Page 22 of Duplicity

It wasn’t her case, but that didn’t absolve her from caring.Lord, help her. Wherever she is, don’t let her be scared. Protect her heart. Her mind. Her body.

Cat shuddered.We need peace, Lord.For a second, she felt better, but reality seemed stronger than the tiny flicker of faith inside her.

She pulled her thoughts back to the situation, trying to think of it more like a case than a missing person she knew and cared about. “Leanna, how has she seemed lately?”

The mom sniffed again and lifted her head. “What do you mean?”

“Like her mood. Has she seemed happy or stressed about anything?”

Leanna frowned. “She’s still always on her phone. That’s nothing different, but it seemed like something on there was upsetting her. I asked her what was going on, but she told me not to worry about it.”

“Do you think maybe someone was giving her a hard time? Did she have any problems with friends?” The little girl leaning against Cat’s side let out a long breath, as if she had fallen asleep. Cat needed to stretch out her leg but didn’t want to disturb Bridget.

“I don’t know. I should’ve asked her. I should’ve—” Her voice broke.

“You didn’t know this would happen. It isn’t your fault.” She glanced at Lucas. “What about her phone?”

The detective shook his head. “We’re looking for it.”

Cat turned back to Leanna. “What about a laptop? Does Marianna have one?”

“We couldn’t afford to buy one. The one she used at school she gave back at the end of the year.”

“And she’s not enrolled in summer school?” Cat hadn’t seen her there.

Leanna shook her head. “She’s been working a lot, trying to save up.”

“What is she going to do with the money?”

“Get out of here. That’s all she said. Go to college somewhere else.”

Trying to escape the place you grew up was a pretty normal teenage dream. Cat didn’t read anything into that simple desire, though it could absolutely be indicative of a problem Marianna needed to run from.

Who—or what—did she want to escape?

“Where does she work?” Cat hadn’t heard about the job that she must’ve gotten in the past few months, since the last time they talked. Marianna hadn’t been working earlier this year.

“The burger place on Central, past the library.”

“Thanks, Leanna.”

“Are you going to find her?”

Cat couldn’t promise they would. All she could say was, “We’re going to do everything we can.”

Commotion erupted in the hall. A door slammed open, and someone called for a medic. One cop ran toward the door and yelled, “Medic now!”

The cop and two EMTs ran the other way seconds later, heading down the hall. Bridget stirred against her. Cat shifted enough to lay the girl on the couch and tugged a blanket from the back of the couch onto her. Leanna didn’t move, and that blank stare hadn’t left her face.

Cat went into the hall in time to see one of the EMTs carrying a young girl in his arms, wrapped in a huge towel. Nearly gray. Blood soaked the front of the towel. They rushed past her, but the officer stopped in the hall.

“What happened, Sergeant?”

The female cop wasn’t one Cat knew. Older than Cat, with chevrons on her sleeves, the cop had her dark blonde hair pulled back and a shadowed look in her eyes. “Slit her wrists. Got deep on the left side but didn’t cut much on the right. She’d already passed out before I got in there.”

“I’m glad you found her in time.”

The sergeant nodded and went outside.

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