I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

“Wow,” he said when I finished. “That’s incredible. Okay.”

I wasn’t sure what to say so I didn’t say anything.

“What can I do?” he asked. “How can I help?”

“I don’t really know,” I said. “Look for her, I guess.”

“Well, of course, Joe,” he said. “I guess I just wanted to know if you needed anything. If I can help you.”

“No. Don’t think so.”

“You don’t sound right, Joe.”

“I don’t?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

The line crackled.

“Was it Bazer showing up?” he asked.

“Didn’t help,” I replied. “Didn’t feel right having him show up out of the blue.”

“I wish he’d told me,” Mike said. “I would’ve come up, too. Run interference.”

“He didn’t call you? At all?”

“Joe, first thing I heard of any of this was when the alert just hit. I did a double-take, read it a third time, then called you. I haven’t heard a word from him.”

I stared out the window. If Mike was telling me the truth, it was Bazer. I wanted to trust him. I really did. But there was still the picture from the file that set this all in motion and I couldn’t get past that.

“That’s odd,” I said.

“Yeah. But I’m gonna call him. Now. See what the hell he knows. Then I’ll get back to you. That okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

It was quiet for a moment.

“I know you’re worried, Joe,” Mike finally said. “But if she’s here, we’ll find her. We’ll get her back to both you and Lauren.”

I said thanks and hung up.

Anchor turned around and set his eyes on me. “You trust him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s Mike,” Lauren said, shaking her head. “I still refuse to believe he had anything to do with this. I trust him. I know you don’t, but I do. I don’t think he’d ever do anything like this.”

I didn’t say anything. She was right. It was still hard to think that Mike could have had any involvement in her disappearance, but I wasn’t willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Not anymore.

Anchor nodded. “Alright. What would you like to do now?”

“I think you need to know something.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Whoever took our daughter,” I said. “They might’ve been in law enforcement.”

Anchor didn’t say anything, just waited for me to elaborate.

“The man on the phone might’ve been involved,” I continued. “The officer that found us at the hotel earlier might’ve been involved. There may be others. I’m not sure.”

Anchor remained quiet.

“If they get in the way before I get to my daughter or if it all comes out at once,” I said, then paused. “It might get bad. Because I don’t care who they are. If I find out they were responsible, I’ll take them out. And I mean that exactly the way it sounds.” I paused again. “I’m not sure that’s something you’ll want to be involved with and I understand if you don’t.”

Anchor stared at me for a long moment, then turned to Kitting. “Ellis, you have a problem taking out a police officer who kidnapped a young girl?”

“None,” Kitting said.

Anchor nodded, as if that was the answer he expected, then he turned back to me. “I appreciate your candor, Mr. Tyler. But neither Ellis nor myself have a problem with continuing to assist you. Mr. Codaselli has made it very clear that he wishes to repay your help in any way necessary. Whatever you need us to do in order to help you reunite with your daughter we’re happy to do. And we’ll do so to the best of our capabilities.” He smiled and there was a coldness in his eyes that made me thankful he was on our side. “And I mean that exactly the way it sounds.”

THIRTY-THREE

“Sixty miles south of here puts us where?” Lauren asked.

Kitting was navigating the car out of Redondo and back toward the interstate.

“San Clemente, maybe?” I said. “Capistrano?”

Anchor nodded in front of us. “I’m seeing Capistrano on my map.”

“How’d she get there?” Lauren asked, then shook her head. “Stupid question. How’d she get anywhere?”

I nodded, laid my head back against the headrest and turned my eyes to the window. The sun was rising out to the east, the city just coming to life. Cars appeared on the road, early commuters hoping to beat the rush in to work.

And all I could picture was Elizabeth walking by herself in the early morning hours, unsure of where to go or what to do.

I was second guessing the decision to have Morgan’s calls forwarded to my phone. If Elizabeth had gotten to talk to Morgan, maybe her friend could’ve gotten more information from her. Found out where she was, where she planned to stay for the night. Her friend could’ve at the very least comforted her. But I’d given her nothing and probably only scared her more than she already was. An unfamiliar voice looking to shake up her world in one more way.

I’d failed her again.

Lauren shifted in the seat next to me and I turned to her. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open. She’d dozed off. Not surprising. We were close to running on empty.

Kitting found the onramp to the interstate and propelled us south. The sky was a dusky pink as we made our way onto the freeway. The refineries in Carson shone brightly in the early morning sun, the gray smoke snaking upward into the air. Planes descended into Long Beach airport, gliding over the freeway; and the gray retaining walls grew higher the further south we went, protecting the neighboring cities from the noise of the nearly ever present traffic.

We hit Orange County, signs written in Vietnamese greeting us, a testament to the immigrant-heavy populations in Westminster and Garden Grove. Orange County started to look more like the Orange County that was portrayed on TV as we entered Costa Mesa and then Irvine: sterile buildings and homes that spoke of money, but no personality, a soulless area nearly devoid of everything but dollar signs. There was no defining characteristic that told you you’d entered Irvine—you were just there and it just existed.

Irvine gave way to the rolling hills and canyons of Laguna and Mission Viejo, homes perched on the hillsides, thumbing their noses at fires and mudslides. The traffic thickened as the 405 rounded the bend into Mission Viejo, brake lights lighting up as people hit their brakes to slow. Northbound traffic was at a virtual standstill and I was glad we were at least moving.

We crested the hill at the south end of Mission Viejo and Kitting took the exit at Ortega Highway before we hit the curve that would drop us into Dana Point. San Juan Capistrano was a small beach community sandwiched between Mission Viejo and San Clemente. I’d only been there once as a kid, when my mother had taken us to visit the mission. I couldn’t recall much else about it, other than I’d passed through it about a hundred times.

Kitting turned right at the stoplight at the bottom of the off ramp and then pulled to the curb, the engine idling softly.

Anchor turned around. “I don’t have an exact location. The signal was somewhere in this area. That’s about all we have to go on right now.”

I nodded. “Okay. Maybe we just drive around, see what we see then.”

Anchor nodded in agreement. “It’s a small area. We should be able to navigate it pretty efficiently.”

He turned to Kitting and whispered something I couldn’t hear, then made a hand motion that looked like he was telling him to move back and forth. My guess was he wanted to cover the streets in a grid so that we didn’t miss anything.

We were on the west side of the freeway and we drove up and down the narrow streets lined with small box homes and local restaurants. It was a sleepy beach town that had refused to give in to the urban sprawl that had smothered so much of Southern California. I thought it probably didn’t look that much different from the way it had fifty years before.

The sidewalks were mostly empty, but the streets were filling up with traffic as we moved up and down, covering each street, unsure of what we were looking for. I don’t think we expected to see a teenage girl, sitting and waiting for us on the curb, but that almost felt like what we were doing. I’d done the same thing many times before, looking for other kids, not knowing exactly what I was looking for, but hoping I’d know it when I saw it.