He left the police station, leafing through the file he had been given. He was completely convinced that the parents had nothing to do with Winona Hart’s disappearance. He was working on the theory that the same person or persons had abducted both girls.
He had a list of the kids who had been at the party. A well-organized list, with notes by each name, and the names weren’t in alphabetical order, but in an order based on who among those who had seen her last had the closest relationships with Winona.
One of the boys she knew well worked at an open-fronted ice-cream shop along the pedestrian mall. Nigel Mason. According to the notes, he should be working now, and that meant he had a place to start.
Feeling newly invigorated, Caleb headed down the street.
“That’s…amazing,” Sarah said to Caroline.
“Amazing? It’s uncanny,” Caroline countered.
Sarah felt as if the air had been knocked out of her.
The picture depicted the man she had seen at the foot of her bed—exactly.
Chills raced through her. Her throat was dry. She didn’t want to show Caroline just how much the photograph disturbed her, but her knees were buckling. She pretended to be studying the old photograph with keen interest as she headed for a chair and sat.
For some reason—maybe to preserve her own reputation for sanity—Sarah didn’t want Caroline to know anything about the night’s strange events, at least not yet.
Events—or nightmare?
“Now I understand why Caleb looked so familiar when we first saw him,” Caroline said, following her and perching on the sofa by the chair. “We both saw this photograph before when it was part of that display on how the city was divided during the Civil War. You and I took down that exhibit when we replaced it with the one on Henry Flagler’s wives.”
Sarah let out a long breath and almost laughed aloud as she handed the photo back to Caroline. Of course. That was it. She had seen the photograph before, and that was why she had thought Caleb looked familiar. She just hadn’t put the two together. And of course this was why she’d been so sure Caleb himself had been in her room. Now, with a fair amount of time having passed between the morning and this revelation, it all made sense. In a way, at least. She’d had the photograph catalogued neatly somewhere in memory. She’d met Caleb. Mr. Griffin had come into her house and given her quite a jolt with his crazy fantasies. And then she had dreamed, and in her dream, she had dredged up her memory of the photograph and put the Caleb she knew into the body of a man who had lived long ago.
“Caroline, I could kiss you!” she said.
Caroline stared at her as if she’d gone nuts. “What?”
She decided she still didn’t feel ready to share what was proving to be only a nightmare, however terrifying, with anyone else. She’d already made a fool of herself in front of Caleb.
“This photograph. It explains everything,” Sarah said. Caroline was still looking at her blankly, so Sarah smiled and went on. “Don’t you see—I’ve been wary of him because somewhere in my subconscious I remembered this photo. Now I understand why he seemed so familiar, so…” She faltered, at a loss for a way to pull things together. “Now it all just makes so much sense,” she finished lamely.
“That’s all you can think of to say? You’ve got to be kidding,” Caroline said.
“No, I’m not kidding. Why?”
“Didn’t you hear me? This is uncanny.”
“I admit, the resemblance is startling.”
“It’s more than a resemblance. There’s got to be a genetic connection. I mean, how else could Caleb possibly look so much like Cato? His great, great, great…whatever grandfather must have been Cato MacTavish, who used to own your house. Maybe it’s destiny that Caleb’s here now. We have to show him the picture. We have to tell him about it,” Caroline said excitedly, and then her smile faded. “Although I have to admit, when I came across the picture today, my…mind went a little crazy. For a minute there I actually thought maybe Cato was back from the dead to take vengeance on the people who drove him away.”
“Oh, Caroline…”
“Well…you have to admit it’s pretty weird. I mean, Cato’s double shows up in the city when all this…stuff is happening.”
“Caroline, Caleb is here searching for a girl who disappeared a year ago, and then he plunged right into the efforts to look for the girl who only just disappeared, but be reasonable. He wasn’t here when either one of them disappeared,” Sarah said, then looked away for a moment. She’d been scared for a minute herself when she first saw the photograph, yet here she was, completely prepared to defend Caleb Anderson with all the passion she had.
And it wasn’t because he was good-looking and articulate, not to mention capable, charming and charismatic.
He worked for Adam Harrison, and that meant he was the one thing that really mattered: a good man.