“You’re right. I know you are, but my brain can’t help cycling through all the disasters I’ve seen over the years.”
“Which is entirely normal for you, but you’ll only make it worse for yourself by applying those disasters to this situation before you know what’s going on.”
She looked up at him, the man she’d come to love and trust like a surrogate father, and asked the question that scared her the most. “What if we never find him?”
“You will. I’m sure of it. I believe in you.”
“That helps. Thank you.”
“Keep the faith.”
“I’m trying.”
He closed the door and drove them to Celia’s, through deserted streets that would be teeming with traffic on a workday in the nation’s capital. With buildings and trees whizzing past, she kept her gaze trained outside, hoping for a glimpse of her nephew that never materialized.
She took a second to text Gonzo to tell him she’d sent Freddie home to sleep so he could relieve him in the morning. Then she put her phone in her pocket while trying in vain to calm her racing mind.
Feeling defeated in a way she hadn’t experienced in quite some time, she walked into Celia’s home a few minutes later to find her sister and niece on the sofa, holding hands as they wept.
“Anything?” Tracy asked when she saw Sam.
Sam shook her head.
Tracy further dissolved into heartbroken sobs that devastated Sam.
She wanted so badly to fix this for the sister who’d taken care of her all her life, but some problems couldn’t be solved by wishing or hoping.
“Where could he be?” Tracy wailed. “Where in the world is he?”
Brooke tried to comfort her mom as she sobbed right along with her.
Sam sat on the coffee table and reached for both of them, giving in to her own tears after hours of fruitless searching.
A throat clearing behind Tracy and Brooke had them pulling back from each other and wiping tears from their faces.
Sam looked up to see Archie, seeming embarrassed to have witnessed their emotional breakdown.
“Hey,” Sam said to her friend as she brushed at tears. She’d thought he was still at Tracy’s. “Where’d you come from?”
“Can I talk to you in the other room?”
She nodded. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Tracy and Brooke before she followed Archie into the kitchen, closing the door between the rooms.
“We might have something from Luna’s phone.” He put sheets of paper on the table and pointed to highlighted lines of text. “She’s been talking to several boys who were trying to get her to come out to meet them, but she didn’t want to go.”
Sam scanned the texts, which showed increasingly aggressive efforts on behalf of the boys, which Luna continued to ignore.
Archie pointed to one of the contacts. “That’s Ethan’s number, and that one is Tomas’s.”
Sam’s gasp said it all. “Archie… what the hell?”
“All this shows is that he was trying to get her to come out.”
“For what reason, though?”
“He never spells that out. It’s mostly ‘come on, let’s have some fun, you know you want to’ kind of stuff.”
“What time were those messages sent?” Sam asked.
