Page 9 of Bring Them Home

“Thanks.” Amanda turned and took a deep breath, and Trent stepped up on her right side.

“I take it that wasn’t what you were expecting?” Carter asked as he came up on her left.

“Not at all.” Her mind was trying to unravel this new mystery. If Landon had been here all that time, wouldn’t he have wondered why his mother hadn’t responded to his text? What the hell was going on? Then again, they didn’t know his medical condition. It couldn’t be ignored that he was a long-term patient. He must have a serious health issue that made him bedridden, completely unrelated to the disappearance of the rest of his family.

“We’ve got to move, Amanda,” Trent prompted her, adding a not-too-subtle brush against her elbow.

“Yeah, I get it.” She smiled at Carter and walked away, but he caught her hand on the backswing and reeled her to him. Trent kept walking. She heard the soles of his shoes hitting the floor.

“I need to leave.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder to emphasize the point.

“Just one thing first.” Carter touched her chin and planted a smoky kiss on her lips. She would have enjoyed it more if Trent weren’t in the vicinity.

She pulled back and smiled at Carter, despite waging war with herself on the inside. It was time to end things with him. She wasn’t doing him or herself any favors. There was no way she was ready for anything serious, and then there were the feelings she had for someone else. It might be better to be alone than coupled when it wasn’t going anywhere.

“Detective,” Trent said, “are you coming?”

Amanda held up her arm between her and Carter. “He’s right. It’s time to go.”

“Okay, well, I’ll be in touch. We could get together later this week, if it works for you.”

She spun and smiled at him. “Sure, I’d like that.” It was the right thing to say, but it had her feeling like a fraud. Their get-together wouldn’t be a pleasurable one. It was time to have the talk with him. She’d find no joy in hurting Carter, but she had to be true to herself. A book she’d read said that if you want something, you need to make room for it to appear. Considering she rarely had five seconds to sit still long enough to read anything that wasn’t a case file, the fact that message had gotten through must mean something. Her phone rang, saving her from stumbling over her next words. “It’s Briggs,” she said just before answering on speaker. She got into the passenger seat while Trent got behind the wheel. “You have something,” she told Briggs.

“Yes, though I was hoping to deliver that line. I got into Valerie Archer’s phone, and I’m just getting started, but I thought you might want to know this sooner than later. The last text she received was from her daughter.”

“When was this?” Trent asked.

“Two forty-five this past Saturday afternoon.”

“What did it say?” Amanda volleyed back.

“‘I need a ride home. Pick me up at Potomac Mills. Near the Cheesecake Factory.’”

This text, along with the ping on Brooke’s phone, placed her at the mall on Saturday, just like her mother.

Briggs continued. “The message isn’t strange on its own, but the punctuation is a different story.”

“How so?” she asked.

“It strikes me as too proper for a teenager. Most of them avoid punctuation in texts altogether. They use acronyms and emojis as much as possible. There was none of that.”

“What are you suggesting?” Trent asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. All I can tell you is from a look at this girl’s other texts, she typically ascribes to the norm for her age group.”

“Okay, thanks,” Amanda told him.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll be in touch with more once I have anything to share.” Briggs was gone before she could say goodbye.

Trent looked over at her. “First, Brooke’s phone pings off a tower near the mall, and now the text from Saturday… We need to get officers searching the lot and dumpsters on the property.”

“Uh-huh, and we have to contact the mall’s property management company and get something set up with their security. It’s time to see if their security footage caught anything.”

FIVE

Amanda called the twenty-four-hour line for the property management company, and they were going to notify on-site security personnel to expect them.

She leaned back against the headrest as she rode shotgun, and Trent got them to the mall. “So we were mistaken about the son. He had nothing to do with why his family is missing. Does the father?”