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“Oh, I know. You just make me think and . . . ugh.” Tori waved a hand. “Let’s talk about something else. It’s two dates. I should not be making myself crazy at this point.”
“Agreed.” Two tables away, a pair of Chandler County deputies sat down, chatting with the server. One squelched a squawking handheld. She frowned, thoughts drawn once more to Vontressa.
Please let Tony’s team be able to help. Please let them find her, alive and unharmed.
“It’s tough.” Tori fiddled with her fork, gaze tracking Caitlin’s. When Caitlin swung her attention back to the younger woman, Tori shrugged. “Mrs. Lauree is devastated and terrified. Mark and Tick don’t have a lot of confidence in the sheriff's department investigators, but neither of them wants to say it out loud.”
Caitlin nodded. He hadn’t said it aloud this go round, but Tick didn’t hold back his opinion about his grandfather’s former department and its current leadership in the privacy of their conversations.
“Mark hopes they’ll call in the GBI, maybe ask for help from the FBI resident agency here.” Tori shook her head, a troubled slant to her full mouth. “That was always Grandaddy’s first step, but Sheriff Hollowell seems to think it’s a sign of weakness.”
“I see.”
Tori tilted her head in the other direction, toward two older men Caitlin recognized as friends of Gene’s. “Mr. Virgil and Mr. Talley are always on Tick to move back, run for sheriff, be the reincarnation of Grandaddy, making things better.”
Caitlin arched a brow. She was well-aware of the unrelenting pressure, aware of Tick’s opinion there, too.
“He’d hate it.” Tori shook her head. “Now, if they were smart, they’d work on getting Sheriff Hollowell to hire him as chief deputy. He’d be amazing, and so much better than the current guy. All Jack does is go in his office and close the door. I think he plays solitaire all day. The department is a mess.”
Maybe if they were smart, they’d stop pressuring him to do something he’d already decided wasn’t for him. That was the quickest way to get him entrenched. Didn’t they know him at all?
Of course, he would be an excellent chief deputy, and he missed home, was wired to serve.
He was also wired to put her and the children first, sometimes at the cost of his own needs.
Caitlin cast a speculative glance over the men once more.
Maybe she needed to talk to her husband.
Chapter Nineteen
Save Me
Mrs. Lauree broke his heart. Hell, David broke his heart.
Tick sat in the living room where he’d spent a lot of his teenage years, Tori out back with Vontressa while David walked him through trig and calculus or he explained the intricacies of whatever poem Mr. Davis had them explicating. Now, he sat on the couch, Mrs. Lauree’s hands cradled in both of his, and he had nothing to offer, except his presence and the disjointed prayers his brain tried to string together.
Thank the good Lord for Falcon since Hollowell’s department seemed intent on maintaining tight, closed control over Vontressa’s case, not even deigning to involve the GBI. He’d called Caitlin’s cousin Tony during his lunch break, after he’d had to tell his mama over the phone she would be a grandmother again. Besides delving into Vontressa’s online presence, Tony offered to send a pair of investigators, and he gently broached that idea with Mrs. Lauree.
She clenched his hands, hard. “Do you think we should let them come, Lamar?”
He cast a quick glance at David. “They’d be solid, discreet. They’re accustomed to working with local law enforcement.”
David nodded, then glanced at his mama, his round face older than normal and ravaged by worry. “I think we should, Mama.”
Mrs. Lauree looked up at Tick with a sharp bob of her chin. “All right.”
“Cait’ll be here all week.” Tony would allow her access to the Falcon systems so they didn’t blur anything with her using Bureau resources. “She’ll be a help to them, too.”
He set up the contact, hugged Mrs. Lauree goodbye, stood in the driveway when David walked him out. Down the street, a trio of boys fiddled with the bass in a box Chevy.
He and David had done that, too, playing with David’s speakers, messing with the audio in his truck, Vontressa and Tori crawling all over the side of the truck like a jungle gym.
“This is bad, Lamar.” David rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know how to tell her how bad it is.”
“I know.” Tick breathed the words, the heat pressing down on them, cicadas buzzing in the pecan grove that backed up to the neighborhood. Yellow ribbons snapped on the chainlink fence, posters with Vontressa’s wide smile furling in the hot evening breeze.
“Lorraine says we should start organizing searches, and she’s right.” David made another slow pass over his lower face. “But I don’t know where to begin. And how do I say we’re at the point where we’re not going to find her alive—”
