That couldn’t be.
It couldn’t. Tenley had never, ever, ever-so why was the Hugh guy saying there was video? Why did her father have to die? There was nothing to protect her from!
“Honey? Honey? I’m right here.” Her mom grabbed her by both arms. Her forehead creased, eyebrows pushed together. “Why is it your fault, honey?”
“Because…” Tears streamed down her face, her own failure mocking her again. “Because if I had pushed Save on the surveillance computer sooner, like I wanted to, we might have seen this whole thing. On video.” The last words came out a wail. That stupid Ward Dahlstrom, if he hadn’t hovered, he’d never have known, never have pushed Cancel, and maybe, maybe, maybe they’d be able to see who killed her father.
They’d catch him, and kill him back.
She tried to explain all of this to her mother, who should have understood. And to Brileen, who was clueless about the video save, and the cache, and the twenty seconds, even though Bri had her laptop with her all the time and knew about computer stuff. It didn’t matter. It was gone, all of the evidence was gone.
She made it through the whole explanation, finally, her throat clogging. Even though Mom had said she loved her, she wouldn’t anymore, not after this. Tenley hadn’t told about Lanna’s boyfriend. And now her father was dead and they’d never be able to find out who did it.
“Now we’ll never know.” Tenley’s words caught in her sobs. “And I never got to say good-bye. He thought I was mad at him. And I was, because he was always upset, or mad, or gone. And then it turns out he was upset because-”
“He loved you, Tenner,” Mom said. “The last thing he told me was how much he did. He knew you loved him, too.”
The room went quiet. Mom clicked her computer to solid black, took out the stupid thumb drive, put it in her skirt pocket. Brileen moved to sit in Mom’s guest chair, her hands covering her face, only the top of her hair showing.
“Hey, Brileen?” Tenley mentally replayed what happened, yet again. “You knew me yesterday, out there. In Curley Park. You pretended you didn’t, but you did. The whole last night, you were pretending.”
Mom looked at her, then Brileen, then her. “What are you talking about? Pretending? Last night?”
Tenley took a deep breath. She talked to the floor, to the familiar tan carpeting, so she wouldn’t lose her nerve. “I went to Brileen’s last night, Mom. I kind of sneaked out, after you were gone, and Brileen picked me up. I was gonna leave. Because Dad was hating me and you hated me and always blamed me for Lanna.”
There. That was it, it was out, and whatever. She felt lighter.
Mom crossed the room and wrapped Tenley up in her arms, so tight Tenley could feel the little round buttons on her blouse, and smell that white soap she used, and her grapefruit perfume, and her mom’s metal watchband pressing into her back.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered.
“Shh,” her mom’s voice went into her hair.
Catherine was never going to let her daughter go. She would never let her out of her sight again. Never let her talk to anyone else, ever again. Never let her come back to City Hall. All her power, all her control. When real life interfered, it proved how little it mattered.
Still. It was all politics. Some people were in power, others weren’t. Some people took the power and tried to use it to control the weaker ones.
Catherine refused to be a weak one. She and her daughter would be strong. They had no choice.
If the mayor’s secret taping came out, he’d have to take his political lumps. Brileen-arms crossed, now sitting on the windowsill-seemed to have the answers.
“Did ‘Hugh’ give these so-called pictures of Tenley to my husband?”
She heard her own words muffled by her daughter’s hair, the dark strands she’d seen every day for the last eighteen years. Funny how she had stopped looking at her, except to criticize, or demand, or question. As Tenley and Lanna grew older, they’d separated, come into their own. Apparently, each of them kept secrets. Lanna’s had died with her, Catherine had always believed. Now, maybe, that wasn’t completely true.
“Brileen? Did he?” She settled Tenley into her own desk chair, standing behind her, both hands on her daughter’s shoulders as if to keep her from floating away.
Brileen tilted her head back, gazed at the ceiling’s swirls of white stucco. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I wanted Tenley out of her house, especially after she said you were gone. I’m sorry, Tenley, but what if Hugh had shown up? Found you alone, and threatened you? He called me, so angry. I felt I like had to get you away. I-couldn’t protect Lanna. I had to at least try to protect you.”
Catherine blinked at Brileen, imagining. Her Tenley, alone with a blackmailer. What might he have demanded she do to hand over that video?
What video?
There was a way to find out. A fast way. A terrible way, but a way.
She clicked open her purse. Pulled out her wallet. Slipped a finger under the very last credit card slot and pulled out a thin white business card. That detective, Jake Brogan, had printed his cell phone number on the back of it along with the number for Sergeant Kiyoko Naka in the Missing Persons department. She stared at the black felt-tip numbers that meant the end of her career.
She could hear the silence of the room, thick with expectation. She might never work here again. Or anywhere. Would that matter?
“Mom?” Her daughter’s voice reached her. Her beautiful daughter, whose life had been trampled by circumstance and politics. Could politics have motivated these attacks on her family? “What are you doing?”
Her intercom buzzed. “Catherine? I’m back at my desk.”
Siobhan Hult. Back from her made-up mission to Ward Dahlstrom, a man probably counting his blessings he hadn’t been able to oust her from the chief of staff job. Heavy lies the head, Catherine thought. And now he’ll be happy it’s my head that’s about to roll. She had to move fast.
“Thank you, Siobhan.” Catherine kept her voice chipper, professional.
She pulled out her cell.
“Who are you calling?” Tenley asked.
“Everything is going to be all right,” Catherine said for the second time that morning.
Again, she hoped it was true.
57
It was almost funny.
“See her?” Jane pointed at the monitor. For reassurance, she snaked her arm through Jake’s, her bare skin on his leather jacket. No one could see them, and this was a moment of swirling relief.
Gracie was safe. Not kidnapped. Not missing. Not dead. Jane had found her.
“That’s in the-gift shop?” Jake leaned forward toward the screen.
Jane didn’t let go, leaning toward the revealing video along with him. “Yup. Poor little thing. Let’s go get her.”
Jake reached for his radio, extricating her with a final pat. “I’ll call off the search. Good work, honey. And I think there’s a reward. A personal one.”
“Can’t wait.” She tried not to cry. This was a good thing.
Jane had seen a flicker on the screen first. A movement in row one, monitor three, according to the schematic. When she had looked again, the shot had changed. She’d kept her eye on the screen, listening to Jake at the same time.
“All clear on the BOLO,” he said. “Return to base.”
When the shot flipped again, Jane saw that unmistakable curly hair. The top of a little face. And then the yellow ruffles, looking gray in the black-and-white. The small figure rose, tentatively, from behind a metal-and-glass display case in the gift shop. Her face looked a little smudged. All the transmissions were fuzzy, but Jane got the picture. Gracie Wilhoite, row one, monitor three, was in the hotel. In the gift shop, where she’d apparently hidden behind the candy counter. And she looked fine.