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“I can always tell the best place to set up a trap,” he said slowly. “People say I have a good instinct for game, but that’s not it. I look at the territory and can see all the paths the wildlife might take, and what the chances are that they’ll choose one over the other, and that’s where I set my traps.”
Bradley slapped his hands together. “There we have it. You are good at math. You’ve just never learned the language.” He clicked on another file and a woman’s photo filled the screen. “Does this photo strike a chord? If this is you, your mother took it, so maybe she showed it to you…”
He trailed off as Elias made a strangled sound and backed away from them. As he disappeared into the adjoining room, Molly started after him. Sam put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“I think he’s overwhelmed,” he said softly. “Let’s give him a moment.”
She nodded, and sank onto the edge of the bed. “Are you both thinking what I’m thinking? That Angus sold off his son because he didn’t want to deal with a neurodivergent kid?”
“It’s a real possibility.” Bradley scanned through the information on the screen. “He lives in Texas now, has a new family.”
“What about Maureen? The mother?”
“She still lives in the same place, even the same house. We see that sometimes, when parents are convinced their child will come home, so they refuse to leave.”
“Where?”
“Anchorage.”
Stunned, Sam shared a glance with Molly.
“So close. Oh my God. What should we do now?” she whispered.
“We’ll have to contact the Office of Children’s Services. They’ll need to do a thorough assessment of Elias. We’ll have to do a DNA test to confirm he is who we think he is. We’ll have to inform both parents. But before we do anything, I need to get as much information as I can from Elias about the Chilkoots.”
“Both parents?” Molly surged to her feet. “Even if Angus sold him?”
“We don’t know that. That’s pure speculation. He’s still a parent.”
When Molly looked as if she wanted to fight the agent, Sam gripped her forearm. “Hey, he’s just following procedure. No one’s going to let anything happen to Elias.”
She folded her arms across her chest and glared at Agent Bradley. “You’re going to hand the whole thing off to someone else, aren’t you?”
Bradley gave her a smile so patronizing that even Sam wanted to wipe it off his face—and it wasn’t even directed at him. “The appropriate authorities will take over. I’m leading the Chilkoot investigation and that’s my top?—”
“But it’s obviously related. Why did they take a brilliant child and then refuse to let him go to school and make him believe he was stupid? And what’s their obsessions with red hair?”
Sam snapped his fingers as something occurred to him. “They chose a boy with red hair so he looks like a member of the family.”
“Oh shit. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it? So all those redheaded kids out there…oh my God. Do you think?—”
“If so, they must be really freaking out that Elias is missing.”
They were talking as if Agent Bradley wasn’t even there. Sam realized that they’d developed their own shorthand when it came to this case.
Agent Bradley finally got a word in edgewise. “Did anyone see you put Elias on the plane in Firelight Ridge?”
“We were careful.”
“And here in Blackbear?”
“My truck has tinted windows. He wore a watch cap and I gave him some sunglasses. He hung back while we checked in, but there’s a chance the hotel clerk noticed him. He had a strong reaction to that oversized logo painted on the wall.”
“You should change hotels, just in case.”
“Good idea.” Something else occurred to him. “Molly, the name from the blog, the guy in Blackbear who took her phone, what was that name again?”
“Jimmy Marsh,” she said.
