Page 98 of Silver Sanctuary
“Lacy—”
“No!” Nash wrapped his hands around her arms. Her eyes never moved off the center of his chest. “Lacy. Look at me. Look. At. Me.”
“I can’t.”
One hand lifted off her arm, his thumb tipping her chin up so her eyes were forced to meet his. “We are not doing this right now. We are not giving up hope after the first hiccup. She is going to be back in our arms. She will be okay.”
“But it isn’t my mom. We don’t know… And I thought it was the worst possible outcome for it to be her. But not knowing is so much worse. Not knowing… and not having anything to go on…”
“Statistically speaking, nearly eighty percent of children are found within the first few hours, Lacy,” Colt’s voice cut through the panic.
“It’s been more than that now.”
“There’s still a very good chance that we will find her sometime before tomorrow. Or even in the coming days. There are tips coming in to dispatch and we’re investigating every one,” Hank said.
“But she wasn’t taken by family. I read that her chances are less if?—”
“What do you mean you read?” Nash asked.
“I’m sorry. I had to know. I tried to look on my phone but I didn’t understand. It said the odds were so much better if she was taken by family. That’s what I was holding out hope for. But if my mom doesn’t have her… if she wasn’t with her… then who has my baby?”
“It’s true that the odds of recovery are slightly better if a relative of the child is involved in the abduction, but we don’t need to be getting into the specifics,” Hank said. “Let’sfocus on hope. We are going to find her. Less than two percent of missing children’s cases last longer than a few days.”
“But how many of those children are returned unharmed?”
“Stop! Please!” Nash begged, but it wasn’t as loud as the blood pounding in her head.
“No. I want to know—I need to know. Please, someone answer me. Please. I’m begging here.”
He nodded, but before he could speak, Sloane cleared her throat.
“I know it feels like something you can hold onto, but the number is not important. Deputy Ford could tell you that twelve percent of children remain unharmed after twenty-four hours or longer following their abduction and it just wouldn’t matter because each case is its own entity. I know it might feel impossible, and it’s probably beyond frustrating to hear everyone tell you it over and over again, but it really is best to just think about her coming back. Visualize that. Hold on to that hope. Right now, there is nothing to suggest a different outcome.”
Lacy’s chest seized. She couldn’t breathe. Her hand reached out and latched on to Nash.
“We’re going to find her. We’re going to find her and we’re going to bring her home.”
“I’m sorry.” She turned into his chest, letting the pressure of his hug ground her. “I made a scene. I’m losing my mind and that’s not helpful. I’m not being helpful. What can I do? What else can I be doing?”
A kiss landed on the top of her head and everyone moved away, low voices now adding a steady hum to the room around them. “Nothing, baby. It’s horrible, the waiting. It’s suffocating—I feel it too. But you’ve given all the information you know. We just have to wait.”
Suffocating. That’s exactly how she felt.There was no use being in the office, thinking every time a phone rang, every time one of the guys stood up and moved around, that there would be news for her. “I can’t be here. I can’t… I just need….”
“Let’s go outside for a minute.”
“No.” She pushed away from Nash. “I need space. I n-need to be alone. Please. Just leave me alone.”
Twenty-Nine
Nash paced up and down the table in the conference room.
“There’s something we’re fucking missing. Tracker, you find anything weird in those files?”
Gage had been sifting through every public arrest record and warrant he could get his hands on from Silver Springs and the surrounding towns, as far back as the digitized records would allow him.
“Nothing yet. But something will turn up.”
“It’s not enough!” Nash growled, his fist slamming down on the table. “We’re not seeing something. She’s fucking gone and it’s just like before.”
