Mrs. Seager nodded. She took another slow sip of her coffee before she answered. “Yes.”
“And who do you believe it is?”
“Mr. Stanton,” she replied quickly, her words coming out in a rush as if she were afraid that if she didn’t say them right then that she would change her mind.
Elijah nodded, his eyes briefly flitting towards the glass viewing window.
“I think he’s gotten her in the most terrible trouble, and she’s too young, too innocent to really understand it. She loves him, at least she thinks she does.”
“Mrs. Seager, your daughter may be young and impressionable, but as you said, she’s a good girl. You seem to be the sort of woman that would instil in her children the difference between right and wrong.”
“Of course. But the young want what they want, and they’ll do what they’ll do,” Mrs. Stanton said, sadness tinging her tone.
“And what exactly is it that she’s done?” Elijah asked, his voice calm and cautious. He made sure there were no signs of judgment in it. He understood how Michael Stanton worked, how deeply he could get under a woman’s skin—especially someone who had no confidence in herself. “Because I find it very hard to believe that she managed to break into Medco’ all on her own. So her involvement must have been…in some other way, perhaps?”
Mrs. Seager opened her mouth to respond, the words almost visible on her lips, when the door to the interview room flew open. Elijah turned in his seat and glared at Paul.
“I need a word, now!” Paul’s words came out in a rush.
“I’m busy,” Elijah snapped. “I’m sorry about this.” He said turning to look at Mrs. Seager who looked scared out of her mind. Her visible guilt at talking about her daughter’s darkest secrets making Elijah panic that she’d not tell him what she came here to say.
“Elijah,” Paul said, the tone in his voice making Elijah look back at his friend, his anger sliding from his face. “They’ve found her.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Elijah
The words rattled around Elijah’s head.
He tried to make sense of what Paul was saying.They’ve found her.Notshe’s come home.Orthey’ve found her body.Notshe’s called her husband, orshe turned up. Just a simple statement.
They’ve found her.
Elijah felt dizzy with the words, lost in a sea of worry, elation, and anxiety. He stumbled to his feet, his chair sliding backwards along the hard floor and letting out a wail of resistance. This must be what it feels like, he thought, to lose someone you love. He’d loved his mother, of course, but this was a different type of love.
This feeling was different. New, and so much more terrible.
“I’m sorry,” Elijah said, looking back at Mrs. Seager, his brown-eyed gaze landing on Mrs. Seager momentarily. “I’ll be right back, if you can just wait here for a moment.” The words were thick like putty as they left his lips, and his body felt almost numb as he walked towards Paul. His eyes stayed at the floor for fear of what he might see if he looked up into his friends face.
Paul stepped back as Elijah left the room, closing the door behind him. He waited one point five seconds before he built up the courage to look up into Paul’s face and speak.
“Is she…” he couldn’t finish off the sentence, he realised. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
“She’s not good,” Paul replied. “She’s in a coma.”
Elijah swallowed, his heart thumping erratically in his chest. “Where is she?”
Paul placed a hand on Elijah’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “She’s in Arizona.”
As soon as the words were out of Paul’s mouth, a piece of the jigsaw fell into place. “The Grand Canyon,” he mumbled.
Paul nodded. “Yeah, how’d you know that?”
“She said she’d always wanted to see it—since she was a little girl. She said one day she wanted to take her kids,” Elijah swallowed. “I told her I’d take her. That I’d take them all.”
Guilt filtered through him, though he wasn’t sure what his guilt was for. He’d promised her, and he had every intention of keeping his promise. Yet the way she’d looked at him led him to believe that she didn’t trust his promise.
“Elijah, she tried to kill herself.” Paul squeezed Elijah’s shoulder again. “She was found by a hiker off one of the paths.”
