Page 82 of Glimmer in the Darkness

“If you’re lying, if you can contact her, tell her to call me. I don’t want her marching into the station. I’m willing to hear what she has to say, but I can’t guarantee her safety with the rest of the force. If you get her to contact us, it’ll go a long way toward getting these charges dropped. And it’ll help us find Ella. Will you do that?”

“I don’t have any way to reach her. Even if I did, she won’t call you.”

“Then you call me. If you know where she is, you call me and I’ll take it from there. I promise I won’t let anything happen to her. I just need to hear her story from her mouth. Okay?”

“Let me just clarify here,” James said. “Are you saying you’re willing to concede that Cassidy isn’t involved in the two recent kidnappings? Or are you saying you aren’t sure she was involved in Hallie’s?”

Vince’s smile seemed about as authentic as Ernie’s Mexican food. “I’m saying I’m willing to listen.”

Right until he threw her in jail.

The bail, the hand of friendship, the words of concern… James didn’t believe any of them. This was all about Vince collaring Cassidy.

Vince was telling James to get on board or get out of the way.

After a shower and a meal, James called Reid. Not surprisingly, his friend didn’t answer the phone. James had counted on that. If anything happened to him, though, Reid would listen to his message.

He was counting on that too.

“I have a theory about what happened to Ella.” For the next few minutes, he told Reid’s voice mail what he believed, including details that supported his idea. “Maybe I’m way off. But I needed you to know.” He wanted to add something mushy about how Reid was his best friend, how James would never betray that friendship, how he was doing everything in his power to bring Ella home. But he didn’t. He’d get the opportunity to say all those things to Reid’s face. He had to believe that.

He disconnected and left his cell phone on the kitchen counter, fearing the police were tracking it. He grabbed his keys and headed for his Jeep, trying not to think the thoughts that had started bombarding him soon after Vince left. But they were there, begging for attention.

It was a long shot, but he needed to reach Cassidy. He didn’t think she’d call him, not if she worried somebody was listening in on his phone calls. Which…they probably were. The cops could do that, right? Get a warrant to monitor him, hope he’d lead them straight to Cassidy?

He checked his rearview mirror. Nobody was back there. Would there be a tracker on his vehicle?

Was it possible he’d slipped from healthy fear to clinical paranoia?

Where was the real Dr. Phil when he needed him?

He passed Coventry High School and turned on the next street, where he parked between two older homes set on acre-plus lots. He locked his Jeep, and after checking to make sure nobody was watching, darted between the houses, through the woods, and to the fence behind the school.

He’d been back to Coventry High many times since graduation. Town meetings, school plays, and recitals were held in the high school auditorium. He’d been to a few of the latter since Ella had taken up dance. Nothing like watching five-year-olds twirling in tutus.

Every two years, he went to the school cafeteria to cast his votes. He’d even come to watch a few baseball games over the years.

But he hadn’t been to the football field behind the school since graduation.

Though the forest was thicker than it had been a decade earlier, he had no trouble finding the tree, the knothole. The first time he’d seen it, he’d been on the other side, having jogged across the field when he saw Cassidy at the fence. He thought about the sadness he’d observed in her expression back then. He hadn’t known much about foster care but worried about her treatment in a house filled with other foster kids. Everybody knew the story of Cassidy’s mother. At school, Cassidy’d been teased to her face, gossiped about behind her back, and bullied more than once. James, Reid, and Denise had put an end to the bullying, at least. But seeing her at the fence that day, staring across the empty football field toward the baseball diamond, he’d worried.

Her tears had been evident in the streak of black makeup down her cheeks. Nothing serious had happened, and she didn’t explain, only said she’d been thinking about her sister.

At the time, he’d suspected there was more to it. How could the grief have held on so long? Her sister’d been gone for years.

Now, he understood how grief could hit you like that. Time didn’t fix it. Nothing fixed it.

Or James had been looking in the wrong places for freedom from his grief. Maybe, if he hadn’t turned his back on God, he’d have found peace long before.

James found the old knothole. It was over his head an inch or two, so fearing he’d be as likely to get bitten as to find anything, he reached inside and felt around.

And pulled out a folded piece of paper with nothing written on it but a phone number.

He jogged back to his Jeep, again looking around to see if anybody was watching.

He hit the state highway and drove all the way to the interstate, then drove south to Plymouth. Paranoia in action again, but if they tapped his phone, they could tap local payphones, right?

He had no idea how those things worked.