Page 64 of The Kidnapped

She got home and readied herself for more work in her office, but she couldn’t focus on work yet again. It wasn’t because she was thinking of Eden, though. It was because she was thinking about Hollis, how their relationship had so clearly been altered, and how much she wished they could go back. No, that wasn’t the truth, and Raleigh knew it, too. She didn’t want to go back with Hollis. She wanted to move forward. She’d wanted to say yes. She wanted to go out with Hollis, the beautiful woman she’d met because they’d both encountered tragedy. Hollis was remarkable. Raleigh would be lucky to snag a date with her. But Hollis was also going through things. So was Raleigh.

Yet, every time she took herself back to that bar, she’d said yes in her mind. They’d gone out in her fantasy, and Hollis had kissed her goodnight. Then, the fantasy would end, and in reality, Raleigh would just go cry in bed because she’d spent an amazing night with a great woman she really liked and not looking for her daughter, not trying to do everything she could to find her.

Group that week had been strange. Hollis had still sat next to her, as had become their custom, but she hadn’t shared. Neither had Raleigh. She’d, instead, kept staring at Hollis’s hands in her lap or looked up at her beautiful face and those eyes that saw right through Raleigh at times and were always so expressive. A few times, Hollis had looked over, and Raleigh hadn’t looked away; she’d smiled at her. Hollis hadn’t smiled back, though. Yes, their relationship had changed, and it made Raleigh’s stomach hurt to think that she might have lost the best friend she’d made in a very long time.

???

“This woman, do you know her?” Dylan asked.

Raleigh looked at the woman in the background of a photo she’d taken.

“No.” She shook her head.

“What about this one?”

Raleigh shook her head again.

“And this one?” Dylan asked.

Raleigh looked at the woman in the third image and shook her head a third time.

“These are the three people I can’t locate or narrow down,” Dylan told her. “I’ve got a friend who works for the FBI. He can do me a favor and run facial recognition, but it’s not at all how you see it on TV or in the movies: there’s no result right away. Often, it would return hundreds of possibilities, so we have to narrow things down from there. I’ll give him a call and see if he can run these three pictures. They’re in the background, so it’s not the best, but maybe he can give me hundreds of options to look through instead of millions. If they’re in the system, we’ll get their info and track them down.”

“These are women,” Raleigh stated the obvious.

“Yes,” Dylan confirmed.

“You don’t think a man took her?”

“I don’t know, Raleigh. All I can tell you is that in the photos you gave me, I was able to eliminate every male.”

“What about the guy you texted me about?”

“The one who was a registered sex offender? Yeah, the FBI cleared him. So did the locals. I also ran another check to be sure. He peed in a public pool at night, when it was closed. Some kids were on a playground nearby, and they saw him. That’s why he’s registered. I still went to his house to talk to him and did some research. He’s clean.”

“And you’re sure?”

“His alibi for the day before, the day of, and the day after was solid. He was visiting family. They were camping.”

“But his family could’ve lied for him.”

“I’m sure they could have, but not in this instance: the campground had a security video where you check in. I can check the footage myself as well, but the FBI already went through it. It’s not him, Raleigh. The picture you caught him in was two weeks before Eden was taken. He was at his niece’s birthday party in the park.”

Raleigh nodded, accepting the news.

“I’ll run checks with the FBI on these women. Maybe they have men in their lives who could’ve very well been there and just weren’t captured in the pictures,” Dylan told her. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Raleigh replied.

“Hey, I brought drinks,” Ada said as she walked into Dylan’s office. “I got you water since you said you didn’t want anything.” She handed Raleigh a glass of water and Dylan a beer.

“Thank you,” Raleigh replied, taking it from her.

“Any good news?” Ada asked Dylan.

“Just eliminating people,” Dylan replied.

“Been there,” Ada said.

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