Page 87 of Tempting as Sin
“Wait. No,” Lily said. “I mean—all right, now I know how everybody found out. Although honestly, it could have been anybody who noticed. There aren’t actually that many men in the world that gorgeous, and his picture is everywhere. I’m glad you told me, though. I was thinking it was Hailey. It’s been worrying me, because I thought we were friends.”
“Ouch,” Maggie said.
“No,” Lily said. “I meant Hailey and me, and shedidknow Rafe was keeping it quiet. Never mind. Stuff happens, it’s done now, and I didn’t ask you not to talk about him.”
“Too generous,” Maggie said, “but all right. Phew. Thanks. I’ve known I needed to call you, and, well…I just haven’t.”
“If you feel bad,” Lily said, “you can help me. Please. That’s why I called. I need a favor. Alawyerfavor.”
Maggie exhaled. “OK. Shoot. I hope it’s something I can do, ethically.”
“I can’t see why not. I need information about a child who might have been put into the…the child protection system last night. I can’t remember what it’s called. Her guardian is in the hospital, and nobody seems to know what happened to the girl.”
“Child and Family Services,” Maggie said. “Right. Here’s what I can do. I’ll call a family law attorney I know, and see if she can hook you up with somebody. How urgent is this?”
“It’s right now,” Lily said. “She’s out there, and I don’t know where.”
Fifteen minutes and a cup of cold coffee later, she was on the phone with Audrey Featherstone, the district administrator for the agency. “No,” Audrey said. “She’s in the system, but with her grandmother as her guardian. Last night? Nothing. Are you sure she isn’t with family? A friend?”
“There is no family,” Lily said. “And what she has, as far as I know, is a dog. Well, I have the dog. She loves that dog more than anything, and she comes to get him every day. She didn’t come this morning, she didn’t go to the hospital with her grandmother, and she’s not at home.”
“Right,” Audrey said. “I’m making a note. We’ll start looking.”
“Thanks. Will you let me know? I’d be happy to take her until her grandmother’s able to.” If her grandmotherwereable. The anxiety was there, squeezing her chest again. What if Ruby didn’t make it? Intensive care didn’t sound good. What would happen to Bailey then? Nothing good. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t have come to me.”
“Mm,” Audrey said. “Give me your address. I’ll make a note.”
Lily gave it and hung up, and Rafe said, “So. No joy.”
“No.” Lily got up from the table and picked up their paper cups. “At least we know she isn’t in the hospital herself.”Or worse.She thought about Bailey’s bike, and about a car, and thrust the image away. They’d know that, too, surely. It would be in the system, even if they didn’t know who Bailey was. It was a small town, and an accident involving a child would be big news.
Missing,her mind tried to say, and she shoved that back, too, and said, “I think what we do now is—we take a look ourselves. If they don’t have her? I’d sure like to find her.”
Rafe was an optimistic fella. He always had been. That was why, before they did anything else, he drove back by Ruby’s place again and walked right in that back door with Lily, called Martin at the shop to check whether Bailey had turned up there, and finally drove up to Lily’s again and got out, ignoring the stubborn bloke who’d recorded them doing all of it in what had to be the most boring set of snaps ever taken.
Bailey wasn’t at her grandma’s. She wasn’t in the cottage, she wasn’t in the shed with the goats, and she hadn’t been by the shop.
“Why wouldn’t she have come here?” Lily asked. She was standing next to the car up at the house, her arms wrapped around her middle, and wearing sunglasses, as she had been all day. Rafe could see the exhaustion and anxiety as plainly, though, as if she’d screamed it. “Or at least the shop? If she’d wanted to hide, why wouldn’t she have hidden here? Surely she’d have come to me. I didn’t ask about accidents. I think I need to ask now. Specifically.”
Rafe ushered Chuck into the back of the car. If you were looking for somebody, you used a dog. Stood to reason. “Wait a wee while before you go there,” he said. “Let’s check first. If we still can’t find her, we won’t bother with a social worker. We’ll go to the police.”
As a tracker, Chuck proved to be rubbish. At the park, he wagged his tail furiously at sight of the ducks, tried to climb up into the little house on the play structure, and lunged at a Frisbee being tossed across the grass. “See?” Rafe told Lily. “Chuck says there’s nothing to worry about.”
Lily was already heading back to the car. “Last place I can think of,” she said. “After that, you’re right. It’s got to be the police.”
Rafe shut his mind on the image that kept wanting to creep in, of a hand opening a car door from inside, a male voice calling out, “Need a ride?” Of somebody putting Bailey’s bike in the boot of his car, because they hadn’t found that, either. Of Bailey, in her newly feminine clothes, gawky and pretty as a fawn, trying to get to Kalispell and her grandmother, once she’d had time to think. Of Bailey on the streets in the middle of the night.
She was scared of men. She was more than wary. She wouldn’t, and if somebody tried to grab her, she’d put up a fight. He told himself that, and then he told himself again.
They should have gone to the police already. Every minute counted. She was eight.
No blue bike at the library, either. “I’ll go in anyway,” Lily said, unbuckling her seat belt. “And check if anybody’s seen her. Just in case. And that’s it. We need the cops.”
No Bailey in the front room. Rafe told himself he hadn’t expected her. Lily moved ahead of him into the back, the children’s section, her heels striking sharp as alarm on the wooden floor.
No Bailey. Some mothers browsing with their kids, a group of girls in a corner, their heads together, and an Asian girl in a beanbag chair.
Wait.A shabby blue backpack between that chair and its neighbor, with a line of silver duct tape across it. And a lumpy white pillowcase, stuffed with something that wasn’t a pillow, stained with dirt.
