Chapter 30 - The Missing Girl
The first picture Marcus Wren sent arrived eleven minutes after his phone call ended. Abigail sat on a wooden bench beneath a stone archway, wearing a navy school sweater and white sneakers. Her dark blond hair fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were Lydia’s.
Grant stopped breathing when he saw them.
The message underneath read: She walked away from school willingly. Ask yourself who she was trying to reach.
Officer Ruiz came back into our lives before noon.
She had moved to a special investigations unit after the Cross case, and when Grant called, she arrived with two detectives and no patience for wealthy families pretending private problems were private. “Nobody pays anyone. Nobody arranges a meeting. Nobody responds to Wren without coordination,” she said.
Grant held up the phone. “He claims he doesn’t have her.”
“And maybe he doesn’t.”
“You believe him?”
“I believe evidence.”
That answer still sounded like Ruiz.
Eleanor gave the police everything she had. Saint Maren’s administrator joined by video. The school confirmed Abigail had received a handwritten note during dinner the night she disappeared. A student courier said it had been left at the front desk.
“What did the note say?” I asked.
The administrator looked uncomfortable. “We don’t have the original.”
“Why not?”
“Abigail took it with her.”
Ruiz asked, “Did anyone see the handwriting?”
“One student. She says the message was short.”
“What did it say?”
The administrator read from a statement. “Your brother needs you. Come alone.”
Grant looked at me.
My stomach tightened.
Noah.
Someone had used Noah to lure Abigail.
Grant stood. “She was trying to come here.”
Ruiz held up a hand. “Possibly.”
“She knew about him.”
“Yes.”
“She got a note saying he needed her.”
“Yes.”
“Then she left.”
“That doesn’t tell us where she went after.”
Eli pulled up a map. Saint Maren’s was almost three hours away. The chapel service road connected to a county highway. Traffic cameras showed three vehicles during the seven-minute security gap: a delivery truck, a white van, and a dark blue sedan.
“Plate on the sedan?” Ruiz asked.
“Obscured.”
“Van?”
“Commercial rental.”
“Truck?”
“Verified route.”
Grant paced once across the room, then stopped. “Find the van.”
While they worked, I went upstairs.
Noah was building a crooked tower of blocks with Rosa. He smiled when he saw me and shouted, “Tessa!” with the triumph of a child who had recently discovered two-syllable names.
I knelt and hugged him.
My eyes burned unexpectedly.
Somewhere, his sister was missing.
His sister.
The word still felt impossible.
Noah pressed a blue block into my hand. “Build.”
So I built.
That was what caring for children often demanded. Terror could be happening three rooms away, and still somebody needed lunch cut small enough not to choke.
An hour later, Eli came into the nursery.
“They found the rental van.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned near a train station.”
“Anything inside?”
“A school button. Same uniform brand as Abigail’s.”
My chest tightened. “Blood?”
“No.”
Small mercy.
Then he handed me a printed still from station security.
Abigail stood near Platform Four.
Alone.
She was looking at her phone.
The time stamp was forty-one minutes after she left Saint Maren’s.
“She wasn’t taken from the school road,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“So she went willingly.”
“At first.”
I studied the image.
Behind Abigail, half reflected in the station glass, stood a woman in a cream coat.
Her face was mostly obscured.
But the posture pulled at something in my memory.
I had seen that way of standing before—weight on one hip, chin slightly raised, one hand tucked under the opposite elbow.
“No,” I whispered.
Eli looked at me. “What?”
I pointed.
“That woman.”
“You recognize her?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did.
Not fully.
Not logically.
I had seen the same posture outside a courtroom months ago, beside defense counsel, never charged, barely noticed.
Evelyn Cross’s younger sister.
Marianne.
May you like
I looked up at Eli.
“The Cross family isn’t finished.”
