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Her brisk, no-nonsense voice reassured him. “This way.” He took Annie’s hand, and they walked into the building.
Mason greeted them at the front door and shook Siela’s hand. “Agent Cheng, Sheriff Mason Kaleva. Good to meet you. I’ve got a war room set up. This way.”
They went through the inner door and down the hall to a conference room on the left. A whiteboard was mounted at the front of the room, and several people were in attendance. Mason nodded to the group and walked to the front of the room while Annie and Jon found seats.
Cheng didn’t wait to be introduced but went to stand beside Mason. “There’s no time for formalities. I’m Agent Siela Cheng with the FBI’s CARD unit. Mason, if you’ll take charge of the whiteboard and list what we know. When we’re done with that, I’d like to interview the parents separately.”
Jon exchanged a long look with Annie. Alone? Why did she need to get them alone? He didn’t like the implications. Did she suspect one of them had something to do with this?
Mason picked up the marker, and it squeaked across the board as he wrote down the names Sarah Vitanen/Taylor Moore. “The first thing to know about in this case is the relationship of the suspected perp. Annie, would you feel up to explaining?”
Annie cleared her throat. “Of course. Sarah is my younger sister. When she was five, she was abducted by an unknown woman and we never saw her again. After all this time, we assumedshe was dead. A few weeks ago, Taylor Moore came to town and applied for a job at my resort. At the time I had no idea she was my missing sister.”
Cheng’s eyes widened. “Interesting. Please continue.”
“She finally announced she was my sister, Sarah. That was confirmed yesterday via DNA, but she’s very bitter and angry that I was unable to save her from being abducted.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight.”
“At that age you would’ve been unable to have taken on a grown woman, of course, but anger and bitterness can blind people. And why would she take Kylie now?”
Annie tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “To punish me, maybe? We don’t know.”
“I see. Anything else I should know?”
Jon glanced at Annie. They didn’t dare leave out the crucial information that had just come out. It might have influenced Sarah.
He cleared his throat. “We recently found out I’m Kylie’s father and not Nate Pederson as Annie had always thought. Sarah overheard me tell my father about it last night. That might have been the catalyst.”
“Hmm,” Cheng said. “I think it’s time I interview the two of you. Annie, would you come with me?”
“You can use my office,” Mason said.
Annie stopped at the door and looked back. “Mason, humor me and have someone check on Lissa Sanchez. Sarah doesn’t know many people here, and Lissa dated her cousin, Sean. It’s possible she might have gone to her. Could we check out her phone records?”
“I have a court order to get the records, but we don’t have them yet.”
The FBI agent pulled out her phone. “I’ll handle it.” She sent off a text and beckoned for Annie to follow her.
This was something they had to go through no matter how much Jon wanted to protect Annie.
***
Taylor paced the floor of the cottage. What had she gotten them into? Kylie had finally cried herself to sleep in the back bedroom, and that left Taylor to deal with Lissa. The woman was furious that she’d been drawn into what she called a mess.
Lissa was on the porch berating someone on the phone. Her brown curls bounced as she gestured. “I told you this would get us into trouble.” She paced back and forth, waving her hands in the air.
Taylor didn’t quite understand why Lissa was so mad, and even worse, Taylor didn’t know how to fix it. They had to hide out while they waited on Jon to come up with the ransom, and they needed fake identities.
Maybe she shouldn’t have called Lissa, but she’d had no one else to turn to. Lissa lowered the phone from her ear and turned toward the house to come inside. Taylor’s gut clenched, and she drew in a deep, calming breath. If there was one thing she hated, it was being yelled at.
Lissa, dark curls askew from the breeze, shut the door behind her and put her hands on her hips as she faced Taylor. “So now there’s an FBI agent in town trying to find that kid. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Her brown eyes were narrowed.
FBI? Taylor hadn’t considered this case might escalate like that. Why hadn’t Jon just gotten the money together like she’d told him?
“That’s crazy,” she managed to say in a feeble voice.
