perhaps it wasn’t a promise she could keep. But she meant it all the same. The determination was burning inside her. She wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t rest, until she’d found Jake and caught the man who had taken him. Who had taken Neil Spencer before him. Who had hurt Pete so badly.
I am not losing another child on my watch.
“We believe we know who’s taken him, and we’re going to find him. Like I said, I give you my word. Every available officer is focused on hunting this man down and finding your son. We are going to bring him home safe.”
“Who is he?”
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
“My son is alone with him.”
She could tell from his face that right now he was picturing every terrible possibility—that a reel of the worst imaginable horrors was unfolding in his head.
“I know it’s hard, Tom,” she said. “But I also want you to remember that, assuming this is the same man who took Neil Spencer, Neil was well cared for at first.”
“And then murdered.”
She had no answer to that. Instead, she thought about the abandoned apartment she had visited a few hours earlier, and the way Francis Carter had re-created the decorations in his father’s extension. He must have seen the horrors in there as a child, and it seemed that he had never truly escaped that room—that a part of him had remained trapped there, unable to move on. Yes, he had looked after Neil Spencer for a time. But then some darker impulse had emerged, and there was no reason to think he would contain it any better with Jake than he had with Neil. The opposite, in fact—once the dam was broken, killers like this had a tendency to accelerate.
But she was not prepared to entertain that idea right now.
Tom, of course, had no such luxury.
“Why Jake?”
“We don’t know for certain.” The desperation in his question was also familiar to her. Faced with tragedy and horror, it was natural to search for explanations: reasons why the tragedy could not have been prevented, to help ease the pain; or ways in which the horror could have been avoided, serving only to stoke the guilt. “We believe the suspect may have had an interest in this house, the same way that Norman Collins did. It’s likely he discovered your son was living here, and probably decided upon him as a target as a result of that.”
“Fixated on him, you mean.”
“Yes.”
A few beats of silence.
“How is he?” Tom said.
Amanda thought he must still be talking about Jake, but then she realized he was staring past her toward the living room, and understood he was asking after Pete.
“He’s in intensive care,” she said. “That’s the last I’ve heard. His condition is critical, but … well. Pete’s a fighter. If anyone can make it through, then it’s him.”
Tom nodded to himself, as though that resonated with him on some level. Which didn’t make sense, because he had barely known Pete at all. Once again she remembered how pleased Pete had been that afternoon. How suddenly alive he had seemed.
“Why was he here?” she said. “He shouldn’t have been.”
“He was babysitting Jake.”
“Why Pete, though?”
Tom fell silent. She watched him. It was clear that he was considering what to tell her, choosing his words carefully. And suddenly she realized she had seen this expression before too. The tilt of Tom Kennedy’s head. The angle of his jawline. The serious expression. Standing in front of her now, his hollow face illuminated by the light above, Tom Kennedy looked almost exactly like Pete.
Christ, she thought.
But then he shook his head and moved slightly, and the resemblance disappeared.
“He left me his card. He said, if we needed anything, to get in touch. And he and Jake … well. Jake liked him. They liked each other.”
The explanation stumbled to an end, and Amanda continued to stare at him. Although she could no longer see the similarity outright, she hadn’t imagined it. She could press that point, but she decided that it wasn’t important—not right now. If she was correct, then the repercussions of that could be dealt with later. Right now, in fact, she needed to be back at the department, making good on the promise she’d made as best she could.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s going to happen next is that I’m going to leave here, and I’m going to find your son and bring him home.”
“What do I do?”
Amanda glanced back toward the living room. It went without