Kisscut

other day.'

Sara studied her mother, trying to figure out what she was getting at.

'I just don't want you to get hurt,' Cathy finally said. 'I don't want to see you get close to this girl, then have her father take her away.'

Sara busied herself arranging her briefcase. Jeffrey had said the same thing to her the other night.

'You know,' Cathy began, 'you could always adopt a child.'

Sara felt a tight smile on her face. She took off her glasses and set them on the table. 'I, uh…' She stopped, giving a humorless laugh. It was so much more complicated than that.

Cathy waited for Sara to speak.

'I really don't want to talk about that right now. Mama.'

Cathy reached over and took Sara's hands in hers. 'I'm here when you want to.'

'I know.'

Tessa walked back into the room and popped Sara on the back of the head, muttering, 'Bitch.'

Sara laughed, and Tessa stuck out her tongue.

Cathy raised an eyebrow as she stood from the table, but did not comment. She asked Tessa, 'You feeling okay, baby?'

'Yes, Mama,' Tessa answered, but she did not look it. Sara felt a flash of guilt for showing her the photograph.

'You sure?' Sara asked.

'Oh, I'm just peachy,' Tessa snapped back. 'My hair is oily, my skin feels scritchy, my pants are too tight.' She stopped on this, tugging at the legs of her shorts. 'They keep crawling up my crotch.'

'Nature abhors a vacuum,' Sara told her, laughing.

'Sara,' Cathy warned, but she was laughing as she walked back into the kitchen.

Tessa sat down again, taking one of the deviled eggs. 'Where's Jeffrey? He's half an hour late.'

'I don't know,' Sara said, watching her sister suck down the egg. 'I thought you were sick to your stomach.'

'I was,' Tessa said, taking another egg. 'Now… not so much.'

Sara started to say something, then stopped when she heard a car pull up in the driveway. 'That's Jeffrey,' she said, standing up from the table so quickly that her chair fell back. She caught it before it hit the ground, and gave Tessa a nasty look, hoping to cut off the comment her sister obviously wanted to make.

Sara purposefully took her time walking to the front door. Jeffrey was about to knock when she opened the door. She leaned in to kiss him, but stopped when she saw the expression on his face. 'What is it?'

He held up a videotape as his answer.

She shook her head, asking, 'What?'

'Let's go into the den,' he said, leading the way down the stairs. She could tell from the way Jeffrey held his shoulders as he walked that he was angry. His posture was rigid, his jaw set in a firm line.

Sara sat on the couch, watching Jeffrey put the tape in the VCR. He took a seat beside her, working the remote control until the picture came up. Sara recognized the black-and-white format as a surveillance tape.

'The post office in Atlanta,' she said.

Jeffrey leaned back on the couch, and Sara pressed herself against him as they watched the tape. The scene was pretty ordinary, a room full of post office boxes with a table in the center of it. Jeffrey fast-forwarded the tape, playing it when a slim-looking young man came into the frame.

'He could be Mark Patterson,' Sara whispered, watching the kid walk to the back of the room. As he came closer to the camera, the similarity between the boy and Mark was amazing. They had the same lanky build and insolent look about them. The way his clothes hung on his body conveyed the same androgynous sexuality.

Jeffrey said, 'He looks just like him.'

On screen, the boy had a suspicious walk as he crossed the room. He stopped, furtively looking around before opening a box. His back was to the camera, blocking the view, as he took out the contents of the box, looked around again, then shoved the envelopes into the waist of his pants. He tucked his shirt in as he walked toward the exit and past the camera.

Jeffrey paused the tape, freezing the image of the boy on the screen.

'She sent someone else,' Sara guessed.

'He walked out into the parking lot, got into a black Thunderbird, and drove to a local mall,' Jeffrey said. 'No one showed up to meet him. He waited a couple of hours, then used a pay phone.'

'To call whom?'

'Nick traced the number to a cell phone. No one answered it.'

'What about the kid?'

'David Ross, a.k.a. Ross Davis,' he told her. 'Nick ran his prints. He was abducted ten years ago from his home in broad daylight. Missing, presumed dead.'

Sara felt her heart sink in her chest. 'Ten years?'

'Yeah,' Jeffrey said, anger in his tone. 'He was playing outside with his older brother. Dottie came up in her car. They think it was Dottie. Wanda. Whoever the fuck she is. It was a woman. Ross Davis went with her and never came home.'

Sara put her hand to her heart. 'His poor parents.'

'He's not their kid anymore, Sara. He's just like Mark. He won't talk. Nick grilled him for six hours, and the kid wouldn't say a word. Wouldn't even acknowledge that he knew Dottie. He just said he was there picking up some of his mail.'

'Did he have a tattoo like Mark?'

Jeffrey shook his head.

'How old is he?'

'Seventeen.'

'He was taken when he was seven?' she asked.

'He's legally an adult now,' Jeffrey said, and there was such an air of defeat to him that Sara took his hand in hers.

She asked, 'Did you notify his parents?'

'Nick did,' Jeffrey said. 'He couldn't hold the kid, though. It's not illegal to check a post office box, and the car is legally registered to him.'

'Nick put a tail on him, right?' Sara asked. 'At least he can tell the parents where he is.'

Jeffrey nodded, his eyes on the frozen image of the boy. 'Watch,' he said, pointing the remote at the VCR again. He pressed play, and the boy left.

The tape showed the empty room for the next few seconds. Sara was about to ask what she was supposed to be looking for when another figure came on screen. A woman wearing a baseball cap and glasses walked purposefully into the camera's range. She went directly to the back of the room