It was an amazing night. Vanessa had never really been the kind who enjoyed carnivals like this. They always felt so dirty, as though anything she touched would make her sticky. And yet she was absolutely loving every minute of it. Not the rides or the curiosities. Just being with her husband and her daughter, doing something outside of the normal routine into which they seemed to have settled. They didn't have to talk about how the recession was slowly killing Warren's practice or about how Medicaid disbursement fell by nearly ten percent annually or about how the rising cost of private health insurance had become so exorbitant that fewer and fewer people were able to afford it. They were able to relax and enjoy the moment, each other's company, and the excitement positively radiating from Emma, who scampered ahead of them through the crowd, dodging legs and whipping her head from side to side to absorb everything there was to see. Her new dress was already dirty and her new shoes were covered with Lord only knew what.
She had never looked happier.
'This was a wonderful idea,' Vanessa said. 'Thank you for doing this.'
'Nothing but the best for my ladies,' Warren said. He hugged her around the shoulders as they walked. 'Besides, you know I've never been able to resist the opportunity to lay siege to my arteries with a full frontal assault of fried food. I take it as a kind of personal challenge.'
'Don't even joke about that. I don't know what I'd do if you ever left me.'
'You couldn't get rid of me if you tried.' He kissed her on the top of the head and pulled her closer. 'Although there are much worse ways to go than death by corndog.'
She pinched the skin above his hip and gave it a solid twist.
'Ow!' He goosed her ribs in retaliation. 'I was just kidding, you know. Sheesh.'
'You're just lucky I didn't go after my first choice of targets.'
'Ouch. I think that would fall under the category of cruel and unusual...'
His words trailed off, leaving the clamor of hundreds of voices, all vying to be heard. He stopped and the crowd channeled around them.
'What?' she asked, but she already knew. She could feel the tension in his arms, in the way his posture stiffened. It raced through her like an electrical current. Bodies shoved past them from both directions. Faces flashed past, familiar and unfamiliar alike, stained by the winking lights, eyes recessed in shadow. Someone clipped her side in an effort to squeeze past and nearly sent her sprawling.
'Where's Emma?' she whispered.
Warren stood on his toes in an attempt to see over the restrained bedlam.
'She was just here,' he said. He released her shoulders and turned a slow circle. 'She was right in front of us.'
'Emma!' Vanessa called.
'She can't have gone very far.' The note of panic in his voice only served to amplify her own. 'I'll go this way. You check over there.'
He ducked away from her through the crowd toward the ring toss. She turned her back on him and shoved in the direction of a mobile home with a plywood facade painted with a two-headed goat and a mummified dwarf.
'Emma!' she screamed. Her eyes darted left and right, scanning faster than her brain could rationalize. People became blurs. She was bumped and jostled from all sides at once. 'Emma!'
She watched for a fleeting glimpse of her daughter's black- and indigo-striped felt dress, of the red bows in her hair, of her chubby cheeks.
Nothing.
'Emma!'
She grabbed the nearest man without looking at his face.
'Have you seen my daughter? She has long dark hair and a---'
The man jerked his arm out of her grasp and rushed away from her.
'Emma!'
She turned and ran back to where she had left her husband. He met her halfway. She could tell by his expression that he hadn't found Emma either.
'Stay right here,' he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking directly into her eyes. 'This was the last place we saw her. She's a smart girl. Once she realizes we've been separated, she'll come back here. In the meantime, call your brother and let him know what happened. I'll keep looking. I have my cell phone. If I find her first, I'll call you immediately. And you do the same.'
He tipped up her chin and wiped away her tears with his thumbs.
'We'll find her,' he said more softly. 'You believe me, right?'
She could only nod her head. Her heart was beating so hard and she was shaking so badly that she couldn't formulate a reply.
'We
And then he was gone.
'Slow down,' Trey said. He had to park the cruiser and press his free hand over his opposite ear to glean his sister's voice from the background noise. 'Start again. From the beginning. I can't understand you. Are you crying?'
He rolled up his window so the only sounds were the purr of the engine and the whoosh of the air conditioner.
'Calm down, Vanessa. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.'
His sister explained everything that had transpired up to that point. Consciously, he was sure she was overreacting, and had she been anyone else, he would have told her so. Emma had been out of her sight for five minutes at the most. She was a bright kid and would surely realize soon enough that she couldn't find her parents and would work her way back to where she had seen them last. Warren was right on the mark with his plan. It was exactly what he would have told them to do. And yet still he had a sinking sensation in his gut.
Perhaps it was the fear in his sister's voice, or maybe just the fact that it was his niece who was lost somewhere in the seething crowd, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was desperately wrong. He knew he was being irrational, that children wandered away from their parents' side all the time in places like this, where everything was new and exciting and promised the kind of fun they only envisioned in their dreams, and that they always returned. A stranger would find them crying and help them locate their parents, or someone would recognize them and stay with them until their terrified parents tracked them down. Jefferson was a small community. That was one of the things he liked most about it. Maybe everyone didn't know each other per se, but they were all bound to each other in a direct way.
'Listen to me, Vanessa,' he said. 'Stay right where you are. I'll check in with you again in five minutes. If you find her before I call you back, then you call me. If you haven't, then I'll contact the sheriff and the other deputies and we'll canvass the whole carnival. But trust me, sis...she'll be right there with you again in a matter of minutes. I'll bet she probably just saw something she'd never seen before and got distracted.'
This seemed to pacify her to some degree, but he could still hear the tears in her voice.
At least he was the one charged with the security of the parking lot. There were all kinds of petty little things that could happen right under his nose, but sneaking past him with his own niece definitely wasn't one of them. Emma was down in that carnival somewhere. There was no doubt about it.
But still, something felt...wrong.
The muscles in his lower back were clenched. His grip on the wheel was too tight. And the tingling sensation in his gut had spread to his groin.
Just five more minutes, he told himself, and if Emma didn't turn up by then, he would take matters into his own hands.
But he also knew, far too well, that an awful lot could happen in five minutes.
Warren slalomed through the shifting maze of humanity, shouting his daughter's name. Everyone he passed looked exactly the same, their features washed out by the blinking lights. He shoved people aside, his ears deafened to their shouts and curses. Every child resembled Emma until he was right on top of them. He had never
