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like his expression. “What?”
    “We’ve now talked to everyone working at Rite Aid today, including the pharmacists. Not one of them remember seeing your sister or the girl. It’s looking a lot like they never went there at all.”
    “But—” Jane stuttered “—she told Drew...”
    “I know what he claims she told him.” The emphasis on claims was subtle, but unmistakable.
    “Why would Drew lie? This was an accident!”
    “Was it?” Clay’s angular face was hard now, all cop. “I’m starting to wonder.”

CHAPTER THREE
    R ICH B ALDWIN , A sergeant in the patrol division, crossed his arms atop the open driver’s-side door of his unit and eyed Clay. “I’ve got to admit, I wondered why you were there early on.”
    He paused, eyebrows raised, but Clay didn’t rise to the bait. Damned if he was going to admit to having a thing for a woman who despised him.
    The eyebrows flickered, but Baldwin gave up and finished his thought. “I’m glad now you were. It’s looking more like your baby all the time.”
    Clay grunted his agreement, although he could not freakin’ believe he was dealing with the second kidnapping of a child within a matter of weeks. Except for the everyday domestic blow-up variety where Dad didn’t bring the kids home when he should just to spite the ex-wife, kidnapping almost never happened around here. He kept telling himself the girl was going to turn up anytime, that there was a reasonable explanation for her disappearance.
    But as the hours passed, the odds that seven-year-old Brianna Wilson would turn out to have spent the afternoon with a friend were looking longer by the minute. At 7:30 in the evening, your average family’s dinnertime had come and gone and the sun was dropping low in the sky. Kids that age did overnights, but according to her dad, Bree hadn’t taken pajamas, toothbrush or anything else with her.
    A deputy had stayed at the Wilson house to answer the phone, mostly in hopes some mother would call and say, “Was I confused? Weren’t you going to pick Brianna up by six?”
    Clay almost wished he could anticipate a ransom call. That would have been better than the far uglier alternative. But though the Wilsons’ house was nice, even before Drew lost his job, they didn’t have the kind of money that would make a scenario of that kind probable.
    Ankles crossed, Clay leaned against the fender of Baldwin’s squad car, parked not far from the emergency room entrance. Clay was arriving, Rich departing from the hospital.
    “I don’t like that we couldn’t find Mrs. Wilson’s phone,” Clay said.
    “Or that it’s dead to the world.”
    Destroyed, he meant. If she’d given it to the kid to take with her, they should have been able to triangulate its location even if Brianna had somehow turned it off.
    Yeah, the completely missing phone was a puzzle piece slotting into an increasingly ugly picture in Clay’s mind. He just wished there weren’t so damn many missing pieces still.
    A missing kid was what he really meant. Clay had seen Brianna Wilson’s first-grade school picture now, as well as a formal family portrait of the whole family taken just before Christmas. Bree, as Jane called her, was a doll, Clay hadn’t been able to help thinking, on her way to being a stunner. Her hair was the same chestnut-brown as Jane’s, highlighted with red, and wavy like hers, too. And, damn, but Clay did love Jane’s hair. Little Bree had just enough freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose to be cute. In both photos her untroubled grin showed missing front teeth. Unlike Jane’s, the kid’s eyes were a warm brown.
    Clay was ashamed in retrospect at how closely he had studied that family photo, fascinated to see how the sisters resembled each other and yet...didn’t. He guessed most people would have said Melissa had gotten the looks, but nothing about her face stirred him. Yeah, she had finely sculpted cheekbones, a pouty mouth that made him wonder about collagen