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Priscilla hung onto that and the hope that Kaylee was still alive. Renee had hung onto it, too.
Then two weeks after her sister was locked up, the call had come from the prison. Priscilla closed her eyes against the shocking agony the message had brought. “We’re sorry to inform you that your sister Renee killed herself.”
“No!” Priscilla had screamed, an animalistic sound tearing from her. “She wouldn’t have. She wanted to find her daughter…”
But Renee was gone.
Now Priscilla was alone with her anguish. And all her questions.
She didn’t believe for a minute that Renee would commit suicide, not without knowing what had happened to Kaylee.
“You have to investigate,” she’d told the warden and the police. “Renee would not take her own life.”
But they hadn’t believed her just as they hadn’t believed Renee.
And now both she and Kaylee were gone.
Reeling from the memory, Priscilla leaned against a tall pine, her breathing erratic as she spotted two ravens soaring above.
Renewed determination made her grit her teeth and she set the sunflowers she’d brought to honor Renee on the landing, the yellow flowers brightening up the dead weeds and grass, a symbol of hope. “I’m going to find the truth, Renee. I swear to it. And if Kaylee is alive, I’ll find her, too.”
Forty-Four
Crooked Creek
By the time Ellie reached the police station, her muscles ached with tension. She checked in with Shondra. “Any developments with the Trumans?”
“Nothing new. Jasper’s still sticking to his story. But they’re arguing again. Jasper blames his wife for not walking Ava to the bus stop, and she claimed if he’d been around more she wouldn’t have been so stressed she’d had a migraine.”
That thought gave her pause, and she slid behind her laptop at her desk. She’d heard stories about babies being snatched from hospitals because a mother had lost a child or couldn’t conceive and was so desperate she was driven to steal someone else’s. There were also kidnapping rings who took children and sold them to couples wanting to adopt.
And then there was Banks’s comment about Autumn. She’d messaged Derrick with that information, adding:If Autumn would take money for her own baby, would she sell Ava?
He sent a return text:On my way to Atlanta to question her. Nothing at her apartment.
Deciding to explore the possibility of a mother in the area who’d lost a child recently, Ellie accessed death certificates of children from the last six months. She spent the next hour combing through the records for Bluff County, and sadly found four children under the age of one. Two were stillborn, one had a heart defect and the other died in a car accident.
Sympathy for those families swelled inside her, but for now she eliminated them. If a person or family wanted to replace a baby, they would probably have chosen a child of a similar age.
She continued and discovered a seven-year-old who’d been struck by a car while riding his bike. A four-year-old who’d had a brain tumor. And an eight-year-old with leukemia.
She wiped at a tear she didn’t even realize she’d shed.
None of the kids were Ava’s age, and as she finished the search, she didn’t find any children close to her age in or around the area.
Often times criminals chose a certain type of victim based on age, appearance, body type, or, in the case of adults, their job. Considering the victim profile here, she dug deeper and found pictures of the four and the eight-year-old, but neither even remotely resembled Ava.
Frustration gnawing at her, she stood and stretched, walking to the window and looking out at the gray gloomy sky. Another day was passing, thunder rumbling, an icy rain beginning to fall. The clock ticked away the seconds in the background, each hour her fears mounting.
Poor little Ava must be terrified now.
Wherever you are, don’t give up, Ava. I’m coming for you.
Forty-Five
Atlanta
When Derrick arrived at the luxury hotel an hour after he’d checked Autumn’s apartment, she was in the middle of a deep-tissue massage, which he interrupted by showing her the warrant he’d obtained. She grabbed a robe and pulled it on, irritation flaring in her eyes. “I can’t believe this,” she snapped. “Why are you treating me like a criminal? I told you I don’t know where Ava is. Jasper wants to be with that woman and his brat, let him have them.”
