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Crispin, one of the sweetest of the Coleson clan, justwouldn’t.
Heather shifted Ember when her baby fussed. “She isn’t the type of girl who justwanders offwith friends, Detective Kimball. I can assure you that.”
“Now, these things happen often. College girls get caught up with the boys and the partying and just forget their mamas at home. Especially the pretty ones.” He gave her a patronizing look, and then smiled down at the baby. “You’ll find that out eventually, I’m sure.”
Heather shot him a narrow look. “I know the statistics; I know all of that. I also know exactly how you should respond to a missing person’s report, detective.” Heather reached into the diaper bag still slung over her shoulder. And pulled out her badge. “It’s Lieutenant Heather Coleson, actually, Wichita Falls Internal Affairs. I’m not an idiot. And I know my niece. This isn’t like her. She’s missing and she’s in trouble. What are you going to do about it?”
She listened to him bluster for five minutes. But she figured out the truth fast enough.
He was going to do absolutely nothing. She knew that with one look at the man’s florid face. If this was the caliber of detectives at Finley Creek, maybe she didn’t want that transfer, after all.
“No one has seen my niece since nine thirty this morning. She didn’t make it to either of her classes, and she isn’t in her usual places either. So who do I need to talk to, to get people out looking for her?”
Campus police. If they’d bother that fast. That was his only answer.
Once they had found Crispin—Heather was going to make Detective Kimball her very next mission. This man was TSP—she’d expected better than that. When the time came, Heather was going to dig so far into Kimball’s career she could count the worms. And then, if it was deserved, she was going to bring him down.
To his knees in front of her.
But for now,shewas going to have to be the one to find Crispin. Her arms tightened around her baby.
If anything ever happened to Ember or Frankie…
No.
Nothing was going to happen to Bonnie’s daughter.
Heather was going to find her. No matter what.
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Bonnie’s shiftwas half over when Heather showed up in the emergency department, after having dropped her two girls off with Cashlyn at Joy’s and speaking with a detective on the FCU campus. Then Heather had spoken with campus police.Theywere out looking for Crispin now.
Bonnie met her just inside the emergency department entrance, though she had only five minutes before she had to be back in her own department. PICU was a well-oiled machine. She had to be where she was supposed to be, no matter what. Children’s lives depended on it.
“I’m going to go by the campus again,” Heather said. “Hope is going to see if anyone has seen her around the campus. We’ll let you know what we find out, ok?”
“I’m probably just freaking over nothing.”
“I’d rather you freak a thousand times and nothing be wrong, than something be wrong and you discount it,” Heather told her. “I tried texting and calling myself. She didn’t answer. Don’t worry, mama bear. We’ll find your cub. And then I’ll give her a lecture about always keeping her phone charged or whatever. I promise. Marcia and Norman are driving down so Norman can sit with all the kids. Summer and Marcia and Eden and Joy can go out looking, too.”
Heather hugged her quickly. “I need to go. I’m going to meet Hope in the parking lot. Don’t leave here without me knowing, ok? When you do leave, go straight home. And stay there. Better yet, have the rest of the girls meet you there. I want everyone in the same place. Just in case. Keep…roll call, Bon. Just so we all know where everyone elseis.”
Bonnie knew what her sister wasn’t saying.
This was exactly what they’d done when they’d first lost Angela, when Eden, Summer, and Samia had been so small. And when they’d lost their father and his second wife. And when…they’d lost Nick.
When they’d disconnected life-support for Otis, too.
She wasn’t even going to think about the possibility of losing one of her baby girls. She just wasn’t.
No. Bonnie wasn’t.
But as she watched her younger sister stroll through the hospital lobby like she owned it, that didn’t keep her terror at bay.
Her daughter was out there, and Bonnie didn’t know where she was.
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