“The mother’s okay?”
“Shot in the arm, a through and through on her side. The paramedics have her bandaged up and they’re keeping an eye on her. Kearney’s with her. Police are organizing traffic stops and a search back into the woods, FBI is sending more agents to help, and if it becomes a search and rescue, the Marines have offered aid out of Quantico.”
“Let’s go inside. I need to talk to Mrs. Douglass.”
Mrs. Douglass is in her kitchen, both hands wrapped around a glass of water. She’s mostly listening to Cass, standing at her side, but she keeps looking out the bay window of the breakfast nook like she’ll see her daughter coming down the street. She just saw her husband shot down and her daughter grabbed, and God, I want to be gentle with her, but we don’t have time.
“Mrs. Douglass, my name is Mercedes Ramirez, I’m an agent with the FBI. Are there any places for the neighborhood kids to play? Anything that’s been here for a while?”
She stares at me. “Sorry?”
“The woman who took your daughter used to live here. Not just in the neighborhood, in this very house. She’s not going to get out of Stafford, so is there any place where the kids gather? Something they maybe think is a secret from their parents?”
“Um . . . no, I don’t think . . .” She glances at the papers stuck to the door of the fridge and flinches. “There’s a tree house! Nichelle drew a picture of it. She and the girls next door found it a few weeks ago. Said it was falling apart, and I . . . I scolded her for going so far back into the woods.”
“Did they tell you where?”
“No, just that it was far back.”
“You said the girls next door? Which side?”
She points, and I run out of the house to go pound on the door, Eddison sticking close behind me. The door is opened by a round-faced man in a bathrobe. “What’s going on?” he demands. “Are the Douglasses okay?”
“Sir, are your daughters home?”
“Yes, but what—”
“Someone took Nichelle Douglass,” I tell him bluntly, “and we think the woman may be taking her back to a tree house your daughters found with Nichelle.”
“We’re not allowed to go there anymore!” pipes up a girl from down the hall. She slips up behind her father and looks at us with wide eyes. “Mrs. Douglass said it was too far.”
“I’m not going to yell at you for it, mija,” I say, crouching down closer to eye level. “I just need to know where it is. Can you tell us how to get there?”
She chews anxiously on her lip. “Is Nichelle okay?”
“We’re trying to find her. But we need your help.”
“Wait.” She races up the stairs, and back down again only a moment later with a piece of paper in her hand. “I made a map.” She shoves it into my hands so hard it crinkles, and she smooths it out before pointing. “Go straight back and cross the creek, and then there’s a weird rock thing. Go right until the tire stack. Then turn left and go straight for a really long time and the tree house is there. But you can’t go up the ladder because the nails are rusty and Mrs. Douglass says that’s how we get tetanus.”
“This is perfect, sweetheart, thank you.” I straighten up, handing the map to her father. “You’ll want to stay inside for a while. There are more agents and officers on the way.”
“Of course. I hope . . .” He swallows hard and pulls his daughter back into his side. “I hope you find her safe.”
Cass meets us between the houses. “Hanoverian’s here, he’s staying with Mrs. Douglass. Where are we going?”
“We need larger flashlights, and we’re going into the woods.”
She whistles at one of the uniforms, and in short order we’re running into the trees with heavy Maglites and the promise of backup as soon as it arrives. We should wait for it, but one look at my face, and Eddison decides to let us go ahead. Guns drawn and aimed at the ground, we keep the flashlights low as we jog two by two.
It’s not the same as the woods back home, where the trees were spindly and needled and stabbed the sky. These are broader, the branches less keen to smack and cling. We don’t talk, our huffing breaths filling the space. The noise from in front of the houses floats back, strange snippets of conversation without words. We splash through the creek, shallow but too wide to jump, and ignore the discomfort of squelching in our shoes as we look out for the rock pile the girl mentioned. We’ve crossed probably a mile before we see it, and we take a right. The tire stack comes up pretty quickly.
Go straight for a really long time, she said, and given how far we’ve come already, I’m a little worried. We pick up the pace, Eddison and I in the lead, angled in opposite directions so we can have a shred of warning if Cara tries to sneak up on us.
Two miles later, we can hear someone screaming, and another voice yelling. We’re flat-out running now, and finally we can see a clearing up ahead. We slow down as much as we dare, trying to be quiet, but there are old branches all around it like a noise trap.
“Don’t come any closer!” the woman in white yells, grabbing Nichelle by the neck and cutting her off midscream. Her gun sways back and forth next to Nichelle’s face.
Turning off the flashlight, I slide it through the loops on the back of my pants.
Eddison sighs but nods, then motions for Sterling and Cass to each go around a different side. He settles into a crouch behind one of the trees so I can move past him.
“Cara,” I call. “Cara, it’s Mercedes. I know you don’t want to hurt Nichelle.”
“I’m making her safe!” she cries, voice still muffled by the plain white mask. “They’ll hurt her. They always hurt her.”
“Like your father hurt you,” I agree, stepping into the clearing. Her gun comes up to point at me, but I don’t try to get too close. “I know his new wife is having a little girl. Cara, I promise you, he is never going to get the chance to hurt that baby girl.”
“I’m keeping her safe,” she insists.
“Cara, can you take off the mask? Let me see your face, sweetheart, I want to make sure you’re okay.”
She hesitates, but then she steps behind Nichelle, using her as a shield so she can reach up with the hand holding the gun and push back the mask. It falls to the ground, taking the long silver-blonde wig with it. Her natural hair is a slightly dirtier blonde, dark and damp with sweat where it’s pulled back into a tight braid. This young woman, with her wide cheekbones and filled-in face, doesn’t look much like the broken girl in the photos in the file. She looks healthy, and it’s hard to connect her cheerful presence at the CPS office with the child who cried whenever I left her hospital room.
Until she looks up at me, and I recognize the fear.
“There you are, sweetheart. Are you and Nichelle okay?”
The little girl looks at me disbelievingly, tears tracking down her face. I wish I could wink or smile or something, anything to reassure her, but I can’t, not with Cara looking at me.
Cara’s crying, too, and she shakes her head. “I can’t let them hurt her.”
“Then let me take her, Cara. You know I won’t hurt her.”
The gun is abruptly aimed at me again. “You were supposed to keep Emilia safe, but you let her go to that woman! That woman murdered a little boy!”
“No, Cara, she didn’t. Her brother attacked her when he was high. She defended herself. He wouldn’t have died from the gunshot, it was too minor. The drugs he was on reacted badly with the anesthesia. He died because of the drugs, sweetheart. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No. No, you’re lying!”
“I’ve never lied to you, Cara. Let Nichelle come to me. I’ll keep her safe.”