Leni cleared her throat. “You’ve been playing for a couple of hours, kiddo. Why don’t you take a little break and I’ll make you a sandwich?”
“Okay.” He blinked up at her with wide, innocent eyes. “Do you think they got peanut butter here?”
Leni smiled. “Oh, I imagine they do.”
“And grape jelly?”
“Why don’t we go find out?”
She got up from the sofa and started walking toward the kitchen. She went a few paces before she realized Riley wasn’t following her. Alarmed, she glanced back and saw his attention was rooted to the TV over the fireplace.
“Rye?”
She drifted back to him, her own gaze drawn to the news coverage playing on the big screen. It was from the local station, a breaking story about a young girl who’d apparently gone missing from Quebec almost two weeks ago. A snapshot of a preteen girl with light-brown hair and a shy smile dominated the display.
“That’s her,” Riley said, turning to look at Leni.
“That’s who, honey?”
“My friend. The one Fred and me met in the woods down by the river.”
A chill moved through Leni’s bloodstream. “What do you mean, you met her? Are you talking about the imaginary friend you mentioned that morning you left the house without telling me?”
He frowned, shaking his head. “Not ‘maginary. She’s real. But I don’t know her name, cause—”
“Because she ran away when you tried to talk to her,” Leni replied, her voice wooden as she recalled what the boy had told her that day. The report she had dismissed as fiction because she was upset and scared and had no patience to play games with him.
Had there been a missing girl on the run in the woods in Parrish Falls?
If so, how on earth had she gotten so far away from her home?
Leni grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. The photo of the shy child was replaced with recent video file footage of law enforcement officers cordoning off a stretch of woods above the river outside Parrish Falls while a coroner’s van waited on the snow-covered road.
“Authorities in Canada say the girl, whose body was found in the Penobscot River yesterday, was last reported seen at the rest stop near St. Zacharie. It is believed the twelve-year-old French-speaking victim may have been at risk for trafficking,” the female anchor reported soberly. “If anyone has further information, you’re asked to please contact law enforcement.”
“What’s trafficking?” Riley asked.
Leni couldn’t answer. Her head filled with a sick suspicion—and a cold, niggling sense of alarm.
What was a child who’d gone missing from the border at St. Zacharie doing in Parrish Falls?
As she considered it, Knox’s account of what he’d discovered when he read Travis Parrish’s sins came back to her with terrible clarity.
Travis had arranged to send Shannon away. No, not sent away.
Taken.
Abducted across the Canadian border into Quebec.
Travis, who had a habit of hurting women, Knox had said.
And young girls.
She thought back to the odd reaction that passed between Travis and his father in the diner Sunday afternoon, when Enoch had mentioned Dwight and Jeb had a delivery to run to St. Zacharie. An urgent delivery made on the worst road conditions of the season.
Money doesn’t wait for good weather.
Enoch Parrish’s remark, and the strange look he’d exchanged with Travis suddenly took on a sinister new meaning.
