Gone Too Far
it.” He laughed again. “God, you know you’re pathetic when you even miss your kid’s dirty diapers.”
    He was silent for a minute, and then he said, “She used to fall asleep just, like, lying on my chest. You know, watching a football game or something. It was . . .” He stopped and cleared his throat. “It was something I missed very much when she was gone.”
    “I’m sorry,” Alyssa said softly.
    “Yeah,” Sam said. “Me, too.” He took a deep breath and blew it out hard. “I figure I’ll take a ride north tomorrow. Mary Lou’s mother lives somewhere up near Jacksonville, I think. I’m not sure where it is—I need to look at a map to jog my memory. I doubt that Mary Lou or Janine would’ve brought Haley there, but she might know something.”
    “You should let the FBI handle this investigation.”
    “Yeah, right.” He laughed his disgust. “You’ve done so well with the whole Coronado terrorist case. I’ll just sit back and wait for you to deliver Haley to me. Sometime before her eighteenth birthday.”
    Her cell phone rang, and she flipped it open. “Locke.”
    “Conseco,” the head of the Sarasota office said. “We’ve IDed the victim as Janine Morrison Wrigley. We’ve got APBs out on both her ex-husband and the missing sister and kid. I’ll keep you posted as we get more information.”
    “Thank you,” Alyssa said. She hung up the phone and turned to Sam, who was watching her intently. “It wasn’t Mary Lou.”
    “Oh, God, oh, Jesus, thank you,” he said, then covered his face with his hands.
    He just sat there, head bowed, completely silent. Alyssa wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.
    But then he drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a hard exhale as he ran his hands down his face. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m just . . . a little . . .”
    “It’s all right,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to say anything.”
    It was several long moments before he spoke.
    “It was Janine?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” she told him. “They’re looking for her ex-husband, Clyde.”
    “You up for a drive?” Sam asked, finally looking over at her. “Because I know where to find him.”
    Haley was gone.
    Mary Lou Morrison Starrett’s mood went from euphoric to terrified as she searched the small au pair apartment that she shared with her daughter, and then ran down the hall to Amanda’s bedroom and then to Whitney’s suite.
    The good news was that Whitney wasn’t lying dead on the floor, her hair soaked with blood.
    In all likelihood, the girl had taken Haley and Amanda, her own daughter—born when Whitney was barely fifteen—to the beach.
    Still, Mary Lou’s hands shook as she picked up the phone and dialed Whitney’s cell phone number.
    The girl answered it on the third ring. “ ’Lo?” Amanda was wailing in the background.
    “Whitney!” Praise God. The cell phone signal out here in Nowheresville was spotty at best. “It’s Ma— Constance.” Connie, not Mary Lou. Connie, Connie, Connie. She was Connie Grant, who had a son , Chris. Haley had balked at a name change until Mary Lou had suggested she pick one herself. Her first choice was Daddy, which had made Mary Lou pause. Her second was Pooh, which also didn’t work. The third time was a charm, thank the Lord, with Christopher Robin, which fit right in with Mary Lou’s plan to pass her off as a little boy. “Where are you?”
    She never raised her voice to Whitney, and right now it took everything she had in her to keep from shrieking at the teenager.
    “Almost home. We’re nearly at the gate. We’ll be in the garage in about three minutes,” Whitney reported. “Are you and Daddy through? Meet us down there and take the screaming monster out of her car seat. You know, I don’t get it. Chris doesn’t have shitfits in the middle of Starbucks.”
    “Please watch your language in front of the children,” Mary Lou said, working hard to keep her voice calm and in control, closing her eyes and

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