Thread of Betrayal Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bird,” Jenny said.
    “The Bird?” Lauren asked.
    “It’s like two minutes from here,” Jenny answered. “Her neighborhood is named after a bird so everyone calls it The Bird. Really big houses. Her dad is some Internet guy or something. Pretty rich.”
    My heart skipped a beat. “Soaring Eagle? That’s her neighborhood?”
    Jenny nodded. “Yep. That’s it.”

EIGHT
     
     
    Ten minutes later, Lauren and I were back in front of the home with the putting green in Soaring Eagle. I’d knocked on the door again, got no answer, and went back to the car. I slipped back behind the wheel and shoved my hands in front of the heater.
    “Now what?” Lauren asked from the passenger seat.
    I turned the heat down to a lower setting. “We wait. Nothing else to do.”
    She sighed and leaned back in the seat. “Great.”
    I understood her frustration. Our daughter, the daughter we'd been missing, the daughter I'd been searching for for nearly ten years, was with this girl. Morgan. I wanted to rip the town apart, call out an APB, do anything I could to locate them. But I couldn't. The only thing either of could do was wait.
    “If we leave, we might miss her,” I said.  “If we…”
    She held up a hand. “I got it. I don’t need an explanation.”
    I pushed the button on the side of the driver’s seat and it complied, reclining slightly.
    “Sorry,” Lauren said after a few minutes. “Didn’t mean to cut you off.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “I’m just frustrated.”
    “I know.” I was, too. But I was used to it.
    “I know there’s nothing else to do,” she said. “I’m just worn down from this chase. Or whatever you want to call it.”
    “I know.”
    “Is this how it always is?” she asked. She didn’t look at me, just played with her fingers, picking at her nails, rubbing her thumb over her knuckles.
    I shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier.”
    “How is it ever easier?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t see that.”
    I stared at the house for a long moment.
    “I was in Dallas, maybe two years ago,” I said. “I can’t even remember why I was there initially, but I ended up helping this woman find her son. He was a college kid. All she knew was that he’d had a fight with his girlfriend. Hadn’t checked in with his mom in a couple of days and she was freaked out. Understandably. I went and talked to the girlfriend. He wanted her to come home with him for the summer. She wasn’t sure her parents would be okay with that. It was a fight over nothing. But she knew when he got frustrated he’d go up to this lake in Oklahoma and camp by himself, just to get away. And they had a deal. If she ever really needed to get ahold of him, an emergency or something, she could text him with a code word and he’d call. She texted him. He called back in about thirty seconds. She told him his mother was worried, that I was looking for him. He felt terrible, apologized to her, to me and immediately called his mom.” I shrugged. “That was pretty damn easy.”
    “They weren’t all like that,” she said. She didn’t pose this as a question, just stated it like something she knew to be true.
    “No. But some were. You just never know.”
    “I wish we had a secret code,” she said, her voice wistful.
    I reached out and briefly touched her hand. “Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”
    She smiled at me, a sad smile that tore at my heart. As much as I wanted to find Elizabeth for me, I wanted to find her for Lauren, too. For both of us. I glanced out the front window, my eyes scanning the road. Every car that passed us on the street gave me a little twinge, wondering if it was the one that might be carrying Elizabeth. But each one continued by, either headed toward another gigantic house or out of the subdivision.
    “Was that night in San Diego weird for you?” Lauren asked, shifting in her seat.
    “Which night?”
    “Me and you,” she said. “The hotel.”
    I’d been in San Diego two weeks