He had made plans to see Hailey this evening—a rare midweek treat because they were both so busy the last few days—and he thought it was Hailey calling with a possible last-minute change in plans.
“Hi, honey,” Dillon said, mechanically swiping open his phone while still looking over the restaurant’s layout.
The sharp voice on the other end of the call took him completely by surprise. Hearing it, Dillon nearly dropped his phone.
“Don’t you honey me, damn it!” the woman shouted.
“Maura?” It wasn’t really a question. Her voice, filled with anger, drilled itself into his head.
Why was she calling him out of the blue like this? And what on earth could he have possibly done to upset her so much?
“Of course it’s me!” Maura snapped, her voice shrill. “Don’t act like you didn’t expect to hear from me.”
“I didn’t,” he told her honestly. “Why are you calling?” he asked, a little frustrated by her tone.
“Like you don’t know,” she accused.
Dillon sighed. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to call. “Maura, I don’t have time for games today. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” she asked in a mocking voice. “Does one of those things on your plate include picking up Julie from the airport?” Maura’s voice rose as she shouted at him.
“What are you talking about?” he asked when he was able to get a word in edgewise.
“Don’t play dumb, Dillon. You know exactly what I’m talking about!” Practically beside herself, Maura was almost screeching at this point.
They were going around in circles, Dillon thought wearily. It was something he had learned that Maura had quite an aptitude for.
“Why don’t you pretend I don’t,” he told her.
She didn’t seem to hear him. “You’re responsible for this!” she accused. “Filling Julie’s head with a bunch of nonsense, turning her against Bill!” she cried, referring to her husband, Julie’s stepfather.
Dillon was struggling to piece things together from the bits of information he was able to glean from her ranting. Why would Maura even think that? “You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“Right, because you’re such an honorable man,” the woman on the other end mocked.
Dillon thought that she sounded as if she was growing more and more angry. But beneath the anger, he detected a ripple of fear. Had something happened to Julie?
He needed to cut through all this angry rhetoric so he could find out just why Maura was calling and hurling these accusations at him.
“Maura, you’re not making any sense. Now you start telling me what this is all about,” he told her.
And then, to Dillon’s surprise, the woman on the other end broke down and started to cry. “Julie. It’s about Julie,” she sobbed.
Fear was suddenly twisting a knife in his gut, carving him up. Maura sounded as if she was falling apart. Maura never fell apart. She prided herself on that. Something awful had to have happened to their daughter.
He struggled to remain calm. To sound calm. “What about Julie?” he asked, even as his breath was backing up in his throat.
“She’s run away from home!”
“Run away?” he repeated. That didn’t make any sense to him. Julie was far too stable to do something like that. “Are you sure? Maybe she’s just at one of her friends’ houses.”
“Of course I’m sure!” Maura shouted at him. “Don’t you think I’ve already called all of her friends? She’s not there. She’s not anywhere,” Maura sobbed helplessly. “She’s run away, I tell you! To see you,” she accused.
Maura’s mind was conjuring things up now, he thought. He did his best to reason with her and calm her down. “Maura, you’re in Florida. I’m halfway across the country in Texas. I really don’t think that—”
“She left me a note,” Maura cried, cutting in. “She said that since I wouldn’t let you come to see her, she was going to go to see you and that I couldn’t do anything to stop her!” She was sobbing again. “This is all your fault!” she accused again.
Stunned, Dillon’s mind dragged up half a dozen scenarios all involving runaways, none of them good. He needed to find her, he thought, trying not to panic. “Did you call the police?”
“I didn’t,” she bit off. “I called you. But if you don’t bring Julie back the second you find her, I will call them and tell them that you kidnapped my daughter! See if you can talk your way out of that!”
“Maura, calm down!” Dillon said loudly, hoping to get some order into the discussion. “I didn’t kidnap Julie. I don’t have her,” he said emphatically. “But I will find her,” he promised. Taking a breath, he tried to think. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“This morning—no, last night,” she realized. “I had an early meeting with my boss this morning, so I left before she went to school. I didn’t see her.”
“You left her alone?” he asked incredulously.
“No, of course not. Bill was still home—and don’t try to turn things around to blame me! You’re the guilty one here!” she cried.
Trying to make Maura see things from his side was frustrating, but she was right—he needed to find Julie before something happened to her. So Dillon continued asking Maura questions, hoping he could get to the bottom of this and figure out if Julie really had run away from home to see him. And somehow, at least for old times sake, he needed to find a way to help Maura calm down.
Chapter Seventeen
He was late, Hailey thought.
She had taken part of the day off because Dillon had told her he wanted to see her. But he was already over an hour late and she was getting antsy. There was no sign of him.
Where was he?
She had reached for her
