Page 108 of Weight of Guilt

“Good.”

“She’ll want to talk to you.” Luke moved toward the doors. “I need to do a few things before she gets here. Can you help my team by looking at a map of the area? I need every exit to the town covered—even the backroads.”

“I’m on it.”

Luke left, and Nash put his back to the wall.

Lord, Mason’s just a kid. Please be with him right now. Help us to find him. Help him to be okay. I’m begging You.

By five that evening, a whirlwind of activities had already happened.

Wren’s sisters had arrived at the school. They’d comforted her before jumping in to help out. Mom had stayed home with Christian. They all thought it was for the best, and it helped that Dad was there with her.

Nash and Cody were busy doing something—she wasn’t exactly sure what.

Wren had talked to FBI Special Agent Prine and given her all the relevant information. The woman didn’t seem especially friendly, but she did seem competent.

When she was done with the interview, Wren wandered outside to get some fresh air.

The parking lot had been cleared—school staff and students had been allowed to leave after each vehicle was checked. Then it had filled up again.

Wren looked at the trucks and church vans parked along the fence. People stood in clusters with their hands in their pockets, waiting on someone to tell them where to go or what to do. They just wanted to help.

That was Fog Lake for you. When it mattered, the town pulled together.

Two folding tables had appeared inside the cafeteria doors with coffee urns on them. A woman Wren didn’t know was writing names on a legal pad, and the line to sign it went back to the trophy case.

Two tips had come in on the phone number investigators had put out. A man at a store in Sevierville and a woman who’d seen a boy in a truck on the state route.

Both of the leads had been checked, and neither was Mason. Luke had told her to expect that.

But Wren hated feeling so helpless. She squeezed the skin between her eyes and vowed to hold herself together. It was becoming harder and harder, however.

Nora came up beside her at the flagpole and put a hand on Wren’s back. “I just talked to Mom. She’s doing okay.”

“What did you tell Christian?” Wren asked.

“That there’s something happening at the school tonight that we need to deal with,” Nora said. “He seemed to understand.”

Wren let out a breath. Hearing about this would probably stir up so many bad memories for him, and he’d already been through so much. Would the police want to talk to him? Could the same person who’d taken Christian also have taken Mason?

Her heart beat harder. The truth was that law enforcement might want to talk to Christian. But since Christian couldn’t remember anything, it probably wouldn’t do any good.

“Prine was supposed to be at the house at two.” Nora rubbed her arms. “She called Mom around one-thirty and postponed it. Said something came up.”

Something had. Wren just hadn’t known what yet.

“I keep waiting to wake up,” Wren murmured.

“I know.” Nora’s hand slid off her back. “Me too.”

Wren watched as a man lifted a stack of flyers out of his truck bed. She hadn’t given anybody a picture of Mason, but someone had found one somewhere—probably through the school’s class photos. Her gut lurched at the thought of seeing her precious son’s face on those papers.

“When Christian disappeared, they wouldn’t let me go out with the search parties,” Nora said. “I wanted to. But they said no.”

“They told me the same thing,” Wren said.

“Instead, I handed out water. It seemed so lame at the time.”