stoic and still.
On any other day, Brad giving a woman his number would be a family joke. Not today. No jokes today.
No, we are going to fucking find my daughter, and then we’re all going to laugh about it later, I told myself to try to keep calm. I reminded myself that today was going to have a good outcome.
We are going to find her. Everything is going to be okay. I repeated the words in my head over and over again.
“Nothing had better have happened to her,” he ground out.
“Don’t go there, Brad,” I warned him. I didn’t need his panic spouting out scenarios. “If Paul’s dead, there’s hope to believe there is a reasonable explanation for all of this,” I said.
But he kept going, “Life is a shitty, shitty game. We’ve been dealt bad hand after bad hand. I’m done with this shit, man. If someone hurt my baby, I’m going to jail. Guaranteed.”
I pushed his words out and cleared my head. I needed all my faculties to make sure this thing came to an end and that Mary was found safe and sound. We double-parked in the emergency lane, jumped out of the car, and ran into the school. In the main office, my eyes connected with Sarah’s, and my whole body relaxed. Immediately, I dropped to the ground and pulled her into my arms, breathing her in, holding her close.
Tears fell down her face as her small arms wrapped around my waist.
“Did you find her?” I asked, pulling back to swipe the tears that had fallen down her cheeks.
She shook her head. “No, Daddy.” She sobbed uncontrollably.
I gulped. “Where’s Becky?”
“She told me to stay here with Kenzo.”
A prickle of goose bumps trailed up my arm. What? Where the hell did she go?
When I released Sarah, Brad lifted her in his arms, her legs dangling above the ground. He kissed her cheek over and over again. “I’m homeschooling you from now on,” he growled, his normal vibrancy gone.
I stood at full height, turning my attention to Kenzo. “You let her leave?”
“She said she was going to the washroom and didn’t come back.”
Two more officers approached me, followed by the principal right behind them.
I didn’t want to talk to any of them right now. I wanted to take things into my own hands. I needed to find Becky and Mary.
A tall male officer with light-brownish hair came closer. “Mr. Brisken, hello. We have a few questions, and we will brief you on our search efforts.”
“One second.” I turned the other way, not wanting to be rude but needing to speak to Becky. Something wasn’t right.
Why would she just leave? And without Sarah?
I plucked my phone from my back pocket and called her. It kept ringing and ringing. The longer it rang, the more my lungs constricted. For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t get the next breath in my lungs.
When I called a second time, she finally picked up.
“Where are you?” I asked, beyond panicked.
“I’m going to get Mary.” She sounded out of breath as her sobs escalated, harder, faster.
I strained my ears to hear her.
“Who has her?” Because at this point, with the way Becky sounded out of her mind, I knew it was a who and that she wasn’t just simply looking somewhere.
“My mother has her, Charles. My mom has Mary.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Her mom? I was so shocked that I couldn’t even say the words aloud.
I shook my head, flipped around, and locked eyes with Brad and Sarah. They were staring back at me expectantly.
I didn’t get a chance to ask my next question.
There was determination and anger and fear in Becky’s voice. “I promise I’ll get her back, Charles. If that’s the last thing I do.”
And then the line went dead.
Chapter 40
Becky
All my mother wanted was money. All she ever needed was money. It was her motivation. What drove her. It wasn’t love. There was no love in her heart.
If I’d been old enough to work, only then, maybe … just maybe, she would have kept me. Growing up, I’d only been a burden to her, a drain to her penniless situation, so she gave me up. It didn’t help that she’d been in and out of jail for petty crimes. She’d never fought to keep me, looked to find me—until now, and I knew why.
While I knew my mom to be a cunning, conniving person, she wasn’t violent. Not to me anyway. She could’ve changed