52
Zeke’sbig truck thundered down the highway while Liv dialed her aunt’s cell phone number yet again. “Still no answer.” She switched to Zeke’s phone, tapped the first line on his Recents list, and tried to calm the quaking in her chest while she waited for Lynette to answer.
The phone on the other end rang and rang and rang until his mom’s voice mail kicked in.
“Shit.” She disconnected, having already left two messages. “Shit, shit, shit. Why aren’t they answering?” She switched back to her phone and started the process all over again.
Zeke laid his hand on her thigh. “There’s a lot of activity and noise at those places. Maybe they can’t hear their phones.” Engaging his turn signal, he swerved into a lefthand turn lane.
“Neither one of them thought to put their phones on vibrate or turn up the damn volume?” She shook her head, unable to shake the feeling something else was at play.
Guilt engulfed her. She should never have let Brodie out of her sight. She should have borne his disappointment. Better that than never hugging him again. Never cleaning up his dirty dishes or corralling him toward the door in the morning.
“I can’t lose him, Zeke.”
“We won’t let that happen. The police are on their way.”
The overhead traffic light blinked from yellow to red. Already committed to the turn, Zeke accelerated. Out of the corner of her eye, Liv caught a flash of blue barreling toward them.
“Watch it!” The warning erupted from her mouth at the same time the car blew through the intersection, horn blaring, wheels swerving to the right.
“Fuck!” Zeke’s truck came to a sudden, deafening halt. They sat in the middle of the intersection for three heart-racing seconds before he eased off the brake and finished his turn. “Sorry,” he said. “You okay?”
She released a breath through her mouth, nodded, and resumed her futile effort to contact Brodie’s guardians.
Despite the near collision, they made it to the water park in record time, pulling into the lot seconds behind Detective Marissa Schuler. Liv had never been so glad to see another human being.
“Thank you for coming,” Liv said.
“Luckily, I was in the area. Uniforms are on their way.”
“I’m not waiting.”
“Glad to hear.” The detective nodded toward the large, imposing building. “Let’s go find the bastard.”
Liv and Marissa flashed their badges at the guy in the ticket booth before pushing their way inside, Zeke tight on her six.
The moment they cleared the double doors, a blast of humid air and the screaming laughter of hundreds of kids assailed her senses. Liv winced at the impact on her already pounding head.
Natural light shone through the see-through roof, bathing all the water worshippers in sunlight. Bright, cheerful blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and reds covered the surface of every slide, tube, chair, table, and wave machine.
How could a place that brought so many people joy allow a hideous person like Jeremy Jackson through its doors?
Although everything pointed to Jackson, she couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t acknowledge her guess at his identity. Had he been hyper-focused on releasing all the dammed-up vitriol he’d been harboring since their last encounter? Or had her phone cut out, and he never heard her say his name?
Marissa split off to speak quietly, but adamantly, to a woman wearing the park’s purple and black uniform. Liv did a quick scan of the enormous space, then she slowed it down. Although her instinct was to look for Brodie, she knew isolating her son from all the other wet-haired, bare-chested boys would be like singling out one bee in a massive hive.
Concentrating on the adults, she alternated searching for Belinda’s athletic build, Lynette’s curly brown hair, and any males who seemed off or didn’t belong.
“Anything?” Zeke asked, scanning.
“Not yet.”
They moved farther into the chaos. So many people. As hard as she tried to focus on the adults, she couldn’t stop herself from searching every face.
Kids and adults alike lined up for their turn down winding slides. Little ones wearing floaters on their arms alternated between stomping their feet in ankle deep water and butterflying in and out of liquid geysers.
A mother should be able to pick out her child no matter what, shouldn’t she?