Page 28 of Diesel’s Desire

“Okay. Addie.” I keep my tone level, the same one I’d use walking a jumper back from a ledge. “I need you to walk me through everything. Every detail, even the ones that feel small.”

The father comes out behind her, a big man gone soft around the middle, phone still in his hand like he’s been staring at it for the last twenty minutes willing it to ring. He’s got that look men get when there’s nothing physical to fight, no door to break down, no threat to put his fists through—just helplessness, raw and useless, eating him alive from the inside.

“She was playing on the swing set,” he says. “I was inside watching the game. Heard the door open and shut and figured she came in for water.”

“She didn’t.”

“No.” His jaw works. “She didn’t.”

I walk the yard first, slow, cataloguing everything the way I was trained to. The gate at the side fence hangs open, swinging a few inches in the breeze, latch busted enough that a good gust could’ve done it on its own. No obvious drag marks in the grass. No signs of a struggle near the swing set itself, no overturned toys, nothing knocked loose in a scramble.

She might have wandered out. Or someone coaxed her away without a struggle. I can’t rule out either yet.

That thought sits cold in my gut while I walk back to the porch.

“Does Addie have any relatives who visit regularly?” I ask. “Grandparents, aunts, uncles? Anybody with standing custody arrangements or visitation you’re not thrilled about?”

The mother shakes her head hard, too hard, like the question itself is an accusation. “No. It’s just us. Her daddy’s family’s two states over. My side’s all local, but nobody’s got a problem with us, nobody would⁠—”

“I’m not saying anybody did anything wrong,” I say, gentle. “I have to ask. It’s usually somebody the family knows. Not always a stranger.”

“There’s no one.” Her hands twist together, knuckles white. “I swear to God, Officer, there’s no one who’d want to hurt her.”

“Any new people around lately? Repairmen, neighbors who moved in recently, anybody paying her more attention than felt normal?”

The father’s the one who answers this time, slow, like he’s dragging the memory up from somewhere he didn’t want to look. “There’s a man two houses down. New renter. Been here maybe a month. Addie waved at him a few times when we walked the dog. Never talked to him myself.”

I write it down and ask which house.

We canvass the road for the better part of an hour. Johnson takes the houses on the left side while I work the right, knocking on doors, asking the same questions over and over until they start to blur together—did you see anything, did you hear anything, do you know a man renting the blue house down the road. Most people haven’t seen a thing. One elderly woman offers me sweet tea I don’t have time to drink and tells me she saw a car she didn’t recognize idling near the mailbox around one-thirty, dark sedan, gone before she could get a plate.

By the time we’ve got a partial description circulating and a BOLO out on the sedan, my shirt’s stuck to my back with sweat and my head’s pounding hard enough that I can feel my own pulse behind my eyes.

I find Johnson leaning against his cruiser near the end of the drive, notebook in hand, and something in the way he looks at me when I walk up makes my stomach tighten before he’s even said a word.

He’s not looking at his notes. He’s looking at me, sideways, the corner of his mouth doing something that isn’t quite a smirk but isn’t friendly either.

“What,” I say, flat, because I don’t have the patience for whatever this is right now.

“Nothing.” He goes back to his notebook, too quick.

“Johnson.”

He glances up again, and this time he doesn’t bother hiding it. “Heard you had a date the other night.”

My whole body goes still. Small-town gossip. Of course it made it to him too.

“That’s not relevant to anything we’re doing right now,” I say.

“Wasn’t saying it was.” He shrugs, but there’s an edge under it, something deliberate. “Just heard The Depot cleared a table on a Friday for Officer Carpenter and a Wicked Sinner. Kind of hard not to have an opinion about that.”

“I don’t remember asking for one.”

“No, you didn’t.” He shuts his notebook, turns to face me fully now, and whatever restraint he’s been holding onto for the last hour evaporates. “But I’m gonna give it to you anyway, since apparently nobody else around here’s willing to. You’re out here knocking on doors trying to find a missing six-year-old, doing good work, real work, and then you go home and climb into bed with the enemy.”

“He’s not—” I stop myself, because I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence in a way that sounds true. “That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it?” Johnson’s voice climbs, sharp enough that one of the other officers glances over from near the porch. “He’s VP of a club running guns, Penny. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it, we just can’t prove it, and now you’re what, dating him? Sleeping with him?”