Page 234 of Things We Never Got Over (Knockemout)
“You find her?”
“Does he look like he found her, Elmer, you idiot?”
“He looks pretty pissed off.”
Ignoring the crowd and the questions, I pushed inside and found half the Knockemout PD surrounded by the other half of town. The specials board had been erased replaced with a hand-drawn map of Knockemout cut into quadrants.
Fi, Max, and Silver charged me, and Nash looked up.
“You didn’t find them,” Fi said.
I shook my head.
A shrill whistle cut through the noise, and everyone shut up.
“Thanks, Luce,” Nash said to Lucian, who immediately returned to whatever phone call he was making. “As I was saying, we’ve got an APB out on Naomi Witt, Waylay Witt, a gray sedan, and a black, newer model Chevy Tahoe. We’re starting the search in town and expanding outward.”
Amanda, dragging Liza J with her, hurried over to Lou, who pulled her into his side. “We’ll find ’em,” he promised. Then he wrapped his free arm around my grandmother.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t move from the spot. I thought I’d been afraid before. Afraid of turning into my father. Of crumbling after a loss. But this fear was worse. I hadn’t told her I fucking loved her. I hadn’t told either one of them. And someone had taken them from me. I hadn’t crumbled. It was worse. I hadn’t had the goddamn guts to love someone enough to crumble.
I shoved my hands through my hair and kept them there as the reality of what I’d walked away from set in.
I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder. “Keep it together,” Lucian said. “We’ll find them.”
“How? How the fuck will we find them? We know jack shit.”
“We’ve got a plate number on a 2002 gray Ford Taurus that was reported stolen from Lawlerville an hour ago,” Lucian said.
“We don’t have plate numbers yet,” Nash said, pausing to glance down at his phone. “Scratch that. 2002 gray Ford Taurus with a primer gray trunk lid.” He read off a license plate number.
“Lawlerville is half an hour from here,” I said, running the calculations in my head. It was the edge of a suburb of D.C.
“You’d have to be pretty stupid to steal a car and then drive it back to the scene of the crime,” Lucian pointed out.
“If Tina is involved with this, stupid is a factor.”
The front door opened, and Sloane and Lina rushed in. Sloane looked breathless and scared. Lina looked scary.
“What can I do?” Sloane asked.
“Whose ass do you want me to kick?” Lina demanded.
I needed to move. I needed to get out of here and find my girls, rip apart every single person who played a role in taking them, and then spend the rest of my life begging for Naomi’s forgiveness.
“Give us a moment, ladies,” Lucian said and steered me back outside. “There’s more.”
“What more?”
“I have a name.”
I grabbed him by the lapels of his wool coat. “Give me the name,” I growled.
Lucian’s hands closed over mine. “It’s not going to help like you think it will.”
“Start talking before I start punching.”
“Duncan Hugo.”
