That was where Bethany should be right now. On a beach somewhere, kicking up sand and building castles with rock walls and seaweed moats. Not in the hands of a sick man who wanted to hurt her to get even with her mother.
His hands tightened around the bottle. He should be out there, working with the Amber Alert response team to track her down, instead of sitting on his ass in offices all day, asking endless rounds of questions.
The Fuji bottle grew taut beneath his grip, so Clay set it on the floor before the top popped and sprayed poor Dr. Eddington in the face.
Check your ego, Lockwood. Plenty of good agents are out searching for Bethany. It’s not like you have any special skills they lack when it comes to finding lost children.
If he did, he would have found Caraleigh years ago.
An invisible knife twisted between Clay’s ribs. Bethany might have legions of LEOs out hunting her down, but his sister had no one.
No one but him.
His gaze returned to the painting. The vivid sky reminded Clay of the sunset at the fair that night. He remembered that as well as the tinny music blaring from the rides. The flashing, colorful lights, and the sugary aroma of cotton candy and churros.
He and Caraleigh had been having a great time until he bumped into his longtime crush near the Ferris wheel. After that, Clay only had eyes for Jana. Or to be more precise, he’d only had eyes for the way Jana’s tight black jeans had hugged her legs and ass.
Caraleigh had tried to regain his attention, even tugged on his arm to drag him over to the games. Clay had trotted along, but only because he’d hoped to show off for Jana. His sister had squealed when he’d won the stuffed pig and thanked him profusely, and what had Clay done? He’d shoved the toy into her hands and prayed she’d shut up so that he could concentrate on getting to second base with Jana.
That was the last time he ever saw Caraleigh.
Late at night, when he tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep, Clay would rewrite the scene and change the ending. His favorite version was the one where he dropped the pig into Caraleigh’s hands, hugged her tight, then turned to Jana with a regretful smile and said, “I’m sorry, but this is brother and sister time. Why don’t we hang out next weekend instead?”
In this fantasy, he and Caraleigh spent the next two hours together playing games and stuffing their faces with pretzels and funnel cakes before meeting up with their parents and returning home. Later, his sister fell asleep safe in her own bed with her arm curled around the stuffed pig.
“Agent Lockwood?”
Clay blinked at the woman seated behind the desk. “Sorry, I was filtering through some of the timeline.”
Dr. Eddington adjusted her glasses and sighed. “I was saying that regardless of how this new information looks on the surface, I’d recommend proceeding with caution. As we discussed before, Lucas has experienced a great deal of trauma in his life, especially around the time period precipitating his escape to the cabin. His memories of living with the girl you suspect to be your missing sister might not be real.”
Her gaze softened when her focus shifted to the young man hunched in the blue chair closest to the window.
“She was real. She lived with me.” Lucas spoke in a flat, slightly stiff cadence that Clay attributed to his spectrum disorder.
He studied the younger man’s body language. Nothing in his actions gave Clay any reason to believe Lucas was lying, but the other man didn’t exactly inspire confidence, either. He didn’t bother to lift his head, just sat there, examining his own fingers as they tugged at the yellow shirt.
Clay rubbed his palms on his pants and warred with the voice in his head. Was Dr. Eddington right? Was Clay allowing hope to tarnish his judgment?
He couldn’t deny that his heart had all but burst with fresh hope a week ago, when Lucas first identified a photo of Caraleigh as the girl he’d once lived with in the woods. The entire incident had been a stroke of luck. When Ellie had shown Lucas the picture, she hadn’t even realized that the girl was Clay’s little sister, especially since her name had been listed incorrectly. The photo had been one of many, pulled from the stack of cold case files on Ellie’s desk.
Coincidence?
Fate?
Plain good luck?
Clay didn’t care what the sequence of events could be attributed to, but he’d left floating on air. He hated to admit it, but every day since, a little more doubt crept into his heart.
What if the link between Caraleigh and Lucas Harrison seemed too good to be true because it was just that? A fictional story created by an autistic boy who’d needed a friend while fending for himself in the wild? “How would he identify a photo of Caraleigh if she was only a trauma-induced fantasy?”
Dr. Eddington finished sipping water and set the bottle aside. “It’s possible that Lucas saw Caraleigh once. In person or perhaps on a missing child flyer or on a news alert somewhere.”
“I don’t watch the news.” Lucas directed the statement to his hands. His leg kicked out once before he flinched and tucked both feet beneath the chair.
“Right, but maybe someone you lived with had the TV tuned to a news station when you were younger, and you caught a glimpse of Caraleigh then.” The doctor studied the top of Lucas’s head with a furrowed brow. “You might not even remember, consciously, but your subconscious could have stored that visual information and used it years later to create a relationship with an imaginary
