Page 110 of Weight of Guilt

“Why’s that?”

“Sunday night at the hospital, a man came to the nurses’ station and asked about a young man with a hand injury.” Nash kept his voice down. “Luke looked at the footage but couldn’t tell much about him. But I’m guessing it’s the same guy we saw on the video footage here at the school.”

She nodded. “Good to know. Anything else?”

“This could be nothing, but one of Wren’s sisters saw Tate Ferris at the hospital the same night. Tate is Mason’s soccer coach. It could be a coincidence, but . . .”

Her eyes lit with interest. “We’ll look into him. As you know with these things, it’s usually someone who knows the victim.”

He did know that. He knew a lot of things, including the fact that it had been two hours and fifty minutes since Mason went missing.

Nash had carried certain numbers with him since going through the academy. Historically, in cases where children were abducted and murdered, 74 percent were killed within three hours of being taken, and 90 percent died within the first twenty-four hours.

He’d never once said those numbers out loud to worried families. But he remembered them. He always remembered them.

He scanned everyone around him until his gaze found Wren. She stood by the flagpole with her sisters on either side of her.

He prayed Mason wasn’t a statistic.

By nine, the school parking lot had started to empty.

Wren stood at the cafeteria window and watched the vehicles pulling away.

Her son was outside somewhere in the dark with an unknown man, and people were going home to bed.

She couldn’t hold those facts against anyone. Yet somehow the thought still made her chest ache.

She was jealous, she supposed. All those people were returning to their normal lives. They’d wake up tomorrow and nothing would change for them.

That wouldn’t be the case for her.

Cody appeared beside her with a bottle of water. He’d returned about thirty minutes ago from whatever mission someone had sent him on.

“Sit down,” he told her.

“I’m fine.” She waved him off.

“I’m not saying that as a friend. I’m saying it as a paramedic. You’re gray, and you’ve been swaying on your feet for ten minutes.” He put the bottle in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Sit down before you go down, Wren. Please.”

With a frown, she complied and lowered herself onto a small stool attached to one of the cafeteria tables.

Cody sat beside her, put two fingers against the inside of her wrist, and looked at his watch. She didn’t fight him.

“When’d you eat last?” He studied her face.

“I don’t know.” Had she had lunch? She honestly couldn’t remember. Her morning and early afternoon now felt like a blur, like something that happened a lifetime ago.

“Drink some water.”

She twisted the top off the bottle and did as she was told.

A few seconds of silence passed as she drank. Then she made the mistake of looking at Cody and seeing the anguish on his face.

“I’m so scared for our little boy, Cody.” Her voice cracked.

“Me too.” He reached forward and squeezed her hand, the earlier tension between them gone. “Me too, Wren.”

Chapter