Page 12 of Hidden Falls

“On it,” Bateman said. “I’ll text you when I have some results.”

“Thanks. Glad to have you pulling this down. I’m sitting outside on the ground, trying to nurse a Wi-Fi connection.”

“That’s all I need to dig up everything you want to know,” Bateman said.

“Good.” Marcella clicked the link he’d sent her via email on the laptop, and within a few minutes he’d taken control of it and was making a duplicate of the contents. “Thanks, Agent Bateman.”

“Just doing my job.” Bateman ended the call.

Marcella glanced around the weedy, unkempt yard. The house was a paint-peeling rental; the cars were older models.

What could have motivated pros to grab Malia? So far, even what she was finding in the girl’s investigation cache wouldn’t explain why a professional kidnapping team would have taken her in broad daylight and whisked her off somewhere.

Lei was holding something back; she just knew it.

Marcella stood up and stretched. She heard the low murmur of voices coming through a nearby window.

Lei, Peter, and Harry could just be going over the same information in more detail, or Lei could be comforting the parents—but maybe there was more going on.

Couldn’t hurt to check.

Marcella moved around the side of the house to a spot of sunshine underneath the living room window and sat down on the grass with the laptop. She still had a lot of scanning and trolling to do to work her way through Malia’s social media and the “hater” letters that the teen sleuth had collected. Might as well get to it and eavesdrop while she was at it.

8

Lei sat down in a low armchair across from Harry and Peter, who had seated themselves on the family’s couch.The window was open, allowing a much-needed breeze to pass through the room. She glanced around at the simple furnishings and a framed painting that decorated the wall. “Nice art,” she said.

“My own work. I paint in my spare time. Helps me with stress,” Peter said.

Lei looked at the scene again, a landscape of Iao Valley. “Seriously. Nice.”

Harry lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out through the open window. She tapped ash into a clay dish shaped by one of their children, judging by the small handprint that formed its depression. “I didn’t like seeing how much response Malia got to her online inquiry asking for drugs.”

“Don’t blame you a bit for that.” Lei blew out a breath. “Let’s talk through your calendar for the week before Malia was taken. The kidnappers were probably casing her activities and routine to time it so perfectly. Maybe we can think of a car or something that might have been parked outside your house, surveilling her.”

Harry looked up. Lei was struck again by the fierce blaze of her light brown eyes; they were almost feral. “I can’t stand the thought of someone tracking her. Targeting her.”

Lei remembered that look, that fierceness. Sixteen years ago, Harry had led Lei to an abandoned copper mine in Mexico where the two of them had freed Lei’s college friend Kelly from a gang of human traffickers.

Lei had done her part in the rescue but hadn’t had the stomach for death that Harry did; Harry had killed all three men. As the women were setting a fire to burn the building and destroy the remains and evidence, they’d heard a wailing cry.

There’d been a baby in the building, too.

Harry had rescued that baby, taken Malia as her own, and never looked back.

“Do you ever wonder about Malia’s birth parents?” Lei hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but the idea needed to be explored.

“Why would we think of them? They abandoned Malia at an orphanage,” Peter said.

Lei locked eyes with Harry. “Don’t you think it’s time he knew the truth?”

“What truth?” Peter’s voice went sharp. “Is there something you’re not telling me, babe?”

Harry dropped her face into her hands again. “It can’t be that.” Her voice was muffled by her fingers. “It can’t be.”

“We need to have every possibility out on the table,” Lei said. “You never legalized her adoption, did you?”

Harry dropped her hands. Lei was treated to the fire of her eyes again. “There was no way to legalize it! There was no one to contact, no way to trace her parents!”

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