“No,” Hunter told their friends. “Ramos is right. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. Get some sleep. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Caroline watched her friends approach in single file to kiss her cheek or give her a hug. But she felt nothing. Her baby was gone. Someone had entered their suite and taken her while she and her husband were downstairs enjoying crêpes suzette. She should never have let him persuade her to leave their daughters alone. If she’d stood her ground, none of this would be happening.
Her brother and Becky were the last to leave. “You’re sure you want us to go?” Becky asked again.
Caroline nodded. Steve leaned in to take her in his arms. “Please don’t call Mom,” she whispered.
“I won’t.”
But even as he was saying the words, Caroline knew he’d be on the phone first thing in the morning. Please, God, she thought, let us find Samantha before then.
The phone rang at just past six-thirty the next morning. Caroline reached across the bed and answered it before it could ring a second time. “Hello?” she whispered, glancing toward the other bed and watching Michelle turn over in her sleep.
“It’s me,” Lili said.
“Thank God. Where are you?”
“Can you meet me?”
“Of course. When?”
“Now.”
“Where?”
The girl gave Caroline an address. “Come alone.” The line went dead.
Caroline threw herself out of bed and jumped into her clothes, taking less than a minute to brush her teeth and splash some cold water on her face. She scribbled a brief note for Michelle—Back soon. Don’t worry—then snuck out of the hotel room and hurried down the hall, boots in hand. She gave no thought to what she was doing or that no one would have any idea where she was. She gave only fleeting thought to the fact that Lili knew she wasn’t alone.
She raced down eight flights of stairs and pushed her way through the lobby doors onto the street, her boots now on her feet, although she had no memory of having put them on. A cab was idling on the other side of the road, but even after she waved frantically in his direction, the driver remained stubbornly where he was. She ran across the street, slipping on the icy road and almost falling before she reached him.
“Where to?” he asked as she climbed into the backseat. Caroline recognized him as the same man who’d driven her and Michelle to the hotel from the airport the day before, but she quickly dismissed the coincidence. “I am not familiar with any such place,” he said when she gave him the address.
Caroline wondered if the girl was playing with her, leading her from one dead end to another in some sort of elaborate sick joke. “Can you check? Please, I’m in a hurry.”
“My GPS, she’s not working.” Reluctantly, the cabbie pulled a map from his glove compartment and unfolded it, studying it carefully before dropping it to the seat beside him. “Ah, yes. Now I see it.”
Except he couldn’t find it, and they drove around for almost twenty minutes until it became obvious even to Caroline, who didn’t know the city but did recognize the same snowdrift after they’d passed it for the third time, that they’d been driving around in circles.
“Am lost,” the driver admitted finally, pulling to a stop and checking the map again.
“Please,” Caroline begged. “I’m already very late.” Would Lili decide Caroline had changed her mind about meeting her and leave? Would she call the hotel again, wake up Michelle?
“Ah, here it is,” the driver said, jabbing at the map with his index finger. “I know now. Is not so far away.”
“Hurry. Please.”
“Don’t worry. We be there in five minutes.”
Except they’d already been driving around for almost half an hour, the morning rush hour had begun, and they soon found themselves mired in a traffic jam several blocks long. “Looks like an accident,” the cabbie said with a shrug. “What can you do?”
“Is there another route we could take?”
Without a word, the driver did an illegal U-turn and sped down a side street, gunning the engine and throwing up a cloud of snow in his wake.
Caroline heard the sirens before she saw the police car. “No,” she muttered. “Please, no.”
“Where’s the fire?” the policeman asked, approaching the car and leaning into the front seat, his helmet covering his head and face except for his dark eyes.
I know those eyes, Caroline thought, as the taxi driver handed over his license and registration.
“We’ve already had one terrible accident here this morning,” the officer continued. “Not ten minutes ago, a teenage girl was hit by a speeding car as she was crossing the street.”
“Is she all right?” the cabdriver asked.
Caroline felt a scream building in the back of her throat. Was it possible that girl was Lili?
“Afraid not.” The officer removed his helmet, revealing a head of thick, black hair. He stared accusingly at Caroline, as if she were the one responsible.