“Some of this isn't appropriate for a child.”
The girl surprised them both.
“Mommy says people make worse choices when they hide things from kids.”
Colton stared at her.
Then, despite the circumstances, he almost smiled.
“That sounds like Mara.”
Darren rubbed a hand over his face.
“All right.”
He explained that he had worked for the United States Marshals Service, handling fugitive cases and assisting with witness protection. Six years earlier, he had returned to his apartment in Albuquerque and found a woman waiting outside his door.
She had known his name.
She had known about his work on the Mara Hayes case.
And she had known which members of the original investigative team had later been arrested for corruption.
The woman had asked him one question.
“Do you still believe I'm innocent?”
Darren had recognized Mara immediately.
She had changed her hair, her name, and almost everything about her appearance. But she still carried herself the same way, with her chin lifted slightly whenever she was frightened and determined not to show it.
He had answered honestly.
“Yes.”
Mara had started crying.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
She had simply covered her mouth and stood outside his apartment until the tears stopped.
After that, Darren had helped her move between towns, obtain legitimate employment under an assumed identity, and avoid people who might be searching for her.
He had never been her boyfriend.
He was not Lila's father.
He had been a friend, a former federal investigator, and one of the few people Mara believed she could trust.
“Why didn't she contact me?” Colton asked.
Darren looked at him for a long time.
“Because she was afraid that anyone who knew you could use you to get to her.”
“I spent nine years looking for her.”
“I know.”
“I crossed five states.”
“I know.”
“I checked hospitals. Morgues. Police reports. I paid people who turned out to be liars.”
Darren lowered his eyes.
“I know, Colton.”
“Then you know what you let me go through.”
“Yes.”
The simple admission angered Colton more than an excuse would have.
He turned toward the windshield.
“Where is she now?”
“Prescott. Or she was.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“What happened?”
Darren took out his phone and opened a photograph.
It showed a small wooden table inside a house. On the table lay a silver pocketknife.
Colton felt the blood drain from his face.
He recognized the knife immediately.
His father had given it to him when he turned sixteen. It had a worn wooden handle and a small chip near the hinge. Colton had scratched his initials into the side with a nail when he was younger.
C.H.
He had carried it for years.
Then, on the night Mara disappeared, it had vanished from his apartment.
He had assumed he had lost it somewhere during the frantic hours after she went missing.
Now it was lying on his sister's table.
“Where did she get that?” Colton asked.
“It was left in the house.”
“By whom?”
“We don't know.”
Colton stared at the photograph.
“Someone knows who I am.”
“Or someone wants Mara to believe that you found her.”
“Why?”
Darren shook his head.
“That is what we need to discover.”
Lila shifted in her seat.
“There was something else.”
Darren turned.
“What?”
“The music box.”
He went still.
“What music box?”
“The blue one. With the stars.”
Colton felt a cold sensation move down his spine.
Mara had owned a blue music box as a child. Their grandmother had given it to her on her eighth birthday. It had a tiny ballerina inside and a winding key that played “You Are My Sunshine.”
Mara used to open it whenever she was frightened.
When their father shouted, she would sit on the floor beside her bed, turn the key, and listen until the music stopped.
The box had disappeared the same week Mara vanished.
Colton had always assumed she had taken it.
“Where did you see it?” he asked.
“In Mommy's bedroom.”
“Recently?”
Lila nodded.
“The person left it on the table.”
Darren looked alarmed.
“You never told me that.”
“You didn't ask.”
Colton glanced at the child.
“Did your mother recognize it?”
Lila nodded again.
“She cried.”
“What did she say?”
The girl thought for a moment.
“She said, ‘He finally found us.’”
Colton stared at her.
“Who?”
Lila hugged the rabbit closer.
“Grandpa.”
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Colton looked out through the windshield at the dry grass moving in the wind.
His father had been dead for eleven years.
He had attended the funeral. He had watched the closed casket lowered into the ground. He had paid for the gravestone and chosen the words carved into it.
Samuel Hayes had been a difficult man.
He was a mechanic by trade, a drinker by habit, and a father whose temper could turn a peaceful evening into a night of slammed doors and whispered apologies.