“Ethan has a good head on his shoulders. He’s bright, strong and sensible. We raised him to have street smarts and to be aware of his surroundings. I say he’ll be fine to go out with his friends.”
Tracy had realized that if Mike was on Ethan’s side, she was fighting a losing battle, so she’d reluctantly gone along with giving Ethan some freedom—with conditions. He had to have his phone with him at all times with location services on, and he needed to check in regularly about where he was and who he was with. She’d also asked for his closest friends’ phone numbers so she could contact them if needed.
He hadn’t liked that request, but he’d traded the numbers for the freedom he craved. And now she couldn’t reach him or any of his friends. His phone was going right to voicemail, and the location wasn’t available, which her older daughter, Brooke, had told her meant the phone was probably turned off or was in airplane mode.
“Do you want me to come home?” Brooke, who was in college at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, had asked when Tracy called her in a panic.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thank you for offering.”
“Nate’s here this weekend. We could be there in a couple of hours. Let me know.”
Brooke was seeing the lead Secret Service agent on the detail of Sam and Nick’s “bonus” son, Elijah Armstrong. He was stationed in Princeton, New Jersey, where Eli was a junior.
“I’ll keep you posted.”
“Please do,” Brooke had said. “This is so scary. It’s not like Ethan to do something like this.”
Tracy had wanted to say that it was just like him lately, but she hadn’t told her eldest about the issues they’d been having with her brother because she hadn’t wanted to burden Brooke with their concerns. She had enough on her plate with her schoolwork and her relationship with Nate, which had gotten serious in recent months. Brooke was planning to transfer to Princeton next year so she could be with Nate.
Tracy checked her phone to see if there was an update from Sam on when she would arrive.
On the way from 9th, Sam had written five minutes ago.
“Anything?” Mike asked when he came in from driving around to check some of Ethan’s usual haunts.
Tracy shook her head. She didn’t bother asking the same question, because Ethan wasn’t with him.
“Did you call Sam?”
“She’ll be here in a minute. She was at Ninth, so close by.”
“That’s good.”
Tracy wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t good, nothing about this was good, and it was all his fault. If only he’d listened to her when she’d said Ethan was too young for the kind of freedom Mike wanted to give him. If only… She bit back the vitriol that burned the tip of her tongue. Saying the words would only make everything worse.
* * *
On the way to Tracy’s, Sam texted Freddie, Gonzo and Archie to let them know what was going on. Malone is calling in Missing Persons, who’ll take the lead on his orders, but I want to help, and there’s not much I can do being a relative. I’m so sorry to ask you to give up a Saturday evening, but there’ve been some concerns with him recently that have me truly worried. We’re going to relocate Tracy’s family to Celia’s so CSU can process Tracy’s house.
I’m on the way to Celia’s, they answered one after the other.
Thank you all so very much.
Anything for you, Freddie said.
The other two put exclamation marks on Freddie’s text.
“Freddie, Gonzo and Archie are coming to help,” she told Nick.
“That’s good of them.”
“Yeah, for sure.”
They knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them either. It was how they rolled. Her entire team had recently stood by her side when she was under attack from two colleagues who blamed her for everything that’d ever gone wrong in their lives. Thankfully, former Sergeant Ramsey and former Officer Offenbach were now locked up and facing charges that should keep them in prison for the rest of their lives.
Chief of Police Joe Farnsworth had put out a message informing his entire four-thousand-member department that there’d be zero tolerance for lawlessness going forward and that the union had agreed to work with him to weed out the bad apples. There were a lot of them, and Sam was relieved to see two of the rottenest ones gone for good from their ranks.
Not to mention the death of disgraced former Deputy Chief Paul Conklin, who’d taken his own life when he was implicated in yet another crime, the first being the shooting of Sam’s late father, a case that had gone unsolved for four long years while Conklin had known all along who’d shot Skip—and why. This time, they found out he’d tried to discredit Sam and Skip by feeding dirt on her to Offenbach and Ramsey, who’d paid him for it.
