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Helen shrugged. “Nope. Sorry. I just got here a minute ago.”
“That’s about when this happened,” Lacey muttered.
Daniel sighed and walked away. He spoke into his microphone and someone squawked an answer. Mason planted his hands on his hips and watched the action. Officers questioned suspects. The crime-scene unit finally arrived, and he grabbed Lacey’s hand to pull her next to him.
He turned to speak to one of the officers. When he turned back around, she was gone.
* * *
Lacey watched Daniel disappear around the phone booth and decided to follow him. She knew she might get yelled at, but had to know if he’d found anything.
Sidling up next to him and the other officer, she listened unashamedly.
“…a syringe.”
“Where?” Daniel asked.
“On the ground, underneath the receiver. What did you get?”
“Nothing of any importance, but we’ll check it out anyway.” With a gloved hand, Daniel shoved a multicolored piece of material into a brown paper bag and folded the top over.
Lacey turned when Mason walked up beside her, his face a thundercloud. She looked at Daniel. “Is that syringe a clue?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have the lab check it out.” He stuffed it into a paper bag and handed it to the tech standing nearby.
Then he turned to Mason. “I called Catelyn and asked her to pull up every white Buick registered within a thirty-mile radius.”
“Good.” Mason pulled Lacey to the side. “Lacey, I understand you’re anxious to find Bethany, but if you get in the way of the investigation, you could hinder it and that’s not going to help Bethany.”
Guilt hit her. He was right. She was acting impulsively, her desperation to find Bethany short-circuiting her usual calm, rational thought. Biting her lip she looked at the ground. “I’m sorry.”
A finger under her chin tilted her face up to look into his compassionate gaze. “I know. We just need to be careful, all right?”
She nodded and he sighed, pulled her next to his chest and placed a kiss on her head. “We’re going to find her.”
If the determination in his voice was anything to go by, they would have Bethany back in no time. Unfortunately, she had a hard time believing this.
“But now someone has her. For real this time. She’s not just out there on the run able to come home any time she decides to.” Tears clogged her throat yet again and she swallowed hard.
“Hey, Mason!” Daniel called.
Mason turned and Lacey peered around him to see an officer escorting one of the residents of the shelter. A clean-cut young man in his early twenties. Lacey decided he looked rather out of place for a shelter resident, but she supposed they didn’t all have to look like ragged misfits.
The officer, whose nametag read P. Hines, and the man stopped in front of them. The young man nodded and shoved his hands in his front pockets. Officer Hines said, “Troy here saw something. I’m going to let him describe it to you.”
Troy shuffled his feet then shrugged. “I was heading out to look for a job and saw a girl near the pay phone over there. It looked like someone ran into her. She turned around to yell at the guy, then she dropped the phone and looked kind of sick. That’s when a woman approached her. The girl looped her arm around the woman’s neck and they walked off together.”
Lacey’s questions burned holes in her mind, but she kept her mouth shut and let the professionals handle it. Mason asked, “Did you recognize the guy?”
“No, he had his back to me and when the girl started yelling at him, he took off down the street.”
Mason nodded. “All right, what about the woman and the girl. Did you see where they went?”
Troy shook his head. “Naw, I wasn’t paying that much attention once I saw the girl had some help. I started walking down the sidewalk. Then I saw all the police cars headed this way and thought I’d turn around and come back to find out what was going on.”
Lacey pulled in a deep breath, relief filling her. “She had help?”
“Looked like it to me.” He shrugged.
