He holds her for a few seconds, running his hand down the thick hair that hangs to her waist. This isn’t the reaction of just a concerned sheriff. My stomach twists. I chastise myself for the reaction and force myself to look away from a moment I feel I shouldn’t be a part of. Finally, Sam takes the woman by her upper arms and guides her away from him, easing her back the few steps and into the chair. He gestures to me.
“Bianca, this is Emma Griffin. She’s helping me with the investigation.”
“I know,” Bianca says, sniffling. “I saw you at the press conference. You’re an officer, too.”
Actually, I’m an FBI agent, I want to correct her, but now’s not the time.
“Emma, this is Bianca Hernandez.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
The sentiment falls hollow and insincere. It’s one of those phrases that fall from people’s lips without them even having to think about saying them. That come even when they probably shouldn’t. I wonder how often people say that and actually mean it.
“Tell me what happened,” Sam says, sitting down in the chair beside her and leaning forward on his thighs.
“Gloria was at the community center today. They’re doing an art program for a couple of weeks of the summer. Parents drop their kids off before they go to work, and they spend the day trying out different kinds of art and music. She eats lunch there, plays outside, has reading time, then I pick her up when I get off. It was supposed to give her something to do and keep her safe. And you know how much she loves art. She’s always sketching or making her own comic books. But today, when I went to pick her up, the director said she was already picked up. Showed me the sign-out sheet and everything.”
“Whose name was on the sign-out sheet?” Sam asks.
“Mine,” Bianca says almost desperately, holding curled fingers to her chest as she sags over toward her lap. “It was my name, and it even looked like my handwriting, but I didn’t sign it. I was at work until fifteen minutes before I got to the center. It was my early day, and I was excited to spend the afternoon with her. All I did was stop for gas between leaving the hospital and getting there.”
“The hospital?” I ask.
“I work at the desk in the emergency room,” she says.
“Did anyone see who signed the paper? The director or any of the adults supervising the children?” Sam asks.
“No. They say that’s the point of the sign-out sheet. They are so busy running around with the kids they don’t have time to sit by the door. So, they have the sign-out sheet posted there, and if no one is available when the parent comes, they just sign the sheet themselves,” she explains.
“That seems like a tremendous oversight,” I point out.
“You have to fill out your child’s name, your name, the time you came to get them, and sign it. It seemed like enough of a safeguard,” Bianca says.
Sam takes out his notebook.
“I need you to tell me everything you can think of about today. What Gloria was wearing, what she brought to the community center with her, if you got any phone calls, what was going on at the center when you got there, if there were any other names on the sign-out sheet. Everything.”
My phone rings, and I look down at the screen. It’s an unfamiliar number, but I recognize the area code. It’s the same as the number that called me from Feathered Nest.
I nod to Sam to indicate that I need a minute and step out into the hallway.
“Hello?” I say almost breathlessly, bringing the phone up to my ear.
I’m waiting for the emptiness and breathing again. But this time, there’s a voice.
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
“This is Clancy. Remember me?”
Air streams from my lungs at the sound of the older man’s voice, but I don’t know if it’s relief or disappointment as I step out of the room.
“Of course I remember you, Clancy. How are you?”
“I hope you don’t mind me calling you. It took some poking around to get your right number. That one you had while you were here isn’t working anymore.”
That’s because it was a burner phone attached only to my undercover persona. Clancy, the repairman who came to fix the furnace in the cabin where I stayed during my assignment, would have had to jump through a few hoops and find the right people to get my actual contact information.
“I don’t mind, Clancy, but I’m kind of busy right now. Is there something you needed?” I ask.
“I just wanted to let you know I was doing some spring cleaning around Miss Wendy’s cabin. Got a little bit of a late start this year,” he chuckles. “Anyway, I was raking up under the porch. It seriously needed doing. Haven’t touched it since right after the last people rented it. I found something I reckon is yours. Probably dropped it, and it slipped down through the slats of the porch.”
“Oh. Thank you. I’ll give you my address. You can mail it to me.”
“I guess you won’t be coming back through Feathered Nest any time soon?”
“No. I’m not planning on it.” I give him my address. “Thank you, again. I appreciate it.”
I put my phone back in my pocket and go back into the room. Bianca is still talking and doesn’t stop until the door to the room bursts open right behind me. I whip around to see Brandy, a young officer who was at the camp searching with us, standing in the doorway with widened eyes.
“Sheriff, we just got a call from Vincent Lam. He needs to speak with you. It’s urgent.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
We leave Bianca with Brandy to continue the preliminary stages of the investigation and head back to the car. We don’t acknowledge where we’re going or what that might mean.
“Who was on the phone?” he asks as we pull out of the parking lot.
“The repairman who takes care of the cabin where I stayed in Feathered Nest,” I tell him.
“From Feathered Nest?” Sam asks, sounding both surprised and wary. “Why was he calling you?”
“He was doing some cleaning and maintenance around the cabin and found something under the porch. I must have dropped it while I was there,” I say.
“And?”
His tone makes me look at him incredulously.
“And? And he’s going to mail it to me. Why do you ask it like that?”
“I can’t imagine that’s a place you want to think much about anymore. Like you said, it was really hard on you. I just don’t like the idea of you still being connected to it.”
“You don’t like the idea? Why? Because of what my therapist said? Because of the trauma? Or because of Jake?”
I know Sam well enough to know as soon as he found out about my involvement in the case, he would research to find out everything he could about it. Which means he was bound to stumble on the articles that lean heavily into the suggestion about my relationship with Jake. They didn’t name me or come right out and say there was something going on between us, but there was enough subtext and clever word choices to make sure readers caught on to exactly what they meant.
His hands tighten on the steering wheel, but he keeps staring straight ahead.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to keep yourself attached to something like that. It’s not good to be so personal with your cases.”
My jaw tightens, and my throat aches, but I try to refuse to acknowledge either of them. I’d rather focus on him lecturing me and trying to sound like he understands what any of this is like for me. The types of cases we’ve dealt with and how we’ve had to deal with them have been completely different. I’d rather sit in my indignance about him drawing lines between them than let myself venture even for a second into why that woman in the interview room bothered me.