Missing. Lynette Eason

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      Then those emotions disappeared and anger made her voice hard as she ground out, “I tried to tell you sixteen years ago, but you wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say, remember?”

      Mason clenched his fists as he remembered their final confrontation. Her tears, Daniel’s guilty flush. Mason’s unwillingness to look at her, much less listen to anything she had to say. Because she’d done what he’d expected all along. Betrayed him. Just like his mother had betrayed his father and her entire family.

      “All right, look.” His brain struggled to adjust to all the information it had just been bombarded with. Life-changing information. “You said Bethany is missing. Let’s put the past aside and focus on her.”

      A daughter, his mind echoed. He had a daughter.

      Maybe.

      If she was really his.

      But what if she was?

      He couldn’t help wondering what she looked like. What did she think about him? Why would Lacey tell him he was the father, if he wasn’t? Then again, this was the girl he’d caught in his best friend’s arms and she’d denied what was before his very eyes. He didn’t know what to believe, but if the possibility that their one-time intimate prom night encounter resulted in a child…

      He had to know.

      “I agree,” she said, interrupting the endless questions he suddenly had. Relief written clearly on her strained features, she also looked grateful. “Please.”

      “But this issue is far from resolved.”

      “I know,” she whispered and looked away.

      Mason stood, rotated his healing shoulder, wincing at the pinch and slight stiffness, then realized his resolve to do whatever it took to get it back into tip-top shape before he returned to work just fell to second place on his priority list.

      Finding his daughter had just careened its way to the top spot.

      Running a hand through the hair he’d just washed before finding Lacey on his doorstep, he said, “All right, first things first. We need find out who saw her last. And if you think her disappearance has something to do with the car accident, then we need to revisit that, too.”

      Lacey rubbed her nose. “I’m sure Georgia knows something. I’ve called her several times and she swears she doesn’t know where Bethany is, but I think she’s hiding something.” She clenched a fist and smacked her thigh. “I just can’t get her to tell me anything. And the police refuse—” She broke off again and Mason could tell she was having a hard time keeping it together. She was obviously exhausted.

      He had a feeling a few sleepless nights were in his immediate future, too. “Grab your stuff. Let’s go talk to Georgia.”

      Gathering her bag and the picture, she stood. “She’s probably in school.”

      “Then let’s get her out of class.”

      “What do we do after that?”

      “Visit the police station and see what we can find out about the wreck.”

      Stepping outside his home, headed for the car, Lacey did her best to shove the hurt down. Old memories threatened to overwhelm her. The fear of finding out she was pregnant. Mason’s rejection…

      As Mason circled the car to open the passenger door, he paused.

      The sudden tense set of his shoulders set off her internal alarms. “What is it?”

      His arm reached across the windshield to pull something out from under the wiper blade. “This.” He held it by the very edge of one corner.

      Stepping around him to look at the object in his hand, she gasped. “Another picture? Of us? That’s from the yearbook, too! What’s going on? How did someone know I’d be coming here?”

      “Get in the car.”

      Eyes peeled behind him for any movement or suspicious person, he opened the door and practically shoved her in. Then he bolted around to the driver’s side. He set the picture on the dash and got on the phone as he pulled out of the driveway.

      Lacey listened to him bark orders and ask questions of an unidentified person as she watched the familiar scenery whiz by, but her brain didn’t process it. She was too busy begging God for her daughter’s life. And thanking Him that Mason had agreed to help her.

      And he’d agreed before he’d found the picture on his car. Who was doing this? Was the person following them even now?

      She looked in the side mirror, but saw no cars behind them. The fact didn’t comfort her. She had a feeling things had just gotten started with Bethany’s disappearance and whoever had left the pictures. The thought made her stomach roll.

      He hung up and looked at her. “I’ve called Detective Catelyn Santino. She’s a homicide detective…” At her gasp, he broke off then rushed to reassure her. “No, it’s okay. She also investigates other stuff, too, depending on her caseload. She said she could help out with this one.”

      He made another phone call and Lacey heard him trying to arrange with his boss to be officially on the case. Finding fugitives was only one part of a marshal’s duties. Would the powers that be let him search for a missing teen who hadn’t done anything wrong and had possibly been kidnapped? Would they let him search for the person who’d left the pictures?

      He hung up.

      “Well?” The word popped from her mouth. She noticed he didn’t tell his boss it was his own child he wanted to look for. Interesting. He was probably still in shock.

      Frustration chiseled his features into a block of stone. “My boss won’t officially assign me the case, although he can’t dictate what I do with my time off the clock. Technically, I’m not cleared to go back to work for another couple of weeks, but that doesn’t matter. Bethany will have my full attention until we get her home. And in spite of the fact that you didn’t think the cops took you seriously, they did their job and filed her as a missing person.”

      “They did?” Tears clogged her throat and she cleared it. “I really didn’t think they’d do anything. I thought they probably just stuck her information on a desk somewhere and figured she was a runaway who’d come home later.”

      A grim smile crossed his lips. “They may have thought about it, but they’re taking it a little more seriously now. Especially when I explained about the two pictures. We’ll turn them over to the investigating detectives as soon as we get there.”

      “How did you get them to do that? To listen to you?”

      He slanted her a glance. “I’m a marshal, Lacey, I do have some pull in law enforcement, you know.” He sighed.

      “Catelyn’s going to ask to be assigned to Bethany’s disappearance and doesn’t think it’ll be a problem. Her husband, Joseph, is FBI and an expert in finding missing people. She’s contacting him, too. Before we go to the high school, she wants to talk to you.”

      He paused СКАЧАТЬ