“It’ll look like they left. With the messages Denise was sending, it’s clear the bitch was thinking about it.”
“What if someone finds out?”
That voice sounded familiar. Why? Did he know these people? He’d only seen the short guy with the mustache outside, and he’d never seen him before, but this voice … tall, skinny … Ricky couldn’t place it. But he’d heard it. Maybe on the phone with his mom. Then why had the guy looked familiar?
“Then we’re fucked. There’s too much money at stake and I’m sure as hell not going to prison. You know what they do to cops in prison? Well, that’s no fucking lie.”
A cop? This was a policeman? Going through his mother’s office?
They talked more, but Ricky couldn’t make it out until the familiar voice said, “What about the little kid? You can’t be serious about hunting him down. He’s a kid. No one was supposed to die.”
Ricky froze. He didn’t dare breathe.
“Don’t get cold feet now. You know what Denise planned to do. You said you’d take care of it, but you didn’t.”
“Look, she wasn’t going to go to the police. She was just freaked. She was going to leave the country, not talk to anyone!”
“But she didn’t leave when she was supposed to! You know what that tells me? Her husband talked her out of it. If she actually talked to the DA, she would have spilled everything. Is that what you want? Do you want to go to prison? Do you want to lose everything that we’ve built? I’m sorry it went down the way it did, but it’s almost over. We lay low, everything will work out.”
“But Ricky…”
They knew his name. They knew his name and they hurt his mom and dad and were going to hurt him.
“Look, the kid doesn’t know shit, I have no reason to go after him. He went to some friend’s house after school. Probably a sleepover. When he turns up the police might think his family left without him, might not—doesn’t really matter because they’ll never find them. It would have been better if you could have convinced Denise to really run, but when she balked, you know this was the only way. And the Escalade is on its way to Mexico as we speak, and it wouldn’t be the first time a family abandoned a kid. I have it covered. Hot damn, this is it!” Silence, flipping of papers, then: “Shred everything else, destroy her hard drive—it’ll look like Denise did it before fleeing. I got what we need.”
The other guy was mumbling and Ricky couldn’t hear what he said.
“Get that damn sour look off your face. They didn’t suffer. It was quick and painless, okay? But we have to go—finish this, five minutes.”
The shredder cut, but there was no talking. Two men were walking upstairs.
Ricky didn’t know what to do. His family … was dead?
He blinked back hot tears.
Maybe they went to Mexico …
No, they didn’t. The men in his house killed them and Ricky would be dead, too, if he had come home after school. As soon as they left, he’d call the police …
That man is a policeman.
A short man with a dark mustache. Probably a hundred cops who looked just like him. Would he be able to tell him from a bunch of cops? And what if they were all cops here? Who could he trust if the police were bad guys?
He missed his mom and dad so much. He didn’t want to think about them being gone … and maybe he got it wrong. He could wait here, they might come back, right?
Or the bad guys could come back. And you don’t know who is good and who is bad.
He waited long after the men had left. Until silence echoed in the house. Then he waited longer. By the time he climbed out of the closet, it was dark, but he didn’t dare turn on a light. What if someone was watching? What if they were waiting for him?
He went upstairs and realized that the men had taken his duffel bag and some of his clothes. He dumped all his schoolbooks on his desk and filled his backpack with anything he might need, then went to his parents’ room.
That’s when the tears fell.
They were really gone.
He took the money out of his mom’s jewelry box, her “fun money,” she said. A couple hundred dollars. He would need to go to the police, but not here. He’d think about what to do, who to talk to.
For now … he had one place he could stay and be safe.
And hoped that no one found him until he figured out who he could trust.
Chapter Five
The high school principal Anita Vargas didn’t tell Lucy and Nate anything they didn’t already know: Glen Albright had taught in the school district for nearly twenty years, the last fifteen at the high school. He’d been popular among both staff and students. He hadn’t told anyone they were leaving town, didn’t request a substitute, and appeared to be devoted to his wife and family. Vargas had been shocked when the police told her his wife had embezzled from a client and left the country.
The older daughter, Tori, had been a popular student, received mostly Bs and Cs from her teachers, and had been known to cut class on occasion. But even though she wasn’t a strong student, the teachers liked her because she was outgoing and friendly and exuded school spirit. She was active in the drama club and had just been cast as the lead in the winter play when she disappeared.
Becky was far more studious, a straight-A honors student. In addition, she had made the varsity volleyball team as a freshman. She wasn’t as outgoing as her sister but was far more disciplined in her work.
All in all, the visit to the school had been mostly a bust, though they confirmed the information in the file, talked to Becky’s best friend—who hadn’t heard from her since she walked out of volleyball practice the Friday afternoon they disappeared.
That tidbit hadn’t been in the police reports—that Becky had dressed for volleyball, but her sister came in and said they had to go, that there was a family issue. That was the word she used—issue, not emergency.
“I tried calling Becky that night, but she didn’t answer her cell phone,” her best friend, CeCe, had said. “I tried again on Saturday like a half-dozen times, and Sunday, and when she didn’t come to school on Monday I knew something was wrong. I knew she was … well, that something was very, very wrong.”
CeCe didn’t have any other information; Becky hadn’t told her that they were going on a trip and had been making plans for the weekend before she left that Friday. Nothing was out of the ordinary … until Becky didn’t answer her phone.
After the school, Nate and Lucy checked in with Ash at the Albright house. The cadaver dogs had found nothing—which was good, Lucy thought, though Ash seemed heartbroken. He didn’t believe that the boy was alive, and he felt that he’d missed something. He was going to return the following day with the dogs and go over the entire area between the Young house and the Albright house.
By the time they were done, it was after five, and Nate drove back to the Young house.
The father, JJ Young, answered the door before Nate knocked. He was a tall, muscular man in his early forties with a military-style haircut and an elaborate tattoo on his right arm, partly visible under his short sleeve.
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Jill called me and I came home early. Said you wanted to talk to our kids. Before I let you, I’m laying down some ground rules.”