Chapter Eighteen
The house was ablaze with light as Steve and Kara pulled into the drive. “See?” Steve said. “She’s home.”
Kara remembered turning all the lights on in the house when she had been a nervous teen left home alone for the first time, but also knew that it didn’t mean anything.
Lights on didn’t mean anyone was at home.
She jumped out of the car before Steve even turned the engine off. “Lindsay?” she yelled as she burst through the door from the garage into the kitchen.
In the living room, the television was blaring, and she switched it off, then went through every room, turning off half the lights even though she was barely aware she was doing it. “Lindsay?” she called out again when she came to the bottom of the stairs.
Now Steve was in the house, too, standing in the dining room holding the note Mark Acton had left on the table. “Well, this looks good,” he said. “Seems like there were a couple of dozen people here today, and this guy Acton seems to think he might have an offer by tomorrow!”
Kara ignored him, heading upstairs, but even as she approached Lindsay’s room, and heard no music drifting from her daughter’s open door, she was all but certain what she would find.
Something was wrong — she could feel it. And the feeling hadn’t started in the car when Lindsay didn’t answer the phone. No, she’d first felt it at dinner, but told herself it was nothing — that there was no reason to think Lindsay wasn’t exactly where she’d said she’d be — first at cheerleading practice, then at Dawn's. She should have called then — she should have excused herself from the Bennetts’ less than scintillating company, gone to the ladies’ lounge and called her daughter.
Instead she’d ignored her feeling and finished her meal.
And now, if Lindsay really was in trouble, Kara knew she would never forgive herself.
“Lindsay?” she called yet again.
No answer.
Feeling her panic rising, Kara stepped into Lindsay’s room, found it as empty as she’d known it would be, then quickly searched the rest of the upstairs — her own bedroom, the bathrooms, the guest room, even the office that doubled as a sewing room, which Lindsay had always hated because it meant mending clothes she’d rather replace.
No Lindsay.
“She’s not here,” she called down to Steve. “I’m going to call the police.”
“The police?” Steve echoed, emerging from the kitchen with a drink in his hand to peer up the stairs at his wife, whose face looked ashen. “Why? What’s going on?” He hurried up to Kara’s side.
“I’m telling you,” she said, her voice trembling, “she’s not here, and something’s wrong.”
With Kara behind him, Steve went into Lindsay’s room. To his eye, everything looked perfectly normal, but when he turned back to Kara, she was biting at a fingernail, something she only did when she was extremely upset.
“Honey, what’s going on?” Steve asked. “She probably just went over to Dawn's, like she said—”
“I’m telling you,” Kara cut in, “something’s wrong.” She opened the laundry hamper and pulled out shorts and a T-shirt. “Look! These are what she wore to practice today.”
Steve shrugged. “So she came home — it’s obvious she came home. She turned on the TV and every light in the house. And there’s her cell phone.”
“So where is she?” Kara demanded. “If she came home, where is she?”
“Call Dawn,” Steve sighed, wishing now he’d let her do it from the car. “That’s where she’s got to be.”
They went back to the kitchen, where Kara pulled the address book from the drawer. But even as she looked for the number, she knew Lindsay wasn’t at Dawn's.
No, something had happened.
Something bad.
And every second they delayed in calling the police was only going to worsen whatever danger Lindsay was in. Now Kara was furious at herself for having ignored Lindsay’s fears about coming home after the open house.
As she dialed Dawn’s number, Steve moved quickly through the house, intending to check the doors and windows, more to put Kara’s mind at ease than because he expected to find anything amiss.
And nothing was.
All the doors and windows were locked.
Going back to the kitchen, he turned on the patio lights and looked out into the yard.
No Lindsay, but nothing else, either.
Everything was perfectly normal.
“She’s not at Dawn's,” Kara said as she hung up. “Phyllis said that Dawn told her Lindsay was upset after practice today, but that she came home because Dawn was going to her father’s house.”
“Upset about what?” Steve asked. He picked up his drink, started to take a sip, then thought better of it. After they found out exactly where Lindsay was, there’d be plenty of time for a drink.
For him, and for Kara, too.
“Upset about the move, of course,” Kara said as she picked up the phone again. “And probably about coming home alone after an open house.” She looked away from Steve as someone answered at Dawn’s father’s house. “This is Kara Marshall. May I speak with Dawn, please?” She talked for a moment, then hung up and faced Steve again. “She was here. Dawn talked to her, but only for a minute.” Kara’s voice began to rise. “But she did come home, and now she’s not here! I’m telling you, something’s wrong!”
“Settle down,” Steve said. “Let’s reason this out.”
“We need to call the police,” Kara said, reaching for the phone once more. “Something has happened.”
“Nothing has happened,” Steve said, trying to stop her hand before she could pick up the receiver.
Kara pulled her hand away. “She never leaves the house without letting us know where she’s going. Never! She’d leave a note or a message on the machine—”
Steve shook his head. “Maybe she left in a hurry — she left all the lights on, the television on. Maybe one of her friends came by and she took off with them.”
Kara nodded and took a deep breath, telling herself that what he said could be true. She stood, opened the address book again, and began to call Lindsay’s friends. Steve watched her, feeling helpless and almost more worried about Kara than Lindsay, and already rehearsing the speech Lindsay would get when she finally showed up.
Kara might ground her for the rest of her life.
But by the sixth call that yielded nothing, Kara was crying, and now Steve, too, was beginning to worry.
“I knew it,” Kara said, struggling against a sob that was threatening to strangle her. “I knew it at the restaurant, Steve. I had a feeling something was wrong.” She glanced around, shivering though there wasn’t the slightest chill in the room. “Someone was in the house, Steve. We should have listened to her. Somebody has her.” Her voice rose. “Someone has her! And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“Now just take it easy,” Steve began. “Let’s—”
“No!” She grabbed Steve’s wrists. “Will you listen to me?” Suddenly, Kara was rigid with a rage born out of the terror that had seized her. “Someone has her! Someone has been in here! We have to call the police!”
“I’m not going to call the police,” Steve insisted, making one last attempt to reason with her. “What are they going to do? She’s not even missing — she’s just not home. And it’s barely even ten-thirty!”
“Then I’m calling them,” Kara said, brushing his words aside and picking up the phone again. But now she was trembling so badly she wasn’t sure she could dial, and she couldn’t even read the numbers on the phone through the tears flooding her eyes.
Steve tried to take the phone from her hand. “I’ll do it.”
Kara steeled herself and refused to give it up. “No,” she said. “You don’t believe anything’s wrong, so you won’t be able to make them understand.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse, focused her mind, and dialed 911.