“What are you working on?”
“I’m trying to find a pattern to tie Fern and Annie Ross to the other women who’ve been reported missing across the state,” he said. “You’ve given me some things that are helpful, but so far I can’t find a link.”
“What kind of link?”
“So far it’s just missing women who have all aged out of foster care. Their backgrounds are all very diverse. The one thing that links Annie Ross to these other women is the fact that she was looking for a friend of hers who’d gone missing. Similar background to Fern’s.”
“Maybe Annie stumbled onto something and that’s what got her being abducted and abandoned?” Ava asked.
“Yes. Have you been through all the stuff that came with Gracie? I wondered if there was something hidden in her bag or blanket. Maybe to explain why someone broke into your house.”
Ava hadn’t thought of that. “I mean, I haven’t seen anything obvious. Let me go and get the bag. It was pretty empty when Marg got to the fire station to collect the baby. There’s nothing in the blanket unless the weave holds a clue, which I think isn’t really likely.”
Chay rubbed his hand over his eyes and then shook his head. “No, that’s not a thing.”
Ava crept quietly into Gracie’s room and retrieved the diaper bag. Emptying the contents on the table, she didn’t find anything that she hadn’t put in there herself. Not even in the lining of the bag, which was a little bit worn.
“Nothing.”
“It was a long shot. Do you see many patients who came from foster care?” Chay asked. “Is there something I’m missing when I’m looking at this?”
“I only have Fern right now. In the past I have had a few foster care adults. Usually they come to me for help with adapting to a new relationship. I find the biggest thing is the struggle to accept anything permanent.”
“Like me,” Chay said.
“And me,” she pointed out. “But my situation is different than yours.”
“Yes, I’ve never felt physically threatened…not since I came to live with Grandmother.”
“Were you mistreated?” she asked. She didn’t want to think of Chay ever being abused, but it happened. His mother was sort of a case study in someone who probably shouldn’t have had a child.
“Sometimes. Usually my mom was so strung out she didn’t know I was there. There were some men who treated me okay. Some them thought I was a nuisance.”
Of course she wanted to comfort him, but Chay was so point-blank about it that she knew he’d processed his feelings around that a long time ago.
“I guess the one thing you have in common is that you don’t trust easily. Why, then, are these women being taken?”
“If Fern had a brand on her, then it would indicate a reason why she was taken. Sex work or drug mule. Something toindicate that she was being trafficked. That’s the most likely scenario for her being out this far.”
Ava had wondered herself about that situation. She hadn’t brought it up to Fern because the other woman was still so fragile and rebuilding her strength. The last thing that Ava wanted to do was worry her again.
But Fern was worried. She’d been afraid to go outside and sit in the sun. She hated that those men who’d abducted Fern still had so much power over her. “I hope you can figure this out.”
“Me, too. It feels bigger to me than just one woman. Maybe I’m adding too much to it, but Annie Ross’s death, your break-in. Feels like they are all too close together to be random.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking….well, at first I was worried that my stalker was out of prison, but that’s just because he’s the only man to have terrified me.”
“He’s not, right? Jacob said he’d double-check,” Chay said, trying to reassure her.
“Yeah, Jacob would have called if he’d heard anything different. I’m just saying that Fern or these other women who disappeared might have someone they were running from. Not Fern. She was settled in her job and her life. But maybe someone else. The woman you mentioned.”
Chay rubbed the back of his neck and then went to get more coffee for them both. “Maybe. It feels like we are close to a breakthrough on this case, but I’m just missing something.”
She smiled at him as she added sugar to her mug. “You’ll get it. The snowstorm…I hope no one was being left like Fern was. Could you imagine a woman trapped and alone in this?”
“I can. I hope to God nothing like that is happening.”
“Me, too,” Ava said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. It was so scary to think that men might be moving women around the state during a storm like this. It would give them cover, but it could also help expose them.
