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Craig nodded. “Yep. That piece of crap was Nate’s.”
Rina’s heartbeat quickened. She’d done a search on vehicles connected to Nathan Rodgers’s name, but she hadn’t found anything. She zoomed in on the license plate. Bingo. She memorized it immediately.
“Thanks so much for your help,” Rina said, passing the phone back.
“Is Nate in trouble?” Craig asked.
“No. He hasn’t done anything wrong. We just need to find him,” Rina said with a smile.
“He isn’t the kind of guy who likes to be found,” Craig said cryptically. “He went off the grid all the time when we were friends. That’s part of the reason we’re not friends anymore, you know? You have to be able to rely on a guy.”
Rina said she understood. She’d been surrounded by people she couldn’t rely on her entire life. But they weren’t her people anymore. She’d had to start anew.
* * *
Rina checked into the Hilton Hotel in Amherst, where parents normally stayed when visiting their children. The woman at the front desk assumed Rina was one of them; that she’d just had a wonderful reunion with her son or daughter on campus, celebrating all things academia.
“How are you enjoying Amherst?” she asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Rina lied. “My son couldn’t be happier here.”
Rina entered her hotel room, made herself some tea, and set her computer up on the thick mahogany desk. It was time to get to work. She had a target.
Nathan’s license plate number continued to burn in her mind’s eye. This was her longtime gift—photographic memory. She and Penny had experimented with it often during childhood. Penny had shown Rina a photograph for no longer than a second and then demanded Rina tell her everything she could about it. Rina’s memory had amazed both of them.
Rina typed Nathan’s number into a database, which she paid for access of, and watched as it spit out all relevant information tied to Nathan’s car. Legally, it belonged to someone named Quinn Rodgers—a relative of some kind, maybe his mother. There were a few tickets associated with it over the years. Nathan had had a fender bender seven months ago in a McDonald’s parking lot. None of it looked out of the ordinary.
But the most recent entry, Rina realized now, was from just six days ago. Nathan had been pulled over for speeding in Utah, of all places. Rina stood, and her chair toppled behind her. Utah. That was nearly a full continent away.
That was nearly all the way to California.
Rina suddenly felt jolted awake. Staggering back toward her coat, she rifled through the pockets to find her phone. Steve answered on the first ring.
“I can’t believe I haven’t thought about this,” Rina gasped.
“What?” Steve sounded alert.
“On the night of New Year’s Eve,” Rina recalled, “I talked to Gail.”
Steve sounded confused. “Did she say something?”
Rina could picture them plain as day: Rina, reeling after learning about her mother’s accident; Gail, black-eyed, angry, smearing Rina’s lipstick over her lips. Rina had mentioned she was going back to California. She’d even said where she’d grown up.
“I think she’s going to Santa Monica,” Rina whispered.
“To look for you?” Steve asked.
Rina blubbered with confusion. “I don’t know.” She explained what she’d learned so far: that Nathan had gotten a ticket in Utah. “I just have this gut feeling she’s over there. It’s as far away from all this nonsense as she could get. I can’t explain it.”
“You have to trust your gut feelings,” Steve assured her. “When do you want to go? I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Let me call Santa Monica police first,” Rina said. “If they confirm, we’ll leave in the morning.”
“Call me when you know more.”
Rina hung up, filled her lungs, and dialed the familiar number for Santa Monica police. It was the same station she and her parents had once entrusted to find Penny. They’d failed her once. That didn’t mean they would fail her again. She hoped.
Before long, Rina was on the phone with an old friend of hers from high school, Cody’s buddy, Jimmy. He was the same guy who’d brought the fireworks that night they’d nearly gotten arrested. Over the years, he’d been instrumental in handing over delicate information to Rina when she worked missing-persons cases. Although neither of them spoke to Cody anymore, they still liked to reminisce as though high school had been just a few weeks ago. Once, Jimmy had asked Rina out—but she’d said no.
