Page 7 of Honest Neglect

“Like?” I prompted him, sitting back down again.mWhat time was it? Without my phone, I was having a hard time figuring out when it was day or night in the windowless box I was trapped in.

“Well, first off, Silver was spotted on the highway,” he replied, and I leaned my head back and let out a sigh of relief. That was something.

“Was anyone able to take her in?”

“She ran away from the couple who approached her but they phoned it in, and the description matched perfectly,” he replied. “Hopefully, she’s just trying to find her way home now, and it won’t be long till she does.”

“Yeah, hope so,” I agreed. How far away had she gotten? Would she even be able to find her way back from there?

“And what about Lily?” I pressed. That was the most important matter at hand here, and I needed to get caught up on any scrap of information they might have had on her case.

“The other officers rejected her mother’s missing person report,” he replied. “As I’m sure she probably told you. But I hung on to your phone, and I had a look at some of the messages that have been coming in. A few are from her. Here, read for yourself.”

He held out the phone to me, and I grabbed it, scrolling through the string of messages from Lily that were waiting for me. My stomach dropped when I saw what they said. She was calling me a monster, a psycho, a crazy serial killer.

“Does this sound like her?”

I shook my head at once, handing the phone back to him. I didn’t want to read any more of that.

“No, it doesn’t,” I replied. “Not in what she’s saying or her typing style.”

“So you think someone else sent the messages?”

“That makes the most sense to me,” I replied. “Have you had anyone take a look at the texts yet? Get a forensic tech on them to figure out where they’re from?”

“Already done,” Frank replied as he tucked the phone away again, glancing around to make sure nobody had spotted him sneaking evidence out of the locker.

“And?” I asked.

“It looks like whoever sent those messages went out of Oakville limits two days ago,” he replied. “And they either had her or her phone—or both—with them when they did it.”

I closed my eyes for a moment.

“Do you think she could have left of her own accord?” he asked.

“No, no way,” I replied. “She would never have left her mother so soon after the accident. That’s not who she is. That’s not who she’s ever been.”

“I’m on it,” he told me, nodding seriously. “In the meantime, I’ve spoken to a county judge. They’re saying we can keep you here until the case goes to trial, which I’m hoping won’t even happen. Hard to imagine that any judge in their right mind would look at the evidence they’ve presented against you as anything close to sane. But as long as I can keep you close, they’re not going to get away with doing anything to you.”

“Thanks, Frank,” I replied. “I owe you a drink when all of this is over.”

He didn’t reply. I wondered if he was having his doubts about whether any of this would ever be over. Or if, like me, he was starting to see it stretch on infinitely in front of him.

But he was on Lily’s trail, and that was what I had to focus on right now. No matter what kind of nightmare she was in, there was someone out there, ready to fight in her corner, ready to help her.

I just had to hope she would hold on long enough to see it.

Chapter Five

Lily

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I CLAMPED MY HANDS together behind the seat, my heart racing. Mark pulled his phone from his pocket and spat a greeting down it. In one hand, he was carrying a tray of food. He’d come back to feed me. Probably just to keep me alive so they could torture me a little longer, but it might have given me my out.

I couldn’t take in a word he was saying on the phone as I felt my blood rushing through my veins. As he drew closer, he got angrier at whoever was on the other end of the line, spitting out commands.

“No, listen to me,” he insisted as he leaned over to drop the food on my lap—and, all at once, I felt a surge of adrenaline through my system. Now, this was the moment I had to make a move if I wanted to get out.