“She does exist. Maybe you misheard her name. Maybe she made it up. Maybe—I don’t know, maybe she’s in on it.”
Ally stops short and I take a quick step back while looking into the blood-red eyes of my exhausted wife. I had already put her through the ringer, and now we’re both in another fresh hell. I’d give anything for this to have been some other horror that we’d have to deal with. An illness, another affair, ten damn lovers in a row—anything but Reagan.
“There was something.” Her voice scratches below the surface.
“What?” I pull her in by the shoulders and steady my eyes over hers. “What was it?” I give a quick shake to her petite frame without meaning to and spot McCafferty in the distance, slack-jawed and taking those damn notes as if her career depended on it. A part of me wants to run over and rip that stupid notebook she’s cradling to shreds. “What happened?” I wrap my arm lovingly around Allison’s shoulders and drop a gentle kiss to her cheek for show.
“That first day we met. I—I don’t know. It was stupid.”
“It doesn’t matter—just tell me.”
“That first day—when she took off to find Reagan, the grass where she was standing—it looked pale, dried up, and yellow as if her feet had the power to kill it.”
A shiver runs through me, ice cold and foreboding as I plant another kiss over the top of my wife’s head. I glance back at McCafferty and give a solemn nod in her direction. Here we are—a happy little family minus one. Now get back to finding my daughter, you judgmental little bitch.
I dip my mouth close to Ally’s ear and whisper, “I’d keep that one to yourself for now.”
The hall inside the Boys and Girls Club is buzzing to life with an uncalled for level of jubilation and the scent of stale coffee. People of all shapes and sizes sit shoulder to shoulder as Rich takes the stage and fills them in on the anemic facts we know. The energy in the room is palpable. You could power an entire city off the tension and the undercurrent of excitement.
Rich clears his throat into the mic. “Over there are little Reagan’s mother and father.” He points our way, and I lift my finger in lieu of a wave. “We’ll be taking sign-ups for the next hour or so, and then we’ll organize into groups for the sweep. It’s looking like a storm is about to push through, so please dress accordingly.”
The meeting wraps up and bodies swirl throughout the bustling hall as people hurry to get their names down for the sweep as Richard called it. Sweep. You sweep rivers for bodies, snow fields, deserts. Who knew it would be a simple word like sweep that has the power to insight a holy terror in me?
An entire throng of bodies line up to wish us the best of luck, offer up their prayers while encouraging us to never give up hope. Every other face is more familiar than the last, which doesn’t surprise me. Hell, going to the grocery store in town has sponsored an unwanted high school reunion just about every time.
“James Price?” a female voice calls from my left and I look to find the one familiar face that I was hoping to never see again. But here she is, right where my shitty luck dictated she be.
The tall brunette with thick layers of caked on makeup, red glossy lips, eyelashes up to her eyebrows would be my old, long-forgotten train wreck of an ex.
“Monica.” Shit. Monica Phillips was the high school homecoming queen to my king, my long-time girlfriend who some might say I up and abandoned when I took off for western pastures, to Wake University. But that wasn’t the case at all, and Monica knows it. Monica Phillips is as batshit as they come, and the truth is, I couldn’t get out of Concordia fast enough to get the hell away from her destructive behavior. She is rabbit boiling insane, hack off your balls if you’re not careful psychotic—and I fake a smile just to greet her. “Monica,” I say her name once again because there are no real words I’d like to exchange with her now or ever.
“Rumor has it, you’ve been in town for weeks. Have you been avoiding me?” She digs a jovial finger into my gut and I cringe. “And I take it this lovely little thing is your poor wife?” Monica’s voice hits an all-time high as she offers a look that mimics something just this side of sympathetic. She’s not fooling anyone, least of all me. I doubt she gives a shit that my daughter has gone missing. Nope. Her little trot to the Boys and Girls Club in spiked heels was just for me, and I’m about to get ten years of pent-up bullshit tossed my way.
“Allison Price.” Ally extends a hand to the viper, and I carefully monitor the situation in the event she gets it bitten right off. But if anything, it’s Monica who had better watch out. Ally may come across as a soft little rose, but she has a bite stronger, deeper, and darker than just about any woman I have ever known. My left eye twitches at the thought because that’s not entirely true. That title goes to another woman, one I’m afraid to let invade my thoughts in fear she could hear them.
“I’m Monica Percale, nee Phillips.” She touches her hand to her chest.
Percale. I do a quick scan of my mental yearbook. Don’t know the poor sap, don’t want to.
“Jamie and I dated off and on. I’m sure he’s mentioned me a time or two.” Those hazel eyes of hers skirt my way and cut me to the quick the way they always had the capability to do. It’s only then I note the hard lines around her lips, the crow’s feet around her eyes that have infiltrated skin that once looked so pristine.
“Actually, he hasn’t.” Allison tips her head back and steals a moment to close her eyes. The fatigue of the hell I’ve dragged her through on top of Reagan vanishing into thin air is about to swipe her feet from under her. I feel the same way. “Maybe he did. I’m sorry. My mind is all over the place right now.”
“Of course, it is. It’s understandable in such situations.” Monica lifts those heavy eyes to mine and her left lid depresses just a notch.
Was that a wink? Is she fucking winking at me?
“I’ll be on the front lines. I’m not giving up on your little angel, Jamie.” She swims past Allison and dives over me with a strangulating embrace, her tits pressing into my chest as if they were hell-bent on leaving an impression. “If you need someone to lean on, I’m living at the old Ghost Ship.”
The Ghost Ship. I carefully extract her from my person and offer a brief thanks as the crowd mercifully sweeps her away like unwanted debris.
But the Ghost Ship resonates in my mind long after Monica is gone. It’s a house off Main Street that used to scare the pants off all the kids in town when we were younger. The old owner erected a statue of a ship in his front yard and it was quickly dubbed the Ghost Ship, thus the Ghost Ship House. I never did visit as a kid, and I don’t plan on knocking on its door anytime soon, unless, of course, that’s where my daughter is holed away. In that case, I’d knock down every wall, tear up every floorboard until I found my sweet baby girl.
My phone buzzes in my pocket so I fish it out. I glance to the screen and my heart seizes before I sink the phone back where I found it.
I lean into Ally a moment, interrupting her conversation with a woman I recognize as the old middle school librarian, grayer and far more fragile and wrinkled than I remember.
“I’ll be right back.” I head to the corner and pull my phone out once again to see the name Hannigan scrawled over the screen—a moniker that sounded like every other last name down in the district where I once held a paying job with the promise of lifetime benefits and a meager retirement. If Ally saw it, she wouldn’t think twice. But there was no Hannigan down in any district that I know of. This was and is my other nut job of an ex if you can call her that—Hailey Oden.