The Naturals
: Part 2 – Chapter 13

I overslept the next morning and woke up to the feeling that I was being watched.

“Knock, knock.”

Based on the greeting—and the fact that the person speaking had opened my door, knocked on it, and said those words at the exact same time—I expected Lia. Instead, I opened my eyes to replace Agent Locke standing in my doorway, a cup from Starbucks in one hand and car keys in the other.

I glanced over at Sloane’s bed, but it was empty.

“Late night?” my newly acquired mentor asked, eyebrows arched. I thought of Dean and the pool and decided that was not an area of discussion I wanted to pursue.

“Really?” Agent Locke said, eyeing the look on my face. “I was just kidding, but you’ve got I-was-up-late-with-a-boy-last-night face. Maybe we should have some girl talk.”

I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that Locke thought my late night had something to do with a stupid teenage crush or the fact that she sounded suspiciously like my female cousins.

“No girl talk,” I said. “As a general rule, ever.”

Agent Locke nodded. “So noted.” She eyed my pajamas, and then jerked her head toward the closet. “Get up. Get dressed.” She tossed me the car keys. “I’ll get Dean. You’re driving.”

— — —

I wasn’t exactly happy when Agent Locke’s directions ended up taking us right back to the mall—and specifically to Mrs. Fields cookies. After seeing the mocked-up blood spatter on the pool’s edge the night before, profiling shoppers seemed senseless. It seemed silly.

If she makes us guess what kind of cookies people are going to order …

“Three and a half years ago, Sandy Harrison was here with her husband and their three children. Her husband took their eight-year-old son to the bookstore, and she was left with the two younger girls.” Agent Locke said all of this in a perfectly normal voice. Not a single shopper turned to look at us, but her words froze me to the spot. “Sandy and the girls were in line for lemonade. Three-year-old Madelyn made a beeline for the cookies, and Sandy had to pull her back. It was Christmastime, and the mall was crammed full of people. Madelyn was desperately in need of a nap and on the verge of a meltdown. The line was moving. Sandy made it to the counter and turned to ask her older daughter, Annabelle, whether she wanted regular lemonade or pink.”

I knew what was coming.

“Annabelle was gone.”

It was easy to picture the mall at Christmastime, to see the young family splitting up, the father taking the son and the mother juggling two young girls. I saw the smaller one on the verge of a tantrum, saw the mother’s attention diverted. I imagined her looking down and realizing that even though she’d just looked away for a few seconds, even though she was always so careful …

“Mall security was called immediately. Within half an hour, they’d alerted the police. They stopped traffic into and out of the mall. The FBI was called on board and we issued an AMBER Alert. If a child isn’t recovered in the first twenty-four hours, then chances are good that he or she will never be recovered alive.”

I swallowed hard. “Did you replace her?”

“We did,” Agent Locke replied. “The question is, would you have?” She let that sink in for a second, maybe two. “The first hour is the most crucial, and you’ve already lost that. The girl was missing for ninety-seven minutes before you even got the call. You need to figure out who took her and why. Most abductions are committed by family members, but her parents weren’t divorced and there were no custody issues. You need to know this family’s secrets. You need to know them inside and out—and you need to figure out how someone got that little girl out of this mall. What do you do?”

I looked around at the mall, at the people here. “Security footage?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Locke said tersely. “There’s no physical evidence, not even a scrap.”

Dean spoke up. “She didn’t cry.” Agent Locke nodded, and he continued. “Even at Christmastime, even in a crowd, I’m not going to risk forcibly grabbing a kid whose mother is three feet away.”

I couldn’t quite bring myself to get in the abductor’s head, so I did the next best thing. I got into Annabelle’s. “I see someone. Maybe I know him. Maybe he has something I want. Or maybe he dropped something and I want to give it back.” I paused. “I’m not the one crying and begging for cookies. I’m the older sister. I’m a good girl. I’m mature … so I follow him. Just to get a better look, just to hand something back to him, whatever. …” I paced out the steps. Five of them, and I was around the corner and facing a service door.

Obligingly, Dean went to open it, but it was locked.

“Maybe I work here,” he said. “Maybe I’ve just stolen the access card. Either way, I’m prepared. I’m ready. Maybe I was just waiting for a child—any child—to take the bait.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Agent Locke said. “Was this a crime of opportunity or was the girl a specific target? To replace her, you’d need to know.”

I backed up and tried to play the scene all over again.

“What kind of person are you looking for?” Agent Locke asked. “Male? Female? What’s the age range? Intelligence? Education?”

I looked at the cookie store, then the service door, then at Dean. This was what he was talking about the night before. This was the job.

All business, I turned back to Agent Locke. “Exactly how old was the girl?”