the fine hairs on the back of Abby’s neck; she put a hand there.
“Mom, it’s like I said before, you need to go home. You need to build a new life, because the one you had is over. You don’t need to be hurt anymore, okay? Just go home.”
Abby looked out at nothing, and when she finally said his name, she knew he’d hung up. She was talking to dead air.
* * *
Abby’s mother met her at the kitchen door.
“Jake said you’ve been into town to see that man.” She followed Abby into the kitchen. “I thought you threw away his number.”
“I did.” Abby sat down.
Her mother took a cup and saucer down from the cabinet.
“Could I have a glass of water instead?” Abby asked.
Her mother filled a glass and brought it to Abby, then sat in an adjacent chair. She took Abby’s hands. “What’s going on, sweet?”
Abby’s eyes filled. “Jake is pretty upset with me.”
“We were worried. We didn’t know what in the world had happened to you. Hap Albright called from Clark at nine and said you still weren’t there. The school is only a ten-minute drive from your house.”
“Hap was at Clark? What was he doing? Checking up on me?”
“I don’t think so. He said he just happened to be there.”
Abby made a face.
Her mother patted her hands and released them.
Abby said, “I can’t shake the feeling that Jake knows something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. He just seems so determined that I should stop looking for answers. He wants me to go home. That’s all he ever says—go home.”
“He wants you to be okay, honey. We all do.”
Abby sighed.
“So, this man, this Hank person, did you learn anything helpful from him?”
Abby gave her mother the gist of their conversation. She said, “Clearly, his wife knew Nick, and if she knew him, she must have known Adam, too. They were all working on the same case.”
“Okay, but do you really think it’s possible the disappearances are related, that they somehow involve Helix Belle and the money that was stolen?”
“I know. It seems so far-fetched.”
“Abby, it sounds like an episode of Forty-Eight Hours.”
Abby managed a smile. She said, “I don’t know about Sondra, what she might be capable of, but Nick was cleared. He had no part in what Adam did. I know that,” she added. But did she? Did she really know Nick at all?
“Maybe you should go to the police.”
“And say what? That I think my husband, who they’re convinced drowned with my daughter in a flood, is actually alive and involved in some sort of—?” Conspiracy. Abby broke off before she could say it, remembering her confrontation with Joe at his office when she’d questioned whether it was possible that Nick had an unhappy client, one who might have followed him and harassed him. Even when Abby told Joe that Nick had mentioned that very possibility to her, Joe had been annoyed; he’d practically sneered. There’s no conspiracy, he’d said. But then she’d dismissed the possibility, too, when Nick brought it up to her.
Abby looked at her mother. “I don’t think the police would pay the slightest attention to me, Mama. I’m going tomorrow with Hank to Sondra’s cabin. Maybe we’ll find something there.”
“Like what? You don’t even know the man. Where do you intend to spend the night?”
“We’re not spending the night.”
“But the drive is too long to make it there and back in one day.”
“But I’m going to, and that’s that.” Abby stood up. “I only came by to say I’m sorry I worried you and to tell you I’m going.”
“But this isn’t like you, Abigail. What do you hope to accomplish? What could this woman, or Adam Sandoval for that matter, possibly have to do with Nick?”
Nothing good. The words rose into Abby’s mouth. She finished her water and set the glass in the sink. She thought in terms of the result she would hope for if hope were possible, and she might have laughed, but her mother’s anxiety was palpable. Abby turned and hugged her close. “I don’t know, Mama. That’s why I have to go there.”
Chapter 20
The neighborhood was old, not more than a handful of crumbling dead-end streets and ramshackle bungalows poked into a frayed pocket on the edge of downtown Houston. Abby would never have found it without the map Hank had drawn for her. He’d said the house was a yellow brick one-story, but pulling into the driveway, she thought the color was more drab. She thought