Heritage Records.
It was dark gray and an older model, with nothing remarkable about it. That was probably why it had taken him so long to notice it.
The car remained behind him, the driver keeping just enough distance not to look obvious.
Nora was quiet beside him, staring out the passenger window.
Austin checked the rearview mirror again. The SUV had moved closer.
“Everything okay?” Nora turned toward him as if she’d sensed the change in the air.
“All good.” He didn’t want her to worry until he knew there was a reason.
Her gaze lingered on him. “I don’t believe you.”
Of course, she didn’t. He didn’t respond.
Austin watched the sign for the next exit. At the last possible second, he cut onto the ramp.
Nora braced a hand against the door and gasped. “Something tells me you didn’t almost miss that exit by accident.”
Austin kept his attention on the rearview mirror.
The gray SUV swerved across the solid white line behind them. Its tires struck the rumble strip, and a pickup in the other lane blasted its horn.
But the driver never hesitated.
The SUV followed them off the exit.
Nora followed his gaze toward the side mirror. “What’s going on, Austin?”
“Hopefully nothing.” He turned right at the bottom of the ramp.
The SUV turned right too.
Any reasonable explanation disappeared.
Austin kept his speed steady even as tension spread across his shoulders. “There’s a vehicle behind us that’s been there since the studio.”
Nora twisted slightly in her seat for a better look.
Austin turned onto a four-lane road lined with gas stations and fast-food restaurants. The SUV stayed with them, creeping closer until only one vehicle separated them.
Austin could make out nothing through its windshield except the dark shape of the driver.
“Do you recognize the SUV?” he asked.
Her gaze shot to the mirror, and she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
The light ahead turned yellow. Austin slowed rather than trying to beat it. The car between them accelerated through the intersection, but the SUV stopped.
Directly behind them.
Austin watched it in the mirror. The driver sat motionless, face hidden behind the reflection on the windshield.
When the light changed, Austin turned left into a fire station. The SUV followed.
He’d chosen the fire station lot because it offered people, cameras, and more than one way out.
The SUV didn’t take any of them.
Nora’s hand remained curled around the strap of her purse. “Do you think it has something to do with the studio?”
“Maybe. Or my dad. Or Preston.” Each possibility was worse than the last. “Too many options right now.”
Austin stayed along the edge of the lot. Several firefighters inside the building stopped to stare. Good. Witnesses.
The SUV paused near the entrance.
Austin waited to see what this guy’s next move would be.