wife, whose face looked ashen. “Why? What’s going on?” He hurried up to Kara’s side.
“I’m telling you,” she said, her voice trembling, “she’s not here, and something’s wrong.”
With Kara behind him, Steve went into Lindsay’s room. To his eye, everything looked perfectly normal, but when he turned back to Kara, she was biting at a fingernail, something she only did when she was extremely upset.
“Honey, what’s going on?” Steve asked. “She probably just went over to Dawn's, like she said—”
“I’m telling you,” Kara cut in, “something’s wrong.” She opened the laundry hamper and pulled out shorts and a T-shirt. “Look! These are what she wore to practice today.”
Steve shrugged. “So she came home — it’s obvious she came home. She turned on the TV and every light in the house. And there’s her cell phone.”
“So where is she?” Kara demanded. “If she came home, where is she?”
“Call Dawn,” Steve sighed, wishing now he’d let her do it from the car. “That’s where she’s got to be.”
They went back to the kitchen, where Kara pulled the address book from the drawer. But even as she looked for the number, she knew Lindsay wasn’t at Dawn's.
No, something had happened.
Something bad.
And every second they delayed in calling the police was only going to worsen whatever danger Lindsay was in. Now Kara was furious at herself for having ignored Lindsay’s fears about coming home after the open house.
As she dialed Dawn’s number, Steve moved quickly through the house, intending to check the doors and windows, more to put Kara’s mind at ease than because he expected to find anything amiss.
And nothing was.
All the doors and windows were locked.
Going back to the kitchen, he turned on the patio lights and looked out into the yard.
No Lindsay, but nothing else, either.
Everything was perfectly normal.
“She’s not at Dawn's,” Kara said as she hung up. “Phyllis said that Dawn told her Lindsay was upset after practice today, but that she came home because Dawn was going to her father’s house.”
“Upset about what?” Steve asked. He picked up his drink, started to take a sip, then thought better of it. After they found out exactly where Lindsay was, there’d be plenty of time for a drink.
For him, and for Kara, too.
“Upset about the move, of course,” Kara said as she picked up the phone again. “And probably about coming home alone after an open house.” She looked away from Steve as someone answered at Dawn’s father’s house. “This is Kara Marshall. May I speak with Dawn, please?” She talked for a moment, then hung up and faced Steve again. “She was here. Dawn talked to her, but only for a minute.” Kara’s voice began to rise. “But she did come home, and now she’s not here! I’m telling you, something’s wrong!”
“Settle down,” Steve said. “Let’s reason this out.”
“We need to call the police,” Kara said, reaching for the phone once more. “Something has happened.”
“Nothing has happened,” Steve said, trying to stop her hand before she could pick up the receiver.
Kara pulled her hand away. “She never leaves the house without letting us know where she’s going. Never! She’d leave a note or a message on the machine—”
Steve shook his head. “Maybe she left in a hurry — she left all the lights on, the television on. Maybe one of her friends came by and she took off with them.”
Kara nodded and took a deep breath, telling herself that what he said could be true. She stood, opened the address book again, and began to call Lindsay’s friends. Steve watched her, feeling helpless and almost more worried about Kara than Lindsay, and already rehearsing the speech Lindsay would get when she finally showed up.
Kara might ground her for the rest of her life.
But by the sixth call that yielded nothing, Kara was crying, and now Steve, too, was beginning to worry.
“I knew it,” Kara said, struggling against a sob that was threatening to strangle her. “I knew it at the restaurant, Steve. I had a feeling something was wrong.” She glanced around, shivering though there wasn’t the slightest chill in the room. “Someone was in the house, Steve. We should have listened to her. Somebody has her.” Her voice rose. “
“Now just take it easy,” Steve began. “Let’s—”
“No!” She grabbed Steve’s wrists. “Will you listen to me?” Suddenly, Kara was rigid with a rage born out of the terror that had seized her. “Someone has her! Someone has been in here!
“I’m not going to call the police,” Steve insisted, making one last attempt to reason with her. “What are they going to do? She’s not even missing — she’s just not home. And it’s barely even ten-thirty!”
“Then
Steve tried to take the phone from her hand. “I’ll do it.”
Kara steeled herself and refused to give it up. “No,” she said. “You don’t believe anything’s wrong, so you won’t be able to make them understand.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse, focused her mind, and dialed 911.
Sergeant Andrew Grant sat on the Marshalls’ sofa, a clipboard on his knee. His partner, younger and even bigger than Grant, sat next to him. Kara wasn’t sure if it was their no-nonsense, just-the-facts-ma'am attitude or their navy blue uniforms, handcuffs, and guns that had imbued the house more with an aura of danger than of comfort from the moment they walked in. Nor had she taken any comfort from their search, which hadn’t taken more than fifteen minutes, both inside and out.
Then, for fifteen more minutes, Steve — all his lawyerly training coming into play at the moment the officers arrived — had made Grant read every note he made out loud, as if afraid that the officer, if left to his own devices, might skew his report to make Lindsay herself look like a criminal. Now Steve was perched on the arm of Kara’s chair, one arm around her, the other holding one of her hands while the fingers of her other hand twisted a damp handkerchief into a shapeless wad. Every one of her nerves felt as raw as those in her nervously working fingers, and she thought the muted but constant squawk from the officers’ radios might very well elicit a scream of frustration and annoyance from her before their questioning was over.
Seemingly oblivious of Kara’s state of mind, Sergeant Grant glanced over his notes, then shifted his attention back to her. “Does Lindsay have a boyfriend?”
“No,” Steve said before Kara could reply.
Grant’s brow arched skeptically. “She’s a cheerleader and she’s not dating anybody?”
Kara shook her head.
“Could she be dating someone you don’t know about?” Grant pressed.
“No,” Steve said, forcefully enough that Grant’s partner — whose name Kara couldn’t remember — recoiled slightly. “Lindsay’s not the kind of girl who keeps secrets from her parents.” Then, as if to underscore his words: “She’s not the kind who has to.”
“Bad breakup with an old boyfriend?” Grant went on, utterly unfazed by Steve’s words. “Maybe dumped someone recently, or vice versa?”
Kara shook her head, but even as she denied the suggestion implicit in the policeman’s question, she realized that she didn’t know for certain. Lindsay never talked about boys; was it possible she could have a boyfriend, or an ex-boyfriend, whom she knew nothing about?
“Internet chat? Does she engage in a lot of that?”
Kara shrugged helplessly, realizing that she had no idea whether Lindsay chatted on the Internet or not, at least with anybody but Dawn D'Angelo, with whom she seemed always to be exchanging instant messages. “I guess I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “She spends a lot of time on the computer, but she gets straight A's, so I’ve always assumed she was doing her homework.”
“Straight A's?” Sergeant Grant said. “That’s a good sign — not consistent with drug use.”
As Grant made a note, Kara’s nervousness morphed into indignation. “Drug use?” she began. “Lindsay would
