FLETCHER AND HART followed the FBI agents to the Stevens house out in Bethesda. On the drive over, Fletcher made a couple of calls, used his contacts to get a background on Rob Thurber. He didn’t want to go into the conversation about his relationship with Timothy Savage totally blind.
Thurber was, by all accounts, a straight shooter. Dedicated to the cause, he’d been an agent for twenty-five years, applied early, right out of school, and had served in several capacities within the organization. He was part of the Behavioral Analysis Unit tasked to the child endangerment team. He was their profiler, the one who looked at the victims and told you what sort of person would be interested in lifting them from their lives.
He’d asked a couple of quick questions about Jordan Blake, as well—she, too, was a lifer, though she was twenty years younger than Thurber and just getting her feet wet. But she had a track record of solves, a knack for finding missing kids, so she was running the show.
They seemed like solid people. So what was Thurber’s connection to Savage?
Nothing to do but ask the man face-to-face.
He debated calling Sam, telling her he’d found a possible heir, but decided to wait until he talked to Thurber himself, determine if it was a fluke or a coincidence, or if he was the real deal.
Fletcher didn’t believe in coincidence.
And the backdrop of this missing kid was sure to keep things interesting. Fletcher knew the odds weren’t good for Rachel Stevens, and he felt immediately guilty for thinking it. The longer she was missing, the bigger the chance she was gone forever. This was a noncustodial kidnapping, the worst possible scenarios at play. It would break his heart, if he let it. He couldn’t afford to. He had to stay detached, stay focused. If he let himself think about what might actually be happening to the little girl, he wouldn’t be worth a flip. He had to do his best to find her before the worst happened.
They took a final turn into a small, neat neighborhood. The Stevens home was a modest two-story brick house with a professionally landscaped and maintained yard on a cul-de-sac. There was a lot of activity on the street: neighbors taking cover in the shade of large, leafy trees, children at play signs at the intersections. This was a good area of town, perfect for young families, and normally untouched by a tragedy of this magnitude.
There was a chalk drawing on the asphalt in front of the house—a big pink heart with the words We Love You, Rachel underneath. A few teddy bears and batches of flowers were leaning against the black wrought-iron mailbox post, forlorn on the ground, and the neighbors who weren’t already gathering peeked out from behind their curtains every time they heard a car.
Fletcher saw a satellite truck make the turn behind them. The media were here, too. Great. Let the cacophony begin.
He put the Caprice in Park. “You ready for this?”
Hart nodded. “Better go in before the gauntlet arrives. The minute the 6:00 p.m. broadcast goes live, this place will be overrun with newsies and the tips are going to start flowing in.”
They followed the agents up the front walk. Before Thurber had a chance to knock, a dark-haired man with a long nose and thin, round silver wire glasses opened the door. His eyes and the tip of his nose were red, but he seemed to be holding it together. At the sight of the agents, his expression changed—hope and dread spilling across his face, etching so deeply into the lines of his skin he seemed like a detailed painting instead of a real person.
His voice shook. “Is there news?”
Agent Blake shook her head. “Not yet, sir. May we come in?”
Stevens’s expression fell. He sniffed once, then melted back away from the entrance, and the four cops trooped in. He shut the door behind them and gestured to the living room.
While the house looked tranquil on the outside, inside it was humming with activity and was packed with people: agents running wiretaps, a grandmotherly looking woman who was crying quietly—Fletcher recognized her as the nanny—a couple of teenagers. They all looked up expectantly, then realized these were simply interlopers—there was no news—and went back to their business.
Stevens brought them to a small den off the more formal living room, a library and office space. There were two comfortable sofas facing each other, and a desk at the head. He sat on the edge of the desk, and everyone else arranged themselves on the sofas.
“What’s happening?” Stevens asked.