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“Lucy,” Ian explained, hands on the back of one of the side chairs. “She’s AWOL.”
Jun’s eyebrows drew together. “Do I have to remind you that she’s your ex-wife? She might need some time alone. Or at least time without you butting in? I know I hate it when one of my exes tries to interfere in my life.”
“I’m not interfering. She has Renee.”
“And—?”
“And I haven’t heard from my daughter in three days. We usually FaceTime every night that she’s not with me.”
“But she’s not due to stay with you for what? Another couple of days?”
“Tomorrow.”
Leaning back in her chair, she looked up at him. “You don’t think you’re pushing the panic button?”
“No.” He shook his head, ran a palm nervously around the back of his neck. “Something’s wrong.”
Jun nodded, unconvinced. “Even so. If she doesn’t want to talk to you . . . isn’t interested in your help.”
“I don’t care. As I said, she has Renee with her, Jun. So I’m outta here. And if you could help me track her down . . .”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But they both did. Jun was a computer genius of the highest order and had worked as a protegee with the government when she was barely out of high school, then was recruited into army intelligence. She knew the ins and outs of the internet and security codes and back doors into systems. If anyone could find a trace of Lucy, it would be Jun. That was why they worked so well together. Neither one was afraid of bending the law to its breaking point.
“I’ll send you Lucy’s info,” he said as he walked to the window and glanced out at the gray day beyond.
She said, “Won’t be necessary.”
“You already have it?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t need to.
“And Ray Watkins?”
“Child’s play, Ian.” She eyed him. Her cell phone vibrated, humming against the top of her desk. She ignored it. “What really went down the night Tina Champagne was attacked?”
They’d never discussed it, mainly because Ian didn’t really know what had happened, even though he’d tried for years to piece it together.
“She attacked him. Right? That’s what I read on the internet.”
“I think so.” But the details were sketchy. Ian had pored over court records, testimony, police reports, depositions, crime scene accounts, anything he had been able to find as, he suspected, had Zhou. Details of the attack had been murky, with Ray Watkins himself taking the stand and describing what he’d claimed to remember: He’d come to Tina Champagne’s home, let himself in, found her nearly passed out drunk in her darkened bedroom, and they’d gotten into a “hell-raising” fight about his lack of attention to her. The bruising around her neck was from his attempts to revive her when he’d been attacked by all of Tina’s children, one—and he didn’t know which—had a pair of long, sharp scissors that he wrested away after he’d been stabbed, his face and eyesight in one eye ruined, Tina herself nearly dying from wounds to her neck and torso. A gun had gone off, Tina’s pistol, and she’d ended up being the one shot, the bullet nicking her carotid artery, her recovery nearly miraculous. There were smudged prints on the gun, but the only ones that could be lifted had been Tina’s own.
Had someone else fired the shot?
Tina couldn’t remember, and Clark and Marilyn had both been too confused. They only knew that Ray seemed to be attacking their mother and they’d tried to physically restrain him, but the bedroom had been dark, filled with screaming and cursing and stone-cold fear.
It had been Lucy’s testimony, an eight-year-old, traumatized child who could barely answer any questions when placed on the stand, who had whispered, white-faced, that Ray had tried to kill her mother.
As far as Ian knew, she’d never varied from that testimony, never filled in the blanks, never confided in anyone, her husband included.
Now, as Zhou waited for an explanation, he wished he had one. “Lucy’s always said he would come for her, and now that he’s out, she could be right.”
“Or she could be paranoid.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, though he had always wondered about Lucy’s stability. Outwardly strong, there were cracks in her armor. She’d been traumatized as a child by not only being involved in a horrendous, tragic, and sensationalized crime, but also by then being sent away, out of the country. “Keep me posted.”
“Sure.”
