“Thank you. We appreciate it.”
She took Nick’s hand to lead him from the morgue to the pit, which was all but deserted today as most of her team had worked overnight at the hotel. As she was unlocking her office door, Captain Malone approached, looking aggravated. “A moment, please, Lieutenant.” He nodded to Nick. “Mr. President.”
“Captain.”
The three of them went into Sam’s office and closed the door.
“Ruiz is furious that you called in the Feds and the marshals without discussing it with her first.”
“I didn’t technically call in the Feds. I called some of my friends for advice, and they offered to come in to help.”
“Fine line, Lieutenant, and Ruiz is rightfully annoyed. This is her case.”
“We’re looking for my nephew, Captain.”
“I’m aware, and that’s why I told you to stay in the background on this case.”
“Which is what I’ve tried to do.”
A loud knock sounded at the door before Ruiz walked in, loaded for bear. She stopped short when she encountered the president of the United States standing in Sam’s office.
“Captain Michelle Ruiz, this is my husband, Nick.”
Ruiz nodded to him and then turned her ire toward Sam. “What part of ‘stay out of my case’ did you not understand yesterday?”
Already exhausted with a day that’d barely begun, Sam took a seat behind her desk while Nick leaned against her filing cabinet, directing a steely stare at the captain that would earn him some extra favors at home.
Sam stared at a spot on the wall as she began to speak. “My sister Tracy was twenty-one when she had my niece Brooke. I was seventeen and had no interest whatsoever in kids or babies until Brooke arrived.” Sam gave a small smile as she remembered the life-altering birth of her niece. “I was obsessed with everything she did and was so in love with her, I started thinking for the first time that I might someday like to have kids of my own. Prior to that, I would’ve said kids were the last thing I wanted.”
“What does this have to do?—”
“I had a miscarriage in college,” Sam went on, ignoring the interruption. “I’ve talked about that so often, I feel like the whole world knows.” As she continued to stare at the wall, her eyes became unfocused as she took a painful trip down memory lane toward some of the most devastating events of her life. She hoped she could keep her composure. “I was relieved when that happened, because I was in no way ready to be a mother. Like most people in their early twenties, I thought I had all the time in the world to have kids. The miscarriage was one of the worst things I’ve ever been through. I ended up having issues for years afterward and was later diagnosed with endometriosis. The theory was that it’d been dormant until I got pregnant, and the hormones triggered it, or some such thing. Who knows?
“I was twenty-four when I was told for the first time that I might not be able to have babies because the endometriosis had left so much scar tissue. That came as a total shock to me. I mean… I knew things weren’t great in that area because of the way I’d suffered every month with intense pain, but it never occurred to me I was losing my fertility one month at a time until a doctor said those words out loud. I was so shattered by that news I could barely function. I was out of work for a week because I couldn’t get out of bed. For the only time in my entire life, I wondered if it’d be easier to give up than to face a future without the children I’d dreamed of having someday. Who would want to marry a woman who couldn’t have children? Who would love me?”
She kept expecting Ruiz to shut her down, but the captain stood by the door with her arms crossed, listening without seeming to blink.
Sam wiped away the tears that always showed up when she revisited this painful era, even after all these years. “I was in a bad way for about three weeks. I went so far as to fantasize about how I might end it all. I had pills for the endometriosis pain. If I took them all, maybe I could escape the hell of this life-altering news. I thought about it nonstop, every waking moment. I dreamed about escaping the agony of physical pain and emotional anguish. I was about to set a date to do it when my brother-in-law Mike called to tell me Tracy was in labor and asking for me.
“I didn’t want to go. I thought I was the last person who should be there when my sister was giving birth, knowing that would never be me. I almost didn’t go, until I remembered the million and one ways that Tracy has been there for me all my life. There’s never been a time when I needed her that she wasn’t right there to take care of me. How could I stay away when she wanted me? So I made myself go, and I was there when my nephew Ethan came into the world, making a huge racket, his face red and scrunchy with outrage. He was so, so beautiful, and like with Brooke, I was in love from the first second I saw him. I never again thought about taking those pills or harming myself, because my niece and nephew were there to soothe the ache. They’d always be there. They were my kids as much as they were my sister’s.”
She finally looked directly at Ruiz through the blur of tears. “That’s who I’m looking for, Captain, the boy who saved my life once upon a time. I’m sorry I didn’t follow your orders to the letter, but there’s nothing I won’t do to bring him home safely. I have to save him the same way he once saved me.”
Ruiz looked down at the floor, her face pulsing with tension, obviously moved by Sam’s story. “I understand what he means to you, but we have to do this by the book so we don’t screw up a potential prosecution. You know that as well as I do.”
“You’re right, and at the meeting, I’ll brief you on everything I know. I spoke to Luna Ahern’s parents and got Archie’s team and CSU started at their house. I’ve asked my friends Avery Hill and Jesse Best for help. I spent all night reading about the horrors of incel culture. I’ve done things anyone in my position would do to help find a missing family member.”
“What else have you done?” Ruiz asked.
“I tried to find the family of a kid named Brecken Mayfield at their last known address. The neighbor told me they moved quite some time ago, and she doesn’t know where they went. If I had to pose a theory at this juncture, I’d guess that Brecken, who was several years older than the three missing kids, was interested in Luna. She wanted nothing to do with him, so he recruited two boys close in age to her to befriend her and try to get her to come out to meet them. I can’t prove any of this, but that’s my guess from what we know so far. We’ve learned there’re active parole violation warrants for him and his father, Asher.
“From what I read about incel culture, this isn’t something people stumble into. Someone in their life leads them to it, perhaps a father, older brother or someone else close to them.”
“That’s a good thought,” Ruiz said. “Why don’t you work on that until the meeting at zero eight hundred?”
“I’ll do that.”
“Let me know what you find out.”
