Sliver Moon Bay: The Looking by Ivana Hruba Page A

should have.’
    ‘Lilian. He didn’t take our
daughter. You know that.’
    ‘I don’t know that!’
    ‘Come on, love—‘
    ‘If not him, then who? Because
somebody did take her, you realize.’
    Lilian’s breathless shouts drop
to a whisper.
    ‘You realize what you’ve done,
don’t you.’
    Lilian’s crying now. Sobbing
like Starling used to when something wasn’t going her way. She just
couldn’t deal with the frustration of it. But Lilian’s taking it up
a notch. She’s going to drown in snot soon if she doesn’t let up.
But she stops the waterworks quite unexpectedly.
    ‘I knew this would happen… I
knew it… I’ve always known…’
    She trails off. I wish she
hadn’t cause I could have learned something. But she isn’t going to
say anything new.
    ‘Don’t do this, Lilian. We’ve
got to stay strong. Positive. Starling’s somewhere near. We just
have to find her. I promise you, I will find her.’
    ‘She’s been taken, I know she
has. She’s alive. I feel her, Chris. I feel her. She’s missing me.
She’s scared. But one day she’ll forget me. She’s so little it will
be soon. You know it will. You’ve got to find her before it
happens. You’ve got to find her, Chris. Please. Please.
P-LEEEEEASE!’
    She’s begging, urgently, going
at it full speed, like a runaway train. He’ll need to give her more
medication cause she’ll go on like this forever. I know. I’ve heard
her. I’ve had to do it myself to stop her raving. At least Chris is
here to deal with her tonight. And I can go to sleep.
     
     

 
    36
     
     
    So Chris is now officially a
Person Of Interest. A. Person. Of. Interest. It sounds quite posh.
Like he’s done something of note. But he hasn’t. He doesn’t have it
in him. Not anymore. Ever since Starling was born, he’s turned into
a big softie. Couldn’t even beat up his old boss when he sacked
him. But Detective Martin still wanted to talk about that. He’s
been snooping around our past, sticking his nose in and getting
nowhere still, says Chris who has now lost all confidence. It’s so
obvious that the big town detective is completely on the wrong
track here, even I can see that. Thank God for Captain Josh though.
He’s been chipping at it steadily, coming in at odd hours, telling
us where he’s at, some of it, anyway. The bit that has nothing to
do with Chris, or Drake, or anyone else who’s being looked at in
the community. Which is just about everyone. And still, nothing.
But Captain Josh will not give up. He’s been chasing cars,
following up reports of suspicious vehicles that were spotted in
the area before the fire. One car in particular has been mentioned
by a few locals. It’s a dark green sedan, alternatively described
as a late model Toyota, an old Ford or even some type of small
Japanese hatchback. Go figure. But they all said it was green.
Dark, forest green. So it would blend in where we live. Okay. So
maybe somebody was spying on us. If they did a good job we wouldn’t
know, would we? Cause we wouldn’t have noticed anybody snooping
around, watching us as we went about our day, is the general
consensus in town. The pub’s full of it, now that the green car
theory is out there. Except they don’t realize that we would have
noticed. I would have noticed. I had old Drakey on my heels day in
day out, so I was on the lookout for a covert operation of this
kind. And I wasn’t the only one. Chris was always checking, too. He
used to run around Sliver Moon Bay, taking pictures, in town, at
the harbour. Checked everything before deleting the lot. So he
would have known, he would have noticed someone new, especially if
they were snooping close to the house. So this theory just doesn’t
make sense. I know it. Chris knows it. Lilian knows it. But we’re
desperate and I think this stream of consciousness is taking hold
over us cause Chris is convinced that someone was watching.
    Funnily enough, the cops are
keeping quiet about Chris’s blood on