“Talk tomorrow?” she asks, peering at the location printed underneath the photo that Josh’s sketch is almost an exact replica of. Oceanside, California.
Olivia feels a rush of excitement.
“Good night, Liv.”
“Night.” She ends the call and cups her mouth. She wants to yell and wake Josh up. Did he just tell her where he’s from?
CHAPTER 27
LUCAS
The elevator is stuffed with talking heads, packed shoulder to shoulder like a can of sardines. It smells as ripe as one, too. Stale sweat mixes with cheap department store cologne and has the metal box reeking worse than Lucas’s gym shirt after a grueling workout. Though the odor isn’t as pungent as his juvie cellmate after a dinner of canned beans and corn. He can tolerate the air in the elevator.
Lucas watches the numbers on the panel above the door light up for each floor, cautious of his surroundings. Camera in the upper right corner. Another hidden in the button panel. He only gives them a sliver of his face.
The door slips open every few floors and guests spill out. Each time, he tightens his fist and the artery in his neck throbs like an embolism. He braces his legs as people nudge past, feeling queasy. He hates cramped spaces and wills the buttons to light faster. Tugging the visor lower over his forehead, he keeps his back to the two men left. His old man and the guy he’s shooting the shit with. Something about in-state distribution growth.
Damn, the man could talk. He’d yak on the phone through dinner if Charlotte let him. Dwight could talk himself out of anything, and Lucas wouldn’t put past him that he talked himself out of St. John’s murder and his involvement in Wes Jensen’s drowning.
The tenth-floor button lights up like a joint. Hands jammed in his hoodie pockets, Lucas steps off the elevator. He goes straight to the lobby phone and pretends to make a call, watching for Dwight in his peripheral vision. The old man and his buddy make plans to meet at the bar downstairs. Dwight claps him on the shoulder and they part ways, with Dwight heading right. Lucas drops the receiver in the cradle and follows, his work boots eating up the tacky carpeting.
With each step he grows more enraged. Dwight swings one of those canvas bags they hand out at conferences, whistling like a Looney-fucking-Tunes character who doesn’t have a care in this messed-up world. Whistling as if Lucas’s mom doesn’t believe he stabbed the neighbor and got off. Lucas is convinced. He saw what the man is capable of the night Lily ran away. He aimed a gun at his own daughter. Beats him why Charlotte can’t see it, or why she hasn’t left him. What’s Dwight’s hold over her?
One thing’s for sure, he didn’t protect Lily from their dad before. He intends to do so now. If Dwight is giving her and Josh trouble, he’ll put an end to that.
Dwight stops at a door and slides his key card into the slot. He ducks into his room as the woman in the room across leaves hers. Talk about shitty timing. She smiles at Lucas. He averts his face and keeps walking, right past Dwight’s room and straight to the stairwell. The metal door bangs open and slams shut behind him. He got what he needed, for now. Dwight’s room number. He’ll come back tonight. Might as well let the old man enjoy one more evening at the bar because he won’t want to show his face at home when Lucas is done with him.
CHAPTER 28
Day 6
Olivia’s phone vibrates on her nightstand, drawing her from the cold, windy shore of her nightmare. The surf still rages in her ears. She wipes her damp hair off her forehead and reaches for the phone.
“Hello?” she croaks, her head foggy. Her dream still lingers in the recesses of her mind like a reluctant child who won’t leave the room.
“Got your call.”
“Lucas?” She glances at the clock, miffed she slept through her alarm again. It’s just after nine. She’d wanted to be on the road by now. Swinging her legs off the bed, she sits up. “Where are you?” Her irritation works its way into her tone. She’s still upset he bailed on shopping the other day. He hasn’t returned her calls either.
“On a job,” Lucas says after a beat. His voice lacks inflection. She can’t tell if he’s tired, down on himself, or flat-out doesn’t care, as if calling her is an inconvenience. Knowing Lucas, it’s the latter.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He doesn’t sound certain to her. “Oceanside, eh?”
Last night, Josh couldn’t sleep and found her in the kitchen. She’d asked if he lived in Oceanside. Bleary-eyed, he’d nodded. But he doesn’t believe Lily would have returned home. When Olivia asked why, he tried to explain, only to get flustered when he spoke gibberish. But the one thing she did understand was that he and Lily didn’t have a choice. They had to leave home.
She still asked him to draw what happened so she’d have a clearer picture. Josh took her to the studio and showed her one of the panels, five rectangles stacked like books. A series of illustrations depicting a lone woman on a barren highway except for one oncoming car. In one rectangle the car clips the woman. In the last rectangle, Josh drew the car’s taillights. The woman, though, is gone.
“Is this your mom?” she asked, horrified. He nodded. “Was she hit by a car?” She could be seriously injured.
“Don’t know.”
“Did you see her get hit?”
He shook his head and touched his ear. “Heard,” he said after a brief struggle to get out the word.
“You heard it happen?”
He nodded.
“Josh, my god.” She grabbed his arm. “Where did she go?”
His lower lip quivered. “Gone.”
“Did the driver take her away?” An even more horrifying thought than Lily being hit.
“Don’t know.”
“Did you look for her?”
He nodded. “Gone.”
“Josh.” Her features softened, and she touched his shoulder, her heart breaking for him. That’s what he meant the day he arrived. He didn’t know where she went, or if she was alive. She was just gone when he went back to the scene. Where’d he been? What had he been doing? That wasn’t clear in his drawings. But it was apparent someone was after them. They were being followed.
Lily could have been abducted, or the driver could have taken her to the hospital. Dazed, Lily could have returned to her car and driven away without Josh. Any number of scenarios could have occurred.
She took a deep breath. Okay, they’d figure this out. She leveled with him. “We’re going to find her.”
Which is why they’re driving to Oceanside. Puzzles aren’t easy to solve, even harder when the pieces are missing. But Olivia doesn’t believe like Josh does that Lily wouldn’t have returned home after she and Josh separated, assuming she was physically capable of getting back. But someone, a neighbor perhaps, is bound to have seen Lily before they left. Someone has to know where they were going. If they can get into the house, there might be clues. And the more information she can bring back to the police, the more details she can add to Lily’s missing persons report. They’ll find Lily that much sooner.
“I want to talk to her neighbors,” she says to Lucas. “Josh might be able to get us into the house.” There isn’t a house key in his backpack, not that she saw the other night. She goes into her closet and gets down her overnight bag. “Have you heard from Dad at all?” she asks, intent on finding out when exactly he’ll be home today. She hasn’t replied to his voice mail, and thankfully he hasn’t yet called back. “Lucas? Did you hear me?” she asks when he doesn’t respond.