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“It’s necessary,” Sam said firmly. “Elias needs someone who’s here just for him. That’s Molly.”
“She’s my guard dog.” Elias, shoulders hunched, chin lowered, looked as if he could take on that role himself. Sam was learning to read his patterns. If he got emotionally overwhelmed, he would shut down and withdraw into himself. He hoped that didn’t happen now, but if it did, there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The agent gave in. “Of course she can stay.” He sat down at the motel’s desk and withdrew an industrial-looking laptop from his briefcase. “I suggest that the first thing we do is check the database of missing children to see if Elias here is a match for one of them. Correct?”
Sam nodded in agreement. “Can you filter it by hair color? His red hair ought to cut down on the number of matches.”
“I can do that. I’ll select a timeframe too. How old are you?” he asked Elias.
He shrugged. “I’m old enough to hunt, but not old enough to help the men.”
“Help them with what?” Bradley asked.
But Elias clamped his mouth shut.
Agent Bradley sighed, set up his laptop and made them all go into the adjoining room while he went through his remote access security procedures.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked Elias in a low voice. “This is a lot, all at once.”
Molly squeezed the boy’s hand in silent support.
“I’m okay. I want to know. I remembered something else. It’s like a dream, it’s all fuzzy but then you remember one part and the rest comes back too.”
“What did you remember?”
“There was money. They were counting it out. I liked watching the green paper and the old men’s faces flipping by. But I was still scared.”
Money. Did that mean he wasn’t adopted, but instead purchased somehow?
Agent Bradley called them back into the room. At Molly’s nod, Elias told the agent what he’d just remembered.
He shrugged off that detail. “Cash could have come into the situation in a number of ways. But it’s certainly concerning. I already did a search and found about a hundred potential matches. Shall we take a look?”
Agent Bradley turned the laptop so they could all see the screen, which was filled with a photo of a toddler and a written description. Sam saw a blush creep up Elias’ cheeks, and stepped in before the boy had to admit he couldn’t read.
“Elias, I’m going to read the names out loud. You were little, so that might stir up more recognition than reading them.”
He caught Molly’s grateful glance, and felt her hand squeeze his. Funny how it was those little things that caught her attention. He’d keep serving them up, so long as he thought of them. He liked fielding looks of approval from Molly Evans.
As Bradley pulled up one missing boy photo after another, all with red or reddish hair, Sam read them aloud, along with the parents’ names and street addresses. Faces flicked past—from one-year-olds to five-year-olds, which was the age range they’d settled on. Sam’s heart ached for all these parents whose kids were still missing after all these years. If they could find that one set of parents that belonged to Elias, they could ease at least one family’s pain.
He kept reading names…Davey Knight, parents Beth and Ron Knight, Glenview Arizona; Archie Burns, parents Sally and Hazel, Brooklyn New York; Philip McBride, parents Angus and Maureen McBride…
Elias let out a squeak, as if someone had just squeezed the breath out of him. Wordlessly, he pointed at the photo on the screen. A plump little boy of about four years old beamed at the world with a gap-toothed grin. A tuft of carroty hair curled like a jaunty feather on top of his head. “Philip,” whispered Elias. “I know that name.”
Agent Bradley clicked on the entry. “Maureen McBride was involved in a bitter divorce with her ex-husband Angus at the time of the kidnapping. She insisted that he had taken the baby, but there was no evidence to support that, and he always denied it. After a while she dropped that accusation, probably because Angus clearly didn’t have him. Apparently,” he pointed at the screen, where various caseworker’s notes were included, “Philip was being tested for neurodivergence. That was one of the main points of contention between the parents. The father didn’t want any testing, insisting that he should be raised like any other child.”
“Is that the same thing as stupid?” Elias asked, color coming and going in his cheeks.
“Not at all. In Philip’s case, the opposite. He showed signs of being extremely precocious. That was why Maureen wanted him tested. It says here that although he was non-verbal, he started walking at six months. Maureen had an old abacus that she’d picked up at a thrift store. He figured out what it could do in about a minute. She didn’t even know what it was for, she just thought it was a fun toy. But his babysitter did. So, great facility with numbers, but still not talking at the age of two and half. Does any of that ring a bell?” He looked over his shoulder at Elias. “Are you good at math?”
“I don’t know. I’m not one of the ones who goes to school.”
“Okay, how about spatial relations, calculations, geometry, angles, trajectories, that kind of thing?”
“I don’t know what those are.”
“Okay, then how about you tell me the thing you’re best at.” Sam had to give Agent Bradley credit for being patient. Maybe he was a grandfather.
