Page 15 of Marked

No, don’t go there.

If she did, she’d crumble and wouldn’t be able to pick herself back up. “Have you called the police?”

“Yes. They’re on their—oh they’re here!”

“Tell them everything. I’ll be there in two minutes.” Sophia disconnected.

She took a hard left through an intersection. Horns blared and someone’s tires screeched, but the noise was distant. Foreign. Barely touching her awareness. Pressure built inside her chest, expanding the walls with a painful ache.

The tears making her vision hazy fell, soaking her cheeks. She couldn’t fall apart. She had to suck it up. Bella’s survival depended on it.

Two minutes later she yanked the car into the parking lot next to the park and threw off her seatbelt. Two cop cars sat next to the curb. Her tunnel vision located the men in uniform. Breaking into a run, she crossed the grass.

Even though she knew Bella wasn’t there, her motherly instinct sought her out. She peered at the playground, the trees, anywhere Bella could be hiding... but her intuition screamed louder than the hope that she was close by.

Bella was gone. She knew it.

Natalie stood next to the officers, her long, curly red hair tossing in the breeze and her cheeks a pasty white. The twenty-two-year-old sitter appeared to have aged a decade in a matter of minutes. Her sunken green eyes shot to Sophia as she approached.

The young woman clapped a hand to her chest and then covered her mouth. “Sophia, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” A sharp cry tore from her throat.

Sophia gathered Natalie in her arms, needing the contact as much as she suspected the sitter did. “I know. We’ll find her. Just help us, okay?” She dropped her hold and swung her attention to the two policemen.

The taller of the two she recognized instantly. “Billy.”

His eyes widened and he looked to his partner—a rookie cop she’d surely seen around the station but couldn’t place—then back to her. “Detective Aldridge. Is this your—?”

“My daughter. Yes. Isabella.” It took all her resolve not to fold at her knees.

Billy’s cool blue eyes filled with sympathy and agitation. He opened his phone and turned the screen toward her. “Is this a good photo of Isabella? Ms. Potts says she took it this afternoon.”

Fresh tears touched her lashes as she stared at the photo of Bella on the teeter-totter. She wore the denim dress Bella had picked out that morning and a pink cardigan. Her dark hair hung straight down with a navy-blue ribbon tied at the top.

“Yes. That’s her.” She crushed her knuckles to her lips, adrenaline pulsing against her skull.

Billy quickly went over the protocol she knew like the back of her hand. “We’ve also put out an Amber Alert and have started questioning witnesses. We’ll begin a search party,” he continued. “She’s been gone less than an hour. There’s still a chance she could be hiding or got lost.”

Sophia glanced at the large park that backed onto a wooded area. Her shoulders trembled as she listened to Billy call over everyone who’d volunteered to search the grounds.

Please, God, don’t take her...

***

Four hours later, Sophia’s hope was all but lost. A deep chill had hardened her bones, but her skin didn’t feel the temperature drop as the sun began to set.

Bella was gone.

Sophia had investigated her apartment with the rookie officer, but it’d been clean. Nothing out of its spot and definitely no Bella.

Then she’d joined the search party combing the woods and the green space. Every so often a volunteer would blow a whistle and paralyzing dread would make vomit hit her palate, but each clue had been a dead end. Either a piece of garbage or something unrelated to Bella.

If heavy shock hadn’t taken over her mind, she’d have been grateful for the fact that several officers had joined the search after their shift. Natalie had stayed too, and had also asked her parents and boyfriend to join. If Bella could see all the people who’d pulled together for her, she’d be overwhelmed with love.

“Sophia!”

She turned toward the booming male voice and watched Bart jog toward her. It’d taken a few hours of searching for her to summon the courage to call him—call it cowardice or just hope.

His blond hair was unkempt, his tie loose and his suit jacket shed.

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