Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Nash set his glass down, buying himself a moment after Wren finished telling him what had happened—including details about her brother’s scar and his memory of his sisters singing.
He’d left these kinds of cases behind in Nashville when he came here. But he couldn’t ignore what Wren had just told him.
Different town. Different music. Same kind of people looking to turn someone else’s talent into their own opportunity.
“I have a few thoughts and questions,” he finally said. “First—what actually pointed to an abduction back then? I don’t mean what you believe now. I mean what the case was built on at the time.”
Wren blinked as if the question had caught her off guard after a decade of not needing to answer it.
“The police and the community searched for Christian for three days straight. Cadaver dogs, volunteers, the works. They found nothing—no trail leading out, no sign he’d wandered off on his own.
Christian didn’t wander. He was seven, but he wasn’t the kind of kid who went off script.
” She shook her head. “There was never a body. Never a ransom call. Just—nothing. He was here, and then he wasn’t. ”
“No custody dispute? Nobody in the family with a reason to take him?”
“No. No one.”
Nash nodded slowly, filing that information away. “Who was in charge of the investigation?”
“An FBI agent. His name was Donnelly. Jeff Donnelly, I think. He gave it a valiant effort, but he got nowhere.”
“Is he still active?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t heard from him in years.” She hesitated. “I don’t know that my sisters and I want to go to law enforcement yet.”
“Can I push back on that for a second?”
Wren’s eyes came up to his. “Okay.”
“If this teenager isn’t your brother,” Nash said carefully, “then you’ve got a stranger sleeping in your childhood home tonight, and none of you know why he’s really there.
If it is your brother, whoever held him for ten years is still out there somewhere, and that’s not a small thing to quietly sit on.
Either way, I’d think hard about how long you wait. ”
“I know.” She wrapped both hands around her glass.
“Believe me, I know. But if we call this in, and it turns out to be nothing . . . my mom. I don’t know how she’ll handle it.
She’s barely held together for ten years as it is.
I don’t think she’d survive getting her hope handed back to her and then taken away again in the same week. ”
“And if it’s real and you waited too long to report it?”
“Then I’ll have to live with that too.” Her voice caught. “I don’t have a version of tonight where I get to make the right call for certain. I just have to pick which risk I can survive being wrong about.”
Nash didn’t have an answer for that, and he didn’t try to manufacture one.
“Christian doesn’t want us to go to the police either,” Wren added, her voice dropping lower.
“He’s scared of what will happen once it’s not just us anymore.
Police. Reporters. Questions he can’t answer.
I’d override his fear in a heartbeat if I thought it kept anyone safer. I’m not sure yet that it would.”
Nash shifted, some of his tension easing, though not all of it.
“Then here’s what you should to do in the meantime.
Don’t let Christian know you’re suspicious.
Not yet. Not directly. The second he thinks you doubt him, he’ll either shut down completely or start telling you what he thinks you want to hear. Either way, you lose information.”
Wren didn’t say anything, but her posture relaxed almost as if she’d been braced for him to tell her she was overreacting, and he hadn’t.
“Second.” Nash leaned forward. “Document everything now, while it’s fresh. Every detail he gives you, write it down exactly how he says it. Memory shifts fast, especially traumatic memory. Inconsistencies that show up later are only useful if you’ve got something solid to compare them against.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
“Third.” He hesitated—not because the idea itself was complicated, but because he already knew how it would sound. “You need a DNA test.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“A scar and one childhood memory isn’t definitive proof of anything.
” He kept his voice even and deliberately gentle.
“I’ve seen people build entire false identities on details like that.
I’m not saying that’s what this is. But you deserve to actually know, instead of just hoping hard enough that everything about this situation turns out to be true. ”
Wren stared at her glass of water as if it might answer for her.
“And if the test comes back and it’s really him?” Her voice almost sounded childlike. “If that’s the case, then I’ve treated my own brother like a suspect. How can I live with myself knowing that?”
“You can’t think like that. You need real proof instead of a gut feeling. Once you know, you’ll never have to wonder again.”
Wren didn’t have a response for Nash, at least not one she trusted enough to say out loud. Instead, she finished her water and stood before the silence could stretch any further.
“Thank you.” She stepped toward the door and paused. “I just didn’t know who to talk to or what to do.”
“You came to the right place.” Nash walked her to the door, Tank trailing after them both, his nails clicking against the hardwood. “You’re asking the right questions.”
“I appreciate that.”
He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe as she stepped out. “Call if you need me.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“I can remedy that.”
She pulled out her phone, and he recited his number.
“Got it. Thanks.” She managed a smile.
“Of course.”
The walk back home felt longer than the walk over, even though the distance hadn’t changed. Wren took her time crossing the gap between the properties. As she walked, she turned Nash’s words over in her mind.
Document everything. Get a DNA test. You deserve to actually know.
His advice was practical, laid out like a checklist. Maybe that was exactly what she needed right now—advice from someone capable of being almost clinical about the situation when she and her sisters couldn’t manage anything but hope or dread in equal, exhausting measure.
Bo materialized from somewhere between the properties with something dangling from his mouth.
“What is that?” She paused and looked at the object in his mouth.
Then she pried it out and frowned.
It was one of Tank’s toys—a bright orange ball.
“Why do you have to do that?” she muttered. “I can’t even deny our neighbor’s claims that you’re a menace.”
She tossed the ball back onto Nash’s property, holding Bo’s collar so he didn’t go after it. She kept her hand on the collar as she led him back home, not trusting him to stay focused and not go back for the ball.
Her dog was definitely a handful, but she loved him anyway.
As she crossed the yard, she glanced at the house.
Her breath caught at the face she saw staring back.
It was Christian. He was watching her from his bedroom window.
As soon as he realized he’d been caught, he dropped the curtain and disappeared.
Wren stopped and stared up at the window, an unsettled feeling in her gut.
He was probably just looking outside. Acclimating himself. There was nothing strange about that. Who knows when the last time was he was able to have that freedom?
Except there was still a small slit between the curtain and the frame. She sensed he was still there, still watching but trying to be secretive about it.
Her throat tightened.
How long had he been watching her? Had it been simple curiosity or had something else driven his actions?
Wren wished she knew that answer.