On the drive over, she and Ruth hadn’t talked much. Kat’s mind had been dissecting the various suspects’ reactions concerning Addie Donovan’s disappearance, wondering if all the anger-fueled bluster and the attacks on Ruth’s, Patrick’s, and her own integrity were simply a means to hide their complicity. To a man, they had been verbally vicious . . . but then they’d basically been asked if they were serial kidnappers and rapists. Innocent men would be offended.
“Your daughter with your mom?” Kat asked now, as they both got out of the Jeep.
“Yeah. It’s strained between Mom and me now, and my father’s not really talking to me, but I just have to wait for them to work through it. My mother still wants to be with Penny, but she has trouble looking me in the eye.”
“I’m sorry,” Kat said, meaning it.
Ruth acknowledged that with a nod. “I knew this would happen. I’d hoped it wouldn’t, but I knew it would. But it doesn’t matter. I had to tell my story, and it’s led Lily to us, so that makes it all worthwhile.”
They reached the café’s front steps. “I don’t see anyone inside who could be Lily,” Kat observed, peering through the windows as she opened the door.
A server in a gingham skirt and white blouse came up to them with a smile. “Sit anywhere you like,” she invited.
There were several older couples and a family of four with a young boy of about two, who held onto a ball for all he was worth, until he hurled it across the room. The mother yelped and chased after the ball as the father scolded the boy and the older sister drank from a straw in a glass of juice, her eyes sliding back and forth between her parents. The little boy ignored his father and tried to follow after his mother, but his father held him back. He started moaning loudly, working up to a scream, when Mom hurriedly returned with the ball. As Kat and Ruth selected a table toward the rear of the room in an alcove that could afford them some privacy, the boy wrested himself free of Dad’s grip and started howling like a banshee.
“The check?” harried Dad asked the waitress through a strained smile.
Ruth made a sound of commiseration low in her throat. “I remember Penny running around the room of a restaurant one time and Sterling trying to catch her. She was laughing, and it was funny, and I tried not to laugh, because Sterling did not find it funny at all.”
“This is your ex?”
“Yep. A sense of humor he did not possess.”
Kat’s gaze lingered on the little boy. Two years old. In a couple of years, she would have a child the same age.
She could see Blair’s tense face. Is it mine?
The family collected themselves and made for the till, Dad picking up the now-sniveling boy, who’d turned into a limp rag. Their waitress rang them up in record time, and as they pushed through the door, a woman entered behind them. She was tall, and her hair was scraped into a ponytail. She wore no makeup, or very little, and her gaze skated over the room, landing on Kat and Ruth. The three of them stared at each other a long moment.
There’s something familiar about her, Kat thought, her mind jumping to the truth just as Ruth sucked in a startled breath and whispered, “Oh my God. It’s Erin Higgins!”
*
It had been more than two days.
Blair turned in the saddle and slid off Willie’s back, then handed the horse over to Mike, who’d ridden with him out to the cabins at the far reaches of their acreage, his mother’s idea for making money when the ranch had been failing. Both Hunter and Blair had considered the idea pure folly, but the fact was the cabins were there, and they either needed to be repaired or taken down. There was a side access road that could be expanded, but neither Blair nor Hunter had been certain which way to jump.
He swept off his gray Stetson and slapped it against his leg, feeling the July sun beat down on his head.
“I’ll take the horses,” Mike said, grabbing Willie’s reins from Blair.
Blair watched the horses’ haunches sway back and forth as Mike led Willie and his own mount into the barn. Blair had been a little short with the foreman, not for anything Mike had done or said—he’d stayed pretty much silent after his initial comments about Kat and the pregnancy—but because the issue was between Blair and Kat, a burning secret neither wanted to touch.
Resettling his hat on his head, Blair squinted up at the sun. He’d let too much time go by, half hoping Katrina would contact him, but it looked like it was going to have to be the other way around. With a sigh, he stalked from the barn toward the ranch house’s back porch.
He could call her, but it would be better to just show up.
*
Erin Higgins looked remarkably the same, Kat realized as the woman headed toward their table. Older, yes, but the eyes that looked out at her and Ruth were hauntingly the same as the ones from the picture that had been distributed on the flyers her family had posted around town. There was no smile now, however. This thirty-plus-year-old woman was as sober as a judge.
She seated herself across from Ruth and to Kat’s right, facing the door. Her tension was palpable. Both Kat and Ruth couldn’t help staring at her, and she flicked her gaze from one to the other, then toward the door, then back, settling on Ruth. “You’re Ruth.”
“That’s right. And you’re Erin Higgins,” Ruth responded.
None of them had known each other when they were in high school, but Kat and Ruth had seen Erin’s picture over and over again, as they had Courtney Pearson’s and Rachel Byrd’s. How Erin recognized Ruth she didn’t say, possibly because of Ruth’s fiery hair.
“I’m Lily now. Lily-white.” She grimaced. “I needed to be somebody . . . pure . . . after he . . .” She stopped herself and just said firmly, “After.”
“I’m Detective Starr,” Kat introduced herself, shaking Erin’s hand. “Do you know who he is? Could you identify him in a lineup?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. He was mostly in disguise. Part of the fun, he said.” The corners of her mouth turned down, and her eyes kept up their restless search of the room.
Ruth said, “You’re safe here with us. Take your time.”
“I haven’t been this close to . . . where he took me . . . in a long time.”
“How did he take you?” Kat asked.
“I snuck out. With my brother. And he left me in the woods, thought it was a great joke. But he was there, just waiting to pounce.”
“Where’s your daughter now?” Kat asked.
“At a friend’s.”
“How old is she?” Ruth inquired.
“Almost fourteen.” She looked panicked for a moment and pulled out her cell phone, checking the time. “I can’t stay long.”
“We won’t keep you,” Kat assured her. “It’s just that we think the man who kidnapped you could be at it again.”
“I know he is,” she whispered. “He won’t stop. Ever.”
“And he may be the same man who attacked Ruth.”
Kat looked at her friend, who said, “We need to find him. We need to know where he kept you.”
“I don’t know where that is.”