Chapter 55
Chapter
Fifty-Five
A few minutes later, Wren glanced across the lot again. Nora had gone back inside to help coordinate handing out water, of all things. If the situation wasn’t so dire, she might have laughed.
Wren saw Nash standing at the tailgate of a county truck with a map spread flat and four men around it. He had a pen in his hand and pointed at something.
The men around him leaned in. Then one of them nodded and peeled off toward a vehicle.
Three weeks ago, she hadn’t even known Nash. Now he felt like her rock. The logic didn’t make sense, but the feeling was unmistakable. Had God brought Nash into her life at just the right time?
Nash seemed to sense her gaze and looked up.
Across that distance, he found her, and their eyes connected. The next moment, he leaned toward one of the men he was with, said something indiscernible, and then he crossed the lot toward her.
He stopped in front of her. “Hey.”
“Anything?” She looked up at him, a touch of hope bubbling inside her.
“Not yet.” He studied her another moment. “You okay?”
“Not really.” Her voice trembled.
“No one expects you to be strong right now,” he murmured.
He opened his arms and, without thinking, Wren stepped into them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She pressed her cheek against his collarbone and let him hold her up.
It had been a long time since she’d let herself be held. She hadn’t thought she’d wanted to be held. Mason had been the only thing that mattered—not her own comforts or desires. Only her son.
But now, somehow, a man who’d solely complained about Bo for their first several conversations was now her biggest support.
Nash was still outside when Prine crossed the lot toward him, her phone against her ear. She finished the call before she got to him. The two of them had talked earlier. She knew he was TBI and on medical leave. That seemed to earn him a new level of respect with the woman.
“I put in for CARD,” she said. “They’re coming out of both Knoxville and Atlanta.”
He nodded, glad to hear the update. CARD stood for Child Abduction Rapid Deployment. “When?”
“Knoxville should be in here in an hour. Atlanta in four.”
“Good call.”
She studied him a moment. “What are your thoughts on this situation? You met the boy. You know his mom.”
“I think this could be connected with Christian, and I think it’s been coming.”
“Why’s that?”
“Sunday night at the hospital, a man came to the nurses’ station and asked about a young man with a hand injury.” Nash kept his voice down. “Luke looked at the footage but couldn’t tell much about him. But I’m guessing it’s the same guy we saw on the video footage here at the school.”
She nodded. “Good to know. Anything else?”
“This could be nothing, but one of Wren’s sisters saw Tate Ferris at the hospital the same night. Tate is Mason’s soccer coach. It could be a coincidence, but . . .”
Her eyes lit with interest. “We’ll look into him. As you know with these things, it’s usually someone who knows the victim.”
He did know that. He knew a lot of things, including the fact that it had been two hours and fifty minutes since Mason went missing.
Nash had carried certain numbers with him since going through the academy. Historically, in cases where children were abducted and murdered, 74 percent were killed within three hours of being taken, and 90 percent died within the first twenty-four hours.
He’d never once said those numbers out loud to worried families. But he remembered them. He always remembered them.
He scanned everyone around him until his gaze found Wren. She stood by the flagpole with her sisters on either side of her.
He prayed Mason wasn’t a statistic.
By nine, the school parking lot had started to empty.
Wren stood at the cafeteria window and watched the vehicles pulling away.
Her son was outside somewhere in the dark with an unknown man, and people were going home to bed.
She couldn’t hold those facts against anyone. Yet somehow the thought still made her chest ache.
She was jealous, she supposed. All those people were returning to their normal lives. They’d wake up tomorrow and nothing would change for them.
That wouldn’t be the case for her.
Cody appeared beside her with a bottle of water. He’d returned about thirty minutes ago from whatever mission someone had sent him on.
“Sit down,” he told her.
“I’m fine.” She waved him off.
“I’m not saying that as a friend. I’m saying it as a paramedic. You’re gray, and you’ve been swaying on your feet for ten minutes.” He put the bottle in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Sit down before you go down, Wren. Please.”
With a frown, she complied and lowered herself onto a small stool attached to one of the cafeteria tables.
Cody sat beside her, put two fingers against the inside of her wrist, and looked at his watch. She didn’t fight him.
“When’d you eat last?” He studied her face.
“I don’t know.” Had she had lunch? She honestly couldn’t remember. Her morning and early afternoon now felt like a blur, like something that happened a lifetime ago.
“Drink some water.”
She twisted the top off the bottle and did as she was told.
A few seconds of silence passed as she drank. Then she made the mistake of looking at Cody and seeing the anguish on his face.
“I’m so scared for our little boy, Cody.” Her voice cracked.
“Me too.” He reached forward and squeezed her hand, the earlier tension between them gone. “Me too, Wren.”