“Or maybe you hit on her or told her she was gonna need to sleep in your bed if she needed a bed to sleep in,” Lauren said.

He stared at her, then shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

“Right,” she said, returning his stare.

Lauren was probably right and a small bubble of anger formed inside of me. But beating the crap out of this guy wasn’t going to get us closer to Elizabeth. We needed to focus and not get distracted by his crap.

“She changed her mind,” I said. “Then what?”

“She said she didn’t wanna go,” he said, moving his eyes from Lauren to me. “She asked if I could just drop her off at another hotel.”

“So you took her to another hotel?”

His mouth twisted and he looked away from me. “I told her no.”

“No?”

“Told her I didn’t have time to take her anywhere else,” he said. “It was my place or nothing.”

The anger inside of me grew. “So you just kicked her out of the car?”

He ran his tongue over his teeth, turning them from red to pink. “I pulled over. She was kinda mad.”

“No kidding,” Lauren said, shaking her head.

“I’m not a taxi service,” Aaron said.

“Yeah. You’re just an asshole,” Lauren said. “An asshole who drops girls off in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night.”

He started to say something back, then glanced at me and thought better of it. He leaned back on his hands. “I pulled over. She got out. That was it.”

He took a deep breath. I was frustrated with him, but also with Elizabeth. She was playing a dangerous game, getting into cars with strangers, then changing her plans. She was lucky that Aaron was just a jerk and kicked her out of the car. He could’ve done far worse.

“Where did you let her out?” I asked.

“Halfway between here and the hotel,” he said, then shrugged again.

“Where exactly?”

“I wasn’t paying attention.”

I glanced at the cars. “I’m serious. Each finger. They will take each finger off and won’t stop until they are all gone.”

He tried to act like he wasn’t afraid, but his eyes had darted to the SUV and he was swallowing hard.

“Probably about six blocks from here,” he said and then named the cross streets.

“She say anything about where she was going?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope, and I didn’t ask.”

“You see which way she went?”

“No. She shut the door and I was gone. That was it, man. Didn’t even check the mirror.”

I reminded myself that Elizabeth had gotten herself this far. She may have been afraid, but she wasn’t dumb. She’d made it all the way from Minnesota to California and that didn’t happen by mistake. She may have made some errors in judgment, but she had gotten herself all the way to the coast by herself. That told me she could take care of herself. She wasn’t going to walk out in traffic or sleep in a crack house.

It was a small consolation.

I looked at Lauren. “Let’s go.”

Lauren stood still, staring at Aaron. I’d seen that look before. I knew she wanted another shot at him.

“Not worth it,” I said. “Come on.”

She stayed for a moment, then shook her head and walked past him.

Then she whirled and drove her foot right under his chin, snapping his head back and buckling his arms as he hit the driveway.

She turned back to me. “Totally worth it.”

THIRTY

We were driving in circles.

We’d relayed the info to Kitting and Anchor that we’d gotten from Aaron Simmons and we’d gone to the intersection where Elizabeth had exited Simmons’ car. There was no smoking gun, no giant clue, no arrow pointing in the direction she’d gone.

It was simply a deserted intersection just before dawn in a coastal town.

So we drove. We dropped Will Thorton back at the Crowne Plaza and returned to the intersection, trying to replicate every possible route, seeing if they led anywhere that might give us some indication as to where Elizabeth might’ve gone. But the longer we drove, the more frustrating it became. The houses in the neighborhoods looked more foreign, the fast-food restaurants more generic and the faces of the people in the middle of the night walking the streets less like Elizabeth’s.

I was tired of staring out the window. My head hurt. It was almost dawn. I hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours since the chase had begun. Wherever she’d gone, it wasn’t where we were looking. We weren’t going to find her.

And then my phone rang.

The ring tone was that of an old rotary telephone, a shrill bell that sounded like it was coming from a phone hung on a wall in a kitchen with a long cord, before the days of cordless phones and cells. The number flashed large on the screen, the entire interior of the car illuminating as the screen lit up. A number with an L.A. area code.

“Right number?” Anchor asked.

I nodded, letting the bells ring in my ears. “Yeah.”

“Wait three seconds, then answer,” he said.

Lauren’s fingers dug into the leather seats.

The seconds ticked away in my head.

One.

Two.

Three.

“Okay, answer,” Anchor said.

I took a deep breath, but couldn’t find any air.

I stuck my finger on the answer button, then touched the speaker button.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Morgan?” the voice said. “It’s me. Are you there?”

I hadn’t heard her voice in almost a decade, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was Elizabeth’s voice. I knew it as if I’d been speaking to her every day for her entire life. In some ways, maybe I had. But hearing her voice right at that moment confirmed something for me that I’d never, ever let myself believe one hundred percent.

She was alive.

“Morgan? Can you hear me?”

“Elizabeth?” I said, my voice sounding strange and foreign in the interior of the car.

She didn’t say anything.

“Elizabeth, please don’t hang up,” I said. “Morgan is worried about you.”

“Who is this?” she asked, her voice quieter, suspicious.

The answer was so simple. It had never changed for me. But I had to wonder if she would agree with it and I had to force the words out of my mouth.

“I’m your dad,” I said, my eyes blurring. “And I’m here with your mom.”

Anchor reached over the seat and gestured with his hand to keep talking.

“I know you have a million questions,” I said, spitting the words out, not sure I was making sense. “We talked to the Corzines in Minneapolis. We talked to Bryce. We’ve been trying to catch up to you. We’re here in Los Angeles.”

“You’ve been following me?” she asked.

Of all the questions I expected, that wasn’t one I was prepared for and I opened my mouth and nothing came.

“Elizabeth, can you tell us where you are?” Lauren said, her voice taut, hanging by a thread. “We just want to help. You don’t have to be alone.”

“I don’t know you,” she said. “I don’t know you.”

Lauren looked at me, lost as to what to say.

“The Corzines said you found papers about your adoption,” I said. “You weren’t adopted. You were taken from us.”

“What?” Her voice was high-pitched. A little hysterical. “What are you talking about?”

There was no roadmap for this conversation. There were no guidelines. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, but more afraid to say nothing. I knew she might’ve blocked out whatever had happened to her. I knew it might be hard for her to recall and that maybe she couldn’t. But I also knew we’d spent years trying to get her back and now we had her on the phone and it felt like we could reach out and touch her.

“You weren’t adopted,” I repeated. “You were taken from us. And you may not remember all of it. We still aren’t sure what happened. And right now, it doesn’t matter. What matters is making sure you are safe. We want to help you.”

Anchor again spun his finger in the air, encouraging us to keep her on the line.