TO DIE FOR (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 8) - Willow Rose Page 0,23

foggy, and it was hard to think clearly.

I’ll never get out of this place!

Sarah took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Panicking didn’t help anything. It only made her more confused and desperate, and then she couldn’t think straight.

Sarah sat back, head leaned against the wall, as she had done so many times before, but this time with the nail tightly clutched between her hands. She felt the tip of it with her thumb, poking the skin.

That’s when she heard footsteps on the other side of the door. Approaching footsteps that soon stopped outside it, and then there was the well-known fumbling behind it before it opened slowly, and the light once again blinded Sarah. As she regained her sight, she looked into the face of her kidnapper, who was smiling broadly and wearing the look of a madman.

Chapter 25

I fed Owen his bottle and put him down for his nap, then took a deep breath, realizing that I had succeeded in putting down both babies, and the house was completely quiet since all the rest of the children were in school.

A small piece of unexpected heaven.

I left the babies in their cribs, walking away as quietly as possible, then hurried down the stairs, poured myself a cup of coffee, and just took in the silence, enjoying it for as long as it would last. I couldn’t stop thinking about Amy and her parents. What had gone so wrong between them? Could it just be the embarrassment of her becoming pregnant at only fifteen? Was that enough to entirely cut your ties to your own daughter and grandson? Could anyone really be that cruel?

I shook my head and sipped my cup, praying under my breath for Amy and that she was somewhere safe. I had driven by the abandoned house she had been hiding in earlier, but she wasn’t there. Christine didn’t know where she was either, she said. In the beginning, I thought she knew but just wouldn’t tell me, so I had been angry with her for keeping it from me, but I knew now that she was telling the truth. It was like Amy had vanished. Matt and his colleagues had put out a search for her, but still with no luck. I had also written in the local Facebook group for people living in Cocoa Beach and told them to look out for her, but still no news.

How far could a fifteen-year-old girl go with no money or even a phone?

A thought entered my mind, and I spoke it out into the silence of the kitchen.

“The father. She could be hiding with him. If only I could find out who he is.”

I sat by my laptop, then went on Instagram to see if I could find her profile. I found her through Christine’s followers and scrolled through her posts. She hadn’t posted anything new in a long time. The last post was a picture of her in a bathing suit on the beach that was obviously taken before she became pregnant. I read through the comments, then saw one from a boy. He wrote that she was gorgeous. I clicked his profile and looked at his pictures. Lots of them had Amy in them, and in one, they were kissing.

Bingo!

He had to be her boyfriend. I could tell he was a kid from the high school since he was wearing a hoodie with the Cocoa Beach High logo on it and had posted pictures of him playing for the lacrosse team. He couldn’t be hard to find. It took me all of three seconds to find out he lived on a side street from Minutemen Causeway, our main road. He wasn’t in Christine’s grade level since I knew most of the kids there. He looked older, too, so probably a year or two above was my guess.

He had to be Owen’s dad, I thought to myself. Was that where Amy was hiding? It was certainly possible.

I stared at his face on my screen when an email popped up and took my mind elsewhere. It was from my dad. He was an extremely skilled hacker, and I asked him to help me find the surveillance footage from Park Avenue in Winter Park three years ago when Sarah’s boyfriend, Tommy, was struck by a car.

He wrote:

HERE YOU GO. PIECE OF CAKE.

Piece of cake, yeah, right! I thought to myself. It was three years old; it couldn’t have been easy to obtain. Most traffic cameras deleted footage after