Page 122 of Hidden Nature

“It sounds like it, but right now, work and the house keep me really busy. It was wonderful seeing you, Diane.”

“Welcome home, Sloan. And I love your hair!”

Sloan sent her a smile, a wave, then got out fast.

Left the car—no, not logical. Possible, yes, possible. If he’d been in crisis, logic didn’t always play. But. But.

Left his car, like Janet Anderson, like the dentist in Cumberland.

Three locations, three different types of people.

A woman in her twenties, a middle-aged man, and—she’d check on Zach Tarrington. If he’d come with his family to vacation, during her high school years, she pegged him as not much over thirty.

Verify, she told herself. Don’t speculate.

She wanted to verify immediately, but made herself put the groceries away first. The laundry sitting downstairs could wait.

Then she sat at her kitchen table with her laptop, and verified.

Zach Tarrington of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Age thirty-one. Divorced, father of one. Employed as a bellman for nine years.

Last seen leaving work at approximately midnight on February 6.

She read the details of the report, then, Saturday be damned, contacted the Uniontown police.

She identified herself, gave her badge number, her phone number, and requested a callback from the lead investigator at his earliest convenience.

Knowing she might have to wait until Monday, or later, for that callback, she dug where she could.

She pulled up his photo, studied it. Average-looking guy, she determined. Average height and weight.

An average-looking guy who’d tried to hang himself, she discovered. And was lucky his father was a paramedic with a portable defibrillator on hand.

Lucky, too, she thought as she read details, and read between the lines, to have supportive parents and extended family.

By all appearances, he’d pulled himself out of the hole. He’d gone back to work nine weeks after his suicide attempt.

She made notes.

Treatment?

Ongoing therapy?

Relationships?

Work absences?

Diane hadn’t mentioned abduction, so obviously Sarah hadn’t mentioned it to her, or she would have.

That didn’t mean the authorities weren’t looking in that direction.

She pushed up, got herself a Coke, and let the info roll around.

Why abduct an average guy from a hotel parking lot? The ex-wife—new relationship, jealousy, revenge?

An attempted robbery gone wrong?

Wrong place, wrong time—as it felt for Janet Anderson?

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