An hour passed before the blocked number called again. Elena waited. One ring and a hang up. The signal. Elena had been constantly checking her ride-share apps. One showed a car eight minutes away. It arrived in fifteen.
The Cracker Barrel in South Portland had the same faux rustic exterior that they all did. The front porch held a plethora of rocking chairs, all empty. Elena stood and waited. It didn’t take long. A vehicle flashed its beams at her. Elena surreptitiously took a photo of the car, making sure she got the license plate, and sent it to Lou.
Just in case. You never know.
When the car pulled up, Elena opened the passenger door and looked inside. The driver was an attractive young woman wearing a Red Sox baseball cap.
“Stephanie?”
“Please get in. Quickly.”
Elena wasn’t the most agile, so it took a little time. As soon as she was seated, even before the door was fully closed, Stephanie Mars hit the accelerator.
“Do you have a phone?” Stephanie asked.
“Yes.”
“Put it in the glove compartment.”
“Why?”
“This is just between you and Alison. No recordings, no calls, no texts.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with giving up my phone.”
Stephanie hit the brake. “Then we call this off right now. You’re carrying a gun, right?”
Elena didn’t answer.
“Put your gun in the glove compartment too. I don’t know if you work for them or not.”
“Who is them?”
“Now please.”
“One of the adopted boys is missing. I work for his father.”
“And we’re just supposed to take your word on that?” The young woman shook her head in disbelief. “Please put your phone and gun in the glove compartment. You can have them back after you talk to Alison.”
No choice. Elena took out her phone and gun. She popped open the glove compartment in front of her, dropped them inside, and closed it again. It wouldn’t take long to retrieve them if there was an emergency.
Elena studied Stephanie Mars’s profile. She had red-to-auburn hair, probably cut short — hard to say for sure with that baseball cap on — and was, in a word, beautiful. High cheekbones. Flawless skin. She kept both hands on the wheel at ten and two, focusing hard on the road as though she were new to driving.
“Before I let you see Alison, I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay,” Elena said.
“Who exactly hired you?”
Elena was going to say that she was not at liberty to divulge, but her client had already told her that it would be okay, that he didn’t care who knew. “Sebastian Thorpe. He adopted a boy he named Henry.”
“And Henry is missing?”
“That’s right.”
“Any clue where he is?”
“That’s what I’m working on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what?”
“How old is Henry Thorpe?”
“Twenty-four.”
“How could his adoption have anything to do with his life now?”
“It might not.”
“She’s a good person, you know. Alison, I mean. She’d never hurt anyone.”
“And I don’t want to hurt her,” Elena said. “I only want to find my client’s son. But that’s the thing. If Alison did do something illegal—”
“She’d never.”
“I know. But if something about these adoptions was not completely by the book, and if she doesn’t cooperate, well, then it’s on her. All the walls come crashing down.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s not meant to. It’s meant to convey the severity of the situation. I’m Alison’s best chance to do the right thing — and stay out of legal trouble.”
Stephanie Mars regripped the steering wheel, her hands shaking. “I don’t know what’s best.”
“I don’t want to hurt either one of you.”
“Do you promise you won’t tell anyone about this?”
Elena couldn’t really make that promise. It depended on what Alison Mayflower said. Still, a small deception at this stage was the least of her worries right now. “Yes, I promise.”
The car veered to the right.
“Where is she?” Elena asked.
“My aunt Sally has a summer cabin.” The younger woman actually managed a smile. “It’s where Alison and I first met. They’re friends, Aunt Sally and Alison. So, see, my aunt has a barbecue to open the season every year, and six years ago, Alison and I were both invited. I know she’s older than I am, but, well, you’ve seen her. She’s young in so many ways. We met by the grill in the backyard — she makes the best skirt steak... Alison, I mean — and we started talking and...” She shrugged, smiled, sneaked a glance at Elena. “That was it.”
“Sounds nice,” Elena said.
“You have someone?”
The pang. Always the pang.
“No,” Elena said. Then she added, “I used to, but he died.”
Elena couldn’t say why she told her that. Could be a subconscious ploy to bond. Could be that she just felt it needed to be said.
“His name was Joel.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re almost there.”
They pulled into the drive. At the end of it, there was a log cabin, the genuine article, not the snap-together look or faux-Cracker-Barrel-type situation. Elena couldn’t help but smile.
“Aunt Sally has good taste.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“Is she here?”
“Sally? No. She’s still in Philly, won’t be up for months. I come here on my own once a week, kinda like a caretaker. No one really knows about the place, and you can see cars coming a mile away, so Alison thought it’d be safe.” She put the car into park and looked at Elena with her big eyes.
“We’re putting our trust in you. Come on.”
As they got out of the car, two words came to mind: “green” and “quiet.” Elena took in a deep breath of seriously fresh air. Nice. Her leg ached. That old wound, her constant companion. Stephanie Mars had told her about her initial chance encounter with Alison at a barbecue here. Fate, destiny, chaos, however two souls get thrown together. Joel loved to tease that he and Elena had the best “meet cute” in history, and while she’d wave him off, maybe Joel was right.
During a raid on a white-supremacist militia compound outside Billings, Montana, Elena had been shot in the “high upper leg” — a nicer way of saying “ass.” The shot didn’t hurt as much as you might think, at least not right away. It was more embarrassing than painful, and Elena, being one of the rare Hispanic women on the job, had felt as though she’d let down herself and her people.
It was at the nearby hospital, while she was recovering, her butt propped up on one of those inflatable tire-like devices so there was no undue pressure on her wound, that Special Agent Joel Marcus first came into her room — and boom, into her life.
“Little did I know,” Joel often joked, “how much I’d enjoy seeing that ass up in the air in the future.”
She half smiled at the memory as Stephanie pushed open the door and called out, “Alison? Honey?”
No answer.
Without conscious thought, Elena started reaching for her piece, but of course, it was back in the car. Stephanie Mars hurried inside the house. Elena came through the door right behind her. Stephanie veered left and moved faster. Elena turned her head in that direction and was about to follow.
But the younger woman had stopped moving. She slowly turned back toward Elena.
The younger woman’s beautiful face broke into a smile, just as Elena felt something cold press against the back of her skull.
Their eyes met — Elena’s sad brown and the young woman’s wild green.