Page 18 of We Are All Guilty Here

“Okay.”

Emmy studied her father’s profile. Hisokayshad several layers. Sometimes they could be taken at face value as an agreement,sometimes they were meant to acknowledge that words had been spoken and they’d been heard, but that was the extent of it. They both knew Jonah spent most of his days either drinking or getting high. They both chose not to talk about it.

“Dad, there’s a big difference between a couple of joints and two eight balls and a dime of Molly.” Emmy tried to take the petulance out of her tone. “The hard drugs change things. Between the lockbox and what I found in the attic, Cheyenne was sitting on nearly 16,000 bucks in cash and 1,000 more in drugs. That’s a significant amount of business.”

“What’s Jack’s involvement?”

“Was he dealing or were they holding for him?” Emmy stared at the blur of the road as she considered the possibilities. “His father is a doctor, but I don’t see Dr. Carl losing track of his prescription pads. And the drugs we found aren’t legal pharmaceuticals. If I’m a drug dealer, I might get Cheyenne to hold my stash, but I wouldn’t trust her to keep that much money. Plus, if he abducted the girls in order to get the cash back, the cash would be gone. According to the neighbors, the Bakers’ house has been empty since three thirty at least.”

“Take the drugs out of it.”

“It doesn’t change anything. Jack would have better opportunities to abduct the girls. He could tell them to swing by his house. But why would he take them in the first place? Where would he hold them? Why take them both at the same time? This feels too calculated and controlled for a sixteen-year-old boy to pull off.”

Gerald asked, “What are the other scenarios?”

Emmy tried to think of how the drugs could tie into the disappearance of the two girls. “The biker gangs out of Macon run coke and oxy. The militia runs—”

“Emmy Lou,” he said, his tone not exactly making fun of her, but not exactlynotnot making fun of her. The humbling part was that he was right. Whoever had supplied Cheyenne with the drugs was at least ten rungs below the organization that trafficked them into the state.

“They’re fifteen-year-old girls,” Emmy said. “They can’t drive. Can’t hang out at bars. Can’t really leave the house withoutpermission. Everywhere they go is on their bikes, so that limits their world even more. They’re not following politics or the news. Their entire lives are whatever happens at school and whatever happens at the outlet mall. And even then, it’s all focused through the narrow lens of their own existence.”

“So?”

“He probably met them at the outlet mall.” Emmy silently flipped through the carousel of small-time drug dealers in the county. Most of them were middle-aged men with receding hairlines who were barely scraping by. “I mean, even the street-level dealers have a moral compass. I could see them dealing to older kids, but I don’t see any of them snatching up two girls, no matter what they did.”

“Focus on Madison,” Gerald said.

Emmy felt her throat tighten. Talking in theoreticals had given her some distance, but now she was reminded that at the heart of everything were two terrified, endangered children. They were not hardened drug dealers or streetwise hustlers. They were Felix and Ruth Baker’s oldest daughter. They were Paul and Hannah’s baby girl.

“Sixteen grand is a lot for a teenager to hold onto,” Emmy said. “It takes an enormous amount of discipline to not blow it on clothes and make-up. They were saving up for something important. Probably to leave town.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what you want to do when you’re a teenager. Everybody treats you like you’re a kid but you think you’re an adult. Your parents are stupid. School is a waste of time. It’s boring hanging out every day at the outlet mall. You see the same people over and over again. Hear the same stories.” Emmy paused, trying to think back to being stuck in that hellish limbo. “The Bakers claim Madison is the one who corrupted Cheyenne. Hannah and Paul say that Cheyenne is the bad seed. I think it’s more likely that they egged each other on. Cheyenne is from out of town. She’s exciting and flashy. Madison soaks up the drama and emotion like a sponge. In order to keep Madison’s attention, Cheyenne has to keep taking bigger and bigger risks. If I’m a skeevy drug dealer, Cheyenne is the one I approach.”

Gerald said, “Paul and Hannah are North Falls people.”

Emmy knew what he meant. There were a lot of assumptions baked into the phraseNorth Falls people. The town’s real estate market was tight and restrictive. The citizens, particularly the women, tended to be tough as nails and long-lived. Generally, if you owned a house within the city limits, it was because your grandmother had passed it on to you, and her grandmother had passed it on to her. People in the city had more money, more education, more political reach, and more resources. In other words, if you were doing something covert or illegal, you would stay as far away from North Falls people as possible.

And you would especially want to avoid their privileged, spoiled children.

“The kidnapper probably watched them before he decided to make his move.” Emmy’s stomach twisted into a knot as she considered the possibilities. “Maybe he only sold weed to them in the beginning. Then he talked to them a bit. Then he figured out that Cheyenne was the leader, so he chose her.”

“Okay,” Gerald said. “What’s his angle?”

“Sex.” She felt a tinge of heat in her cheeks. “Hannah and I talked about this when Madison turned thirteen. Suddenly, all these creepy adult men came out of the woodwork. We both remember it happening to us around that age, too. What you wear, how you walk, how you talk, how you breathe—there’s always a skeevy older guy who’s paying attention, noting your vulnerabilities, flattering you, flirting with you, because he’s trying to groom you.”

“For sex?”

“Sure, but also for power, control, manipulation. Small men can’t handle grown women. They go after girls because most girls are pliable and desperate for outside approval. At that age, you’ll do almost anything for attention, even if it feels bad and you know it’s wrong.”

Emmy shrugged when Gerald looked at her, because it really was that simple.

He asked, “They wouldn’t tell their parents?”

“Parents get mad about the wrong things. What were you doing talking to him? Why were you hanging out there? Whydidn’t you walk away? What were you wearing? Why did you lead him on?”

“Okay.” He cut the steering wheel into a sharp turn. “Explain the drugs.”

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