Page 19 of Lost Lake
He managed a wry smile. “You have a family full of felons, too?”
“No. Just a father who bailed when I was one. And a mother who supported herself as an exotic dancer.” She grimaced. “When I was three, I was taken into foster care. Eventually my mom relinquished her rights to me, and I was adopted. I have great parents now.”
So that was it. An explanation for the walls she’d built around her emotions. “Anything I haven’t asked that I should know?”
Was there? He thought for a moment. “Yeah, I should tell you about Jude. You know he’s a former FBI agent, but you might not know he was a profiler. He doesn’t talk about it with anyone, but any theory he offers on an investigation comes from that profiler background, and we should pay attention to it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Sounds like you’re skeptical of profiling.”
“Not skeptical. I’ve never worked with a profiler, sowary.”
“Jude was one of the best.”
She tilted her head. “Why did he leave then?”
“That’s his story to tell, but it has nothing to do with not doing the job right, so his skills can help with this investigation.”
“Then I’m glad to have him on board.”
As much as Gabe wanted to disagree with Jude about his first profile of their killer, Gabe was glad to have him, too. “That’s all I have for now, but I doubt I’ll get any sleep and my mind will keep looking for a possible motive. If something comes to me, I’ll tell you when we meet at the beach.”
Her mouth tightened, as if she dreaded the thought. Or maybe she dreaded watching divers search a lake for a missing child.
Heaven knows, he was dreading it far more than anything he’d ever faced.
From the hilltop above Lost Lake, El stared at the water, silent at dawn, the kind of silence that swallowed sound and secrets. Maybe not for long. Divers would arrive soon, and they might reveal the most horrific secret of all.
She shuddered, but not from the cold. Lucy had been missing for twelve hours now, and they hadn’t made any real progress. Sure, they knew approximately when Kenna was murdered, giving them a timeframe, but they had no idea if Lucy actually was with her mother. But she had to be the reason for the car seat, so where was she?
You must answer that soon.
Statistics told her so. Seventy-five percent of all abducted and then murdered children were killed within the first three hours. They’d passed that milestone before they even knew she was gone. At the three to twenty-four hour mark—where they fell right now—a solid chance of finding them alive still existed, but they needed to ramp up their urgency, because hitting twenty-four hours?
No. No. No way she would go there before it was a problem. She’d just focus and do everything within her power to bring sweet Lucy home alive.
Starting with upping searchers, bringing in the dogs, additional door-to-door canvassing, along with evidence retrieval and processing. All scheduled by eight o’clock this morning. Not to mention, hunting for a boat potentially used to transport Kenna and Lucy from their van to the beach.
Vehicle tires crunched over gravel behind her. Had to be the dive team. Searchers from other jurisdictions and the K-9 teamweren’t due for thirty minutes. Plus, Sierra Rice from the Veritas Center forensic unit wouldn’t arrive until eight.
Dread settled in El’s gut as she turned.
Oh. Oh!
Not who she expected this early. Not at all.
All six members of the Lost Lake Locators team climbed from black SUVs. Led by Gabe, they approached with grim purpose as if they were in slow motion in a movie. If only that were true, she’d have time to prepare herself for their arrival, but all too soon they were standing in front of her.
All her fault for being caught off guard. They’d said they were coming at daylight, which it almost was, and they weren’t the kind of people to stand around and wait for the day to get away from them.
“We’re here to help with the search,” Gabe said.
“You should’ve called first.” She held his firm gaze and tried not to sound irritated when they knew better than to be there. “I could’ve saved you the trip. Nothing has changed. If you came to join in on the immediate area search and not the same place you searched last night, I can’t let you do that. Not with your personal connection to the investigation.”
“So what if we know Kenna and Lucy? Doesn’t compromise our search abilities.”
“Agreed, but until we have official details about Kenna’s death, I can’t rule any of you out as suspects.”
