Kate Collins - Sleeping with Anemone

“The police have issued an Amber Alert and sealed the exits,” Marco continued, “in case the girls are wrong and Tara’s still in the building. They’ve brought in a search dog, and a helicopter will be here soon for an aerial search, in case she’s on foot. They’ll find her, Abby.”

I could hear Kathy keening in grief, and my eyes welled with tears. I pushed through the people around her and knelt at her side, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. “Kathy, I’m so sorry,” I said, the words catching in my throat.

She lifted her head, her eyes sad and frightened. “We have to find her, Abby,” she whispered, clutching one of my hands. “We have to find my baby.”

“We will, I promise.”

One of the cops came to talk to her, so I stepped away. “Marco, I have this horrible feeling that the kidnappers were after me and got Tara by mistake.”

Marco wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. “I didn’t want to frighten you, Sunshine, but I was thinking the same thing. Still, we can’t rule out that someone had a grudge against your brother. He’s a doctor, and rightly or wrongly, people sometimes take revenge against a doctor when something goes wrong.”

“They sue, Marco. They don’t kidnap the doctor’s kid. Jordan didn’t even decide to come with us until today, so how could a kidnapper have planned it? I must have been their target. Nothing else makes sense except that Tara has the misfortune of looking like me.”

“Okay, if that’s true, think about what happened when they realized their mistake with Jillian. They dropped her off. So they’ll probably do the same with Tara.”

“What if they gave Tara some kind of drug that paralyzed her? She could by lying along the side of the road somewhere, freezing to death.” I handed him his coat and Tara’s jacket so I could put my coat on. “I’m going outside to look for her.”

“Abby, it’s twenty degrees out there. Stay in here where it’s warm. I’ll look.”

“No, Marco. I’m going. If I have to wait around in here, I’ll lose my mind.”

“You won’t get out the door without an okay from the sergeant.”

Crap. Marco was right. I didn’t know the sheriff’s chief officer at all. Why couldn’t the Expo Center be in city jurisdiction instead of county? Reilly hated it when I got involved in police business, but he usually capitulated.

I glanced at the stern face of the sergeant, who had set up a command station on one side of the doors. There was no way he was going to give me the okay to help. But damn it, there was no way he was going to stop me, either. “Create a diversion, Marco. I’m going out.”

“Past that big cop at the door? I don’t think so.” Marco took Tara’s coat from me. “I’ll be back in a moment. The canine handler will need this to establish a scent pad for his dog.”

As Marco strode off with the coat, I wound my scarf around my neck and headed for the exit. Permission or not, I was going to look for my niece.

“Excuse me, I need to leave,” I said to the tall cop guarding the glass doors.

He gazed down at me over the bridge of his nose. “No one leaves.”

“I know those are your orders, but I’m the victim’s aunt and I really need to help search for her. Here. Do you want to see my ID?”

“No one leaves.”

“Look, it’s my fault she was kidnapped, okay? I have to get out there and find her. Wouldn’t you do the same for your niece? Don’t look away. You know you would. Tell you what, just keep looking the other way and I’ll dart out.”

“One more time. No. One. Leaves.”

I huffed in frustration. “Ever?”

“No one leaves.”

“Is that all you’re programmed to say?”

He scowled at me.

I saw Marco heading toward me, so I said to the cop, “See that former New Chapel police officer coming over here? He just got the okay to leave. If you don’t believe me, ask him.”

As Marco strode up, I used the distraction to slip past the cop and out the door, where the flashing red and blue lights of a half dozen cop cars illuminated the light snow covering that had fallen earlier, giving the scene a surreal, almost festive appearance. I pulled the scarf tighter around my neck and charged across the icy parking lot, afraid to look back for fear the cop was on my heels.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Marco called. “I got the okay.”

I glanced back at him in surprise. “It’s okay for me to help search?”

“No, it’s okay for me to take you home. The sergeant wants you out of his hair. Seems he’s heard about some of your exploits.”

Whatever. We headed for Marco’s Prius so he could retrieve his flashlight, gloves, and a wool hat, and then, as we walked away from his car, I heard something snap beneath my boot. I glanced down and saw a thin, glossy, curved object sticking out of the snow. “Marco, shine the flashlight down here.”

He illuminated the ground while I plucked half of a skinny pink headband out of the snow. “This is Tara’s. She was here, Marco! Look. Here’s the other half.”

“Don’t touch it. Leave it there for evidence.”

I quickly backed away, still holding the other piece.

“Abby, are you positive Tara was wearing that headband during the concert?”

“Yes. She gave me the yellow and orange ones and kept the pink, green, and black.”

Marco pointed to the ground. “These shoe prints are recent. We need to move away.”

“Do you see Tara’s? Small, with a pointed toe and narrow heel?”

He stepped back a few feet, then crouched down and shined his light on the area. “There’s a set with a pointed toe. And there’s a set with a one-piece sole and a deep tread pattern. I’d guess a fairly new woman’s running shoe.”

I showed him the bottom of my boot. “They’re not mine, and Kathy had on boots, too.”

“Here’s a larger print with deep, wide treads, a man’s hiking boot possibly. But if they belong to the kidnappers, why would they have brought Tara here?”

I bent to take a closer look. “Do you think Tara got away from them and came here-maybe hoping to hide in one of our cars?”

Marco rose and began to search beyond the car. “If they used a Taser on her instead of a drug, she could have recovered quickly enough to escape. Maybe they caught up with her here. I see more of the same three sets of prints heading off toward the highway.”

“You’d think if they realized they nabbed the wrong person, they’d have let her go.”

“Either they haven’t discovered their mistake or it wasn’t a mistake.”

“Or maybe Tara saw their faces…”

I stopped. Marco didn’t say anything, but I knew he was thinking the same thing: If the kidnappers were afraid of being identified, they’d probably kill her.

A helicopter flew overhead, its powerful searchlight aimed at the ground, allowing us to see three police officers, one with a dog on a leash, heading in our direction. Marco walked out to talk to them while the big German shepherd led his handler straight to the half headband in my hand, and then barked to alert the officer.

I turned over the piece of headband as Marco explained why we were there. The K-9 handler introduced himself as Officer Ray Aaron of the Sheriff’s Police, then asked us to step away so the other cops could take photos and collect evidence. With the wind blowing the snow around, I feared Tara’s trail would be lost, but Officer Aaron assured me that the cold air would actually help preserve her essence.

“A search dog’s goal is to locate the source of the scent,” Aaron explained. “His ability to track isn’t affected by cold weather, only by heat, which can dissipate DNA.”

When Eros, the German shepherd, was given the command to search, he put his nose down and headed toward the highway. But at the edge of the road, he began circling.