.” He blew out a shaky breath. “They have pictures of Zoey meeting someone at the place where they found her car. She left with a guy. It looked as if she left willingly.”
Oh. Man. What could Rae say to that? “What do the police think?”
“The detective on the case asked me if I knew the man in the picture, and she kept pressing that point. I think she’s formulating a theory that I’m a jealous husband and I knew Zoey was having an affair. That I killed her.”
Rae bent forward as if she felt the proverbial punch to her own gut. A moment passed before she could gather her composure enough to speak again. “And what do you believe? Do you think Zoey was having an affair?”
Please, let it not be so.
“I don’t want to believe it. I can’t believe it, yet the images show her talking to him like she knew him well.”
“But she wouldn’t leave Callie. Even if—and I’m sorry to say this—even if she left you, she wouldn’t leave her little girl. I know this to my core, and you know it too. Something else is going on here. He must have been able to coerce her. To threaten her. Send me the pictures.”
“I’m still waiting to get them. As soon as I do, I’ll send them.”
Rae glanced at Liam, who watched her. “Can you at least describe him?”
“He wore a ball cap, but he had light brown hair. Was kind of stocky. The complete opposite of me.”
“Alan, listen to me. Get ahold of yourself. I don’t believe for a minute she was having an affair. So we’re going to go with the supposition that she was forced to leave.”
“How could he force her?”
“By threatening you and Callie—the most important people in her life.”
Callie’s soft voice sounded in the background.
“I have to go,” Alan said. “I’ll send you the picture if I ever get it.”
The call ended.
Rae stared at the screen as tears dropped to her phone.
“Hey.” Liam’s gentle voice comforted her. He took her hand in his. She continued to glare at her phone. Then she sniffled and wiped the moisture from her eyes. Rae lifted her gaze to meet the concern in Liam’s. “Did you catch any of that?”
“I got the gist of it.”
Rae shared everything Alan had said.
Liam shook his head. “That’s rough. You said you don’t believe she was cheating. How sure are you, Rae?”
“She loved him. I just know, okay?” She huffed and stared out the window. “Look, Zoey was super smart. She had amazing job offers. If she didn’t love him, then she didn’t have to stay with him. But she chose to stay home with her little girl. She wanted to be there with her.”
Rae said nothing more, and silence filled the cab for a few moments.
“Okay, then,” Liam said. “We already know she’s missing, and now it appears that she was probably abducted. Now we know more. Still, there could be more to it. Could be the man was taking her to show her something. Maybe she was going to purchase a surprise for Alan. I don’t know. This man could have abducted her that way. The point is, we stick to our plan while we wait for more information—like the name of the man she was last seen with.”
Rae nodded. Liam made sense. She glanced up in time to see the sheriff’s vehicle exiting the long drive. Time to focus her thoughts on the current situation and, like Liam said, stick to the trail they were following.
“Here he comes. I wish we could have been there to see and hear Enzo’s words, his response to whatever news the sheriff delivered,” Rae said.
“The big question is, what will happen next?”
“I hope it doesn’t involve more skiing.”
Liam chuckled. She liked the sound of it, and they needed levity. A breather from the heaviness. Poor Alan. How was he handling the weight of this and caring for Callie? Wasn’t Mom coming to help? When was she supposed to get there? Rae never remembered to ask. Still, the focus required to care for Callie could be exactly what Alan needed right now.
The sheriff’s vehicle steered onto the street and passed them, then made a U-turn to park behind Liam’s truck on the shoulder. Sheriff Taggart got out and hiked over to Liam as if he would give him a ticket for a traffic violation. Liam lowered his window.