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Her daddy kept changing his name. Their names.
Her stomach cramped. Had he lied to her? Had he been to Widow Lake before? Had he attended college here?
Did he know something about those bodies they found at Widow Lake?
NINETY-THREE
SOMEWHERE ON THE AT
Derrick called a SAR team and an ambulance, then Ellie while he waited for them to arrive. “Coolidge crashed then got out of his truck and ran. He fell over the drop-off and landed on a ledge.”
“Is he alive?” Ellie asked.
Derrick used binoculars to get a close-up view of Coolidge. “Hard to tell,” Derrick said. “So far I don’t detect any movement.”
“That’s not good,” Ellie said. “If he’s dead and he’s the one who took Sarah, he can’t tell us where he left her.”
“She’s not in his truck,” Derrick said.
“Deputy Eastwood, Sheriff Waters and I are searching vacant apartments here and the surrounding property in case he left her on the premises. We’ll also canvass residents and ERT is checking their vehicles.”
“McClain just got here,” Derrick said. “I gotta go.”
He hung up and went to meet Cord and the other SAR workers along with the ambulance.
“What do we have?” Cord asked.
Derrick quickly explained. “We think Coolidge may have had something to do with Amy Dean’s death. Last night, another young woman in his complex disappeared. Ellie is at the scene with search warrants and ERT. Coolidge fled the scene.”
Cord’s eyes darkened. “Then this guy might be a killer?”
“He could be,” Derrick said. “But at this point, he’s only a person of interest. We need him alive so we can question him.”
Cord nodded. “I’ll go down and assess the situation, then we’ll make a plan to bring him up.”
Derrick conceded. Ranger McClain knew what he was doing and had proven invaluable in prior cases.
If Coolidge was alive, there was no one else he trusted to handle bringing him up from the ravine.
NINETY-FOUR
WIDOW LAKE
The girl—Lorna Bea—was alone. Up in her room with the windows blacked out.
And Frank was gone.
He lit a cigarette and inhaled, blowing smoke rings into the hot air as he watched the two other kids sneak into the house. As he inched through the bushes, brush crackled beneath his boots. Sweat beaded on his upper lip as he peered through the window and saw the old lady stretched on her bed, snoozing.
Perfect.
He waited a few minutes, watched to make sure she stayed asleep, then snuck up to the back door. It squeaked as he eased it open and he ran his fingers over the knife he’d tucked in his back pocket, pausing to listen for the granny or the kids.
Voices sounded from the second floor. The kids were in the girl’s room.
“When will your daddy be back?” Betsy asked.
“I don’t know, so let’s be fast,” Lorna Bea said. “What else can you find on that iPad?”
