Page 9 of The Lost Bones
He stood up. “Yes. Brett.”
“I’m Detective Price, and this is my partner Detective Blackwood. You reported your wife missing?”
“Yes, I gave my statement to one of the cops over there.” He looked worried. “Courtney never returned home from work yesterday.”
“And when was the last time you talked to her?” Nick asked.
“Yesterday around five. She said she was leaving work and to warm up some dinner.” Tears glistened in his eyes. “She isn’t picking up her cell. I even showed up to her work. Her car wasn’t there and her co-workers said she’d left already. I was here last night too, but they told me to wait until the morning.”
“And she hasn’t done anything like this before?” Mackenzie asked.
Brett couldn’t hide his anger. “Do you know how insulting that is? No. My wife doesn’t just disappear.”
“I’m sorry, but we have to cover our bases,” Nick tried explaining.
“Do you see them?” Brett pleaded, pointing at the boys chasing each other outside. “She would never abandon them.” He blinked away his tears. “I had to tell them she’s visiting her mother. I don’t know what to do…”
Mackenzie hadn’t meant to be insensitive, but in their line of work they had seen many adults leaving voluntarily. She had lost count of how many times she’d had to crush hope in the eyes of frantic spouses and parents. She saw the young boys running with their arms outstretched, their light brown hair dancing in the wind, their mouths opening into toothy grins.
“All right, Mr. Montenegro. We’ll track her cell phone and dispatch a team to begin canvassing her workplace,” she said with resolve.
Brett looked dazed, like he had been expecting more, but then nodded.
“We’ll keep you informed,” Nick assured him. Brett dragged his feet out of the station and gathered his kids.
“I’ll ask Peterson for the first incident report.” Mackenzie sighed.
Nick checked his watch. “I have to head to Seattle to meet Anthony. See you later.”
Mackenzie bit her tongue, knowing the meeting had to do with Sophie and her car. She felt frustration claw at her, but when Peterson handed her the report, she redirected her focus to Courtney. When she opened the file, breath spiraled out of her lungs.
She knew this woman.
“No guy will ever like you,” sneered the tall, slender girl with dark skin and almond-shaped eyes. “You’re fat, ugly, and you stink.”
Mackenzie’s lips quivered. She felt blood gush to her face, reddening under the stares of her classmates.
“Mack n Cheese! Mack n Cheese!” the girl chimed, and soon the rest of the class joined in. But all Mackenzie could see was the girl leading them. Her perfect face and angelic features hiding a bully who spent her days making Mackenzie cry. Courtney Goodman.
The face from Mackenzie’s memory grew older, the skin thinning, stretching and sagging, until it morphed into the one in the picture in her hands. Courtney Goodman was now Courtney Montenegro. And she had gone missing yesterday evening.
Mackenzie grazed her fingers over the face she had forgotten over the years. She was twelve years old when she was shipped off to New York to live with her grandmother. It was only nine years ago that she’d returned with unfinished business to Lakemore. Back to her hometown, where years of witnessing Melody getting beaten had culminated in that fateful night when they’d buried a man. She’d always known she would return to Lakemore to right the wrongs of her past, to find closure, to get to the truth of what had really transpired that night, because her mother was not the innocent party she’d been led to believe.
And now a forgotten and inconsequential part of her past was in her hands. Courtney Goodman—the resident mean girl. She read over the report, gaining no new knowledge. She’d already dispatched a team to start looking around the area where Courtney was last seen.
She headed downstairs to the office of their IT guy, Clint—the tallest man in Lakemore PD. She found him sitting behind his spread of monitors, his mop of hair visible.
She knocked on the door. “Got a minute?”
“Barely.” He sighed, typing at lightning speed, then rolled away and removed his glasses. “What can I do?”
She showed him the file. “Need to track this phone. Husband said it kept going straight to voicemail.”
He skimmed through the details and raised an eyebrow. “Missing since last evening? Adult woman?”
Mackenzie suppressed a sigh. She knew what he was getting at. It was too early to label this a missing person case. “The woman’s got two young kids. I knew her.”
“You did?”
