The little girl returned Helen’s stare with the sunken, empty gaze of a drug addict or abuse victim triple her age, causing goose bumps to skitter across Helen’s chest.
She needed to get this child out of the alley. Escort her to the safety of Helen’s car or back inside the museum.
A breeze kicked up, whisking a dead leaf down the alley. The girl jumped and tugged at Helen’s hand.
“It’s okay, baby, I’m here now. I’ll take you somewhere safe and get you something good to eat. How does that sound? A nice big meal, and maybe a cup of hot chocolate or a shake. What do you like? Spaghetti? Pizza? We can have anything at all, my treat.”
At the mention of food, hope lit up the girl’s eyes for one heart-stopping instant, and Helen sucked in a breath. The transformation was unbelievable. Just as quickly, the expression vanished, and the dead-eyed wariness returned. Had someone lied to the girl about food before?
Helen was this close to spitting nails. What kind of monster would tease a precious little angel like that? Starve her half to death? “I promise, I’m not playing a trick. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
The girl began to quiver all over. Her throat moved several times, and her lips parted, and the expression on her little face when she glanced over her shoulder could only be described as pure terror.
Her fear made Helen’s urgency return. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get out of here. You’ll feel so much better once you eat.”
And Helen would feel better once they were out of this creepy alley and back in the open. Hopefully, once Helen removed the girl from this grim spot and tucked her into a booth in her favorite diner, the child would relax a little. There wasn’t much a little good, Southern cooking and a big bowl of peach cobbler couldn’t fix. Once her belly was full again, Helen was sure to coax the story out of her.
As soon as they were locked inside the car, Helen would call Eleanor and let her know who she’d stumbled upon.
But first, she needed to get the girl to move.
Helen tugged on the girl’s hand and tried to pull her into a run, but the girl’s legs wobbled and stumbled after only two steps. Too weak. Probably from hunger.
That left only one option. Helen bent down and scooped the girl up, the same way she’d done years ago with her own children. Her knees creaked and her spine complained, but the girl was light. Too light. Helen clutched the frail body close to her heaving chest and staggered toward the parking lot.
She’d been so wrapped up in the girl that she hadn’t noticed the silver car come to a stop at the exit of the alley until the motor sounded over the beating of her heart.
She was trapped.
Fear clawed at her breast, but Helen Kline did what she did best…pressed forward. There was a foot or so of space between the wall and car. If she hurried, she could slip past and rush to her own vehicle.
She only made it a few steps before a man leapt out, and Helen gasped. She recognized the face from the photo attachment he’d emailed her.
Mr. Ray.
There was no smile on his face now. No apologies for arriving so late for their scheduled appointment, or explanation for how he’d located Helen here, out of sight from the museum foot traffic.
Helen Kline prided herself on being the type of person who wasn’t given to flights of fancy or allowed her imagination to run wild, but the victorious expression on the man’s tanned face was truly the most frightening thing she’d ever seen.
Hurry. Hurry.
Holding the child tight, she rushed to get past him. Three steps, and then her ankle wobbled, twisted. Cursed heels! She’d chosen her fancy, impress-the-wealthy-donor footwear today, not her Cole Haan sneakers.
Frantic, she kicked off the first shoe, then the second, before hugging the girl and gathering her legs to launch into a run.
They only had to get to her car. They could make it. She might need an oxygen tank afterward, but she would get them there.
She lunged forward, but a strong hand grabbed her arm from behind. Terror clawed up her throat. She sucked air into her lungs and opened her mouth to scream, but another hand clamped across it, muffling the sound to a squeak.
No.
Helen Kline twisted, lurched, fought with all her might. As she struggled, she felt a pinch in her upper arm.
No.
She staggered. Craned her head in time to witness the hypodermic needle extruding from her favorite peach blazer.
The man withdrew the needle, and she stumbled away.
Hurry. This was her last chance to get them to safety.
She managed one more step before her knees buckled, and the blue sky ahead tilted in a sickening way.
As her vision blurred, the man she knew as Mr. Ray finally spoke.
“Hello, Mrs. Kline. I am so very pleased to see you.”
27
An undercurrent of urgency electrified the silence in Ellie’s living room, which was broken only by an occasional cough or paper rustling when someone flipped a page. Katarina’s surprise arrival on her doorstep had led to both Ellie and Jillian letting work know they’d be staying home for the day. Neither of them trusted leaving Katarina to her own devices, so instead, they were sprawled out across the apartment, each of them claiming a different area to serve as a temporary workstation.
Thanks to her work on the Burton case, Ellie had access to a treasure trove of adoption documents that would have proven difficult to acquire otherwise. The dining room table doubled as her desk, with all the files on Burton’s illegal adoption victims stretched out before her like an assembly line.
Ellie tugged at the elastic holding back her ponytail to tighten it while frowning at the quick and dirty timeline she’d attempted to form. Her idea was that by arranging the illegal adoptions in chronological
