Was it even possible that her sister was, say, not in Alabama or Tennessee, but six blocks away?
With a sigh, Allison turned to the next page of the trap and trace. Everyone, it seemed, had called or been called by Senator Fairview. Other senators, congressmen, a well-known conservative actor, along with dozens and dozens of names she didn’t recognize who were probably lobbyists and constituents. But there was one number that was popping up with more and more frequency on his cell phone. Calls to and from the number came in four, five, six times a day, and sometimes lasted twenty or thirty minutes. But the name wasn’t one she recognized. K. Page. And then it hit Allison so hard that she actually jerked her head back. How could she have been so blind! No wonder Katie’s trap and trace records had only shown phone calls to and from her parents. Katie had gotten a second phone and registered it under the name K. Page. K for Katie, and Page as a little inside joke.
Allison’s finger stabbed at the printout. She couldn’t wait to hear how Senator Fairview would try to explain this away.
SOUTHWEST PORTLAND
December 24
Maybe you should scoot your seat back,” Marshall said as they drove to church for the midnight Christmas Eve service. Allison loved the routine of welcoming the Christ Child in the middle of the night. When she was a kid, they would come home from the midnight service, drink hot cocoa, and go to sleep—although Allison and Lindsay often only pretended to, too eager for Christmas morning.
“Why?” Allison stopped typing in her pass code to access the voice mail system at work. Even though she had left the office three hours earlier, her mind still churned. There was no new word on the Converse case. And Lindsay hadn’t called back. It seemed that both Allison’s fifty dollars and Lindsay had vanished. She just hoped that Lindsay hadn’t pulled the same stunt with their mom.
Marshall pointed at the dash. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so close to the air bag.”
“I think that’s the whole point of the air bag.”
“An air bag is supposed to stop you from breaking your neck. It wasn’t designed to protect a baby. I was reading online; the Department of Transportation says pregnant women should sit as far back as possible from the air bag and keep their arms away from the dash area.”
“Are you going to be like this the whole time?” Allison patted Marshall’s knee. “Remember, women have been having babies for thousands of years. You’ve seen those diaries pioneer women kept. Made dozen loaves of bread, plowed back forty, gave birth to son, butchered hog. They didn’t worry about folic acid and air bags, and everything turned out fine.”
But even as she was speaking, Allison reached for the lever on the side of the seat and scooted it back as far as it would go. She finished entering her code and put the phone to her ear.
“You have two new voice mails,” the woman’s pleasant voice announced. The first was a request to change a meeting to a different time. The second was a man’s voice, husky, not one she recognized.
“Hey, slut. Listen to me. I know where your fancy house is in the West Hills. I’m going to give you what you’ve got coming.”
Allison gasped. Marshall looked over at her, concerned. With every ounce of will, she forced herself to listen to the man’s threats.
“I’m going to tie you down and rape you, and then I’m going to slit your throat.” And then he said the same words that had ended the note. “And I’m going to like it.”
There was a click.
“End of final message,” the woman’s voice announced cheerfully.
Allison flipped her phone closed. “This is not what I needed right now,” she said, her voice cracking.
Marshall hurriedly pulled into the far end of the church parking lot and turned off the car. He turned to her. “What is it? Did Lindsay call back? Is something wrong?”
“Oh, just a, a message. From someone who’s mad at me.Y
“Allison.” Marshall put his hand on her chin and made her look him directly in the eye. “What is it?”
She hesitated, then said, “I’ve gotten a couple of threats recently. You know the kind of people I put away. It comes with the territory.”
“But there’s a difference now, Allison. You have to think of the baby.”
“These people just like to hear themselves talk,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Marshall. “And I’m taking precautions. There are extra patrols coming by the house. And Rod put a trap and trace on my phone, so I’ll be able to find out where it came from.”
Marshall sighed. “Maybe with the baby coming you should think about going into a different area of law. One that’s less dangerous.”