| |
“Hold on, Maggie,” Ann whispered. Her first thought was Teresa was hurting her. Ann grabbed her radio while she maneuvered the old Jeep toward the Hart residence.
“Ann to George,” she said.
“Yeah?” George responded.
“Be on the lookout for Teresa Hart,” Ann said. “She is our prime suspect in the missing persons case. Likely armed, definitely dangerous.”
“Is that a BOLO?” George asked, excitement in his voice.
“Yes. I’ll radio you soon with more information.” Ann pulled into Derrick’s driveway and ran to the door. She pounded on it with the side of her fist. “Derrick!” she yelled. He was supposed to stop here to get Maggie’s overnight stuff. Ann tried the knob. The door opened. She burst inside.
“Maggie?” she called. She held her breath and listened. No sound of anyone home, just the tick of a clock somewhere nearby.
The phone rang. Ann jumped. The answering machine picked up.
After the beep, a voice said, “Hello, this is Harmony Elementary calling. We have Maggie here . . .” Ann ran out the door, slamming it behind her. She jumped into her truck and hauled ass over to the school.
Maggie Hart stood outside with a woman about Ann’s age. Tears streamed down Maggie’s cheeks. When her teary eyes landed on Ann, Maggie ran to her and wrapped her arms around Ann’s waist. The glow and the ache in Ann’s veins ceased. The mark continued to burn.
“Daddy didn’t come get me from school. No one came. My teacher took me home, but no one is there, so she took me back here. Where is my daddy?” Her words came bawling out of her, full of desperate fear. She looked up at Ann, and Ann’s heart shattered.
This poor child. Stuck in the middle of crazy and crazier with the literal weight of the world on her shoulders.
Ann dropped to a squat, and Maggie wrapped her arms around Ann’s shoulders, sobbing hot breath against her neck.
“It’s okay, Maggie,” Ann said. “I’m going to take care of you until they come back, okay?” She felt Maggie’s head nod and heard a muffled agreement.
“Derrick Hart called the school earlier and said you would be picking Maggie up today,” the woman said.
“Would have been nice if he told me I was supposed to do that,” Ann said in a tight voice.
That son of a bitch.
“We tried calling the number he left for you, but it didn’t go through.” She shrugged.
“Thank you. I’m sorry there was a miscommunication.” She took Maggie’s hands and extracted them from around her. Maggie took a step back and hitched in several breaths.
“Everything’s going to be all right, okay?” Ann told her.
Maggie twisted her fists in her eyes and nodded.
“Let’s go to your house and get some overnight stuff.”
She nodded again. Ann stood and took the girl’s hand.
As they drove to the Hart residence, Ann tried to contain her anger. She’d told Derrick to work things out with his wife. Not only did he not listen—and why should he? She wasn’t the boss of him—he’d put his daughter at risk. He put humanity at risk.
On the other hand, if Teresa truly was behind the disappearances—murders—a mental health facility was exactly where she belonged. Ann was almost grateful. Almost.
“Why didn’t they come get me?” Maggie asked with a sniffle.
“I’m sure there’s a good reason.” Ann followed the street into Harmony’s suburbia. At Maggie’s house, she parked in the driveway and went inside.
“Socks, underwear, clothes, toothbrush,” Ann said. Maggie ran upstairs. Ann wandered into the front room and perused the pictures on the piano. Teresa and Derrick seemed like a happy couple in all of the images. She lifted one that sat in the middle. A photo of Teresa and their baby. She seemed so happy. Ann supposed a lot of women suffered from post-partum depression on the inside but hid it on the outside at the risk of letting it break them open.
Maggie clomped down the stairs behind her. “Got my teethbrush.” She giggled. “I call it a teethbrush because I have more than one tooth.” Finding her own joke so funny, she threw her head back and guffawed.
Ann couldn’t help but laugh with her. She ushered Maggie back into the Jeep.
“I need to run by the station,” Ann said. She hoped the printer had handled the massive print job. “Then dinner—and then I’m taking you to someone who is excited to see you.”
“Who?” Maggie asked. “I want to stay with you.”
“It’s a surprise,” Ann said. They got to the station a couple minutes later. Pinky greeted them with a woof. Maggie froze.
“Pinky?” she said. The dog bounded toward her and licked her face. Maggie squealed with delight and hugged the dog’s head.
“I saw you in my dreams. You smashed through the glass.” She stroked Pinky’s scabbed-over cuts, then sobered and looked up at Ann. “Brent’s gone, isn’t he?” Her eyes filled with renewed tears.
Ann didn’t know what to say. She cleared her throat and went to the printer. By the grace of whatever, the station had a laser printer—not a dot matrix like she’d expected. Joey’s hacked documentation from the mental institution Teresa went to as a kid and from Mountain View sat in the tray. She grabbed the missing persons case file from the desk and stuffed the print job inside.
“Are we bringing Pinky with us?” Maggie asked. She was on the floor with the dog’s big head in her tiny lap. Pinky rolled slightly onto her back and opened her mouth. Her tongue flopped out as she gazed adoringly at Maggie.
“Please? I love her.” Maggie wrapped her arms around Pinky.
Ann grimaced. Maggie may have known Brent was gone, but she didn’t know how he went or what happened to his remains thereafter. So much inside of her said no, leave the dog, but Maggie’s smile and Pinky’s obvious contentment at having a child mauling her . . . Ann would just keep a close eye on the dog.
Ann found a rope in the storage cell to use as a leash. She tied it around Pinky’s collar. Maggie climbed in the Jeep while Ann loaded Pinky into the back.
Behind the wheel, Ann glanced at Maggie, whose eyes were full of tears. She hitched in a shaky breath.
“Three people,” she whispered.
Four, Ann thought. But she wasn’t going to go there.
“It’s okay,” Ann said. “Don’t cry. I’m here. You’re safe.”
* * *
Ann microwaved a frozen dinner tray for herself and threw together some noodles and sauce she found in the cupboards for Maggie. While Maggie slurped her spaghetti, Ann perused the file, dog-earing pages to come back to after she had Maggie safely with Raghib.
Maggie finished a second helping of spaghetti, and Ann cleared away the plates.
“I know you want to stay with me,” Ann said. “And I really wish you could, but I have a lot of work to do.” She tossed their napkins into the trash.
“I’ll be quiet. I won’t bother you,” Maggie said. “Please, Ann.”
“You’ll be safe with this person, and I’ll know if you are hurt or scared.” She pulled her shirt aside and showed Maggie the mark again. “Even when you were scared and sad at the school, I knew.”
Maggie wiped away a single tear that had fallen from her right eye.
“I can get to you in minutes if anything happens.”
“Promise?” Maggie took in another hitching breath.
Ann nodded. Maggie grabbed her backpack with her overnight stuff, and they went out to the Jeep. A little way into town, Ann turned south toward Harmony B&B.