“You aren’t coming in?”

“I’m fine right here.”

She watched me for a moment, then let her eyes drift around the room.

I looked, too.

A small, stuffed tiger on the bed. A desk in the corner stacked with books. A Twins baseball hat hung on a wall peg. An iPod dock next to the bed. Mirrored closet doors. And framed pictures I couldn’t bring myself to look at.

Lauren ran her hand along the bottom of the bedspread and pulled the tiger off the bed. She closed her eyes, hugged the tiger for a moment. Then she stood and pulled one of the pictures off the wall. She set the tiger down and held the picture like it might crumble.

“She’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Elizabeth is beautiful.”

I didn’t say anything.

She stared at the photo in her hands. “And it’s her, Joe. You were right. It’s her.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Lauren giggled at the photo. “It’s her.” She held it out to me. “Look at her.”

I glanced down at the floor. “I know. I know it’s her.”

“Joe?”

“I know it’s her, Lauren.”

“Look at me.”

I did. “What?”

“Why won’t you come in?”

I tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I mean, you found her,” she said, spinning slowly in the room. “You did it. This is her room. We’re going to find her. We are standing in her room. Her life is right here.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

Lauren stopped and stared at me. “What?”

I kept my eyes on her, careful not to look at any of the photos. “I don’t want to see what I’ve missed, alright? I don’t want her to have had a life without us. And all this? This is what I missed. What I didn’t get to give her.”

She walked over to me, then reached out her hand to me, the picture in her other. “Come here.”

I shook my head.

“Joe,” she said. “Come in here.”

My heart thumped in my chest and my fingers tingled.

“Come on,” she said.

I reached for her hand and let her gently pull me into the room. She pulled me in close to her.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes. “She’s okay.”

“Not yet,” I said, my breathing coming in bursts. “Not yet she’s not.”

“But she’s alive,” she said. “She’s alive.”

Tears were pushing behind my eyes.

“Look at her,” she said. “Look at Elizabeth.”

She held out the picture frame and I took it, my hand shaking.

Elizabeth was hugging another girl and they were cheek to cheek, smiles taking up most of the frame. Her face was a miniature version of Lauren’s and there were very faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her teeth were perfectly straight and the one ear I could see was pierced twice, sporting a small emerald colored star and silver hoop. Her hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail. There was nothing hidden in her expression, just a teenage girl with a friend, mugging for a camera.

My tears spilled onto the glass frame, blurring Elizabeth’s face. I handed it back to Lauren before I dropped it.

She took the photo and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me as I shook and cried.

“We’ll get her,” she whispered in my ear. “We’ll get her.”

FORTY-SIX

There was nothing in her room that indicated where Elizabeth was.

I sat on the bed, mostly ineffective, as Lauren weeded through drawers, the closet, anything she could find. She pulled out stacks of clothes, sifted through her books and papers, checked every nook and cranny.

Nothing that told us where she went.

We walked back out to the Corzine’s living room. They were both still sitting on the couch, huddled together, looking dazed and confused. Lauren and I resumed our seats.

“Nothing?” Alex asked.

We both shook our heads.

“So now what?”

“We’re going to go to Bryce’s home,” I said, glancing at Lauren. “Check there.”

“We’ll come with you.”

I stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “No. You won’t.”

Anger flashed in his face. “You know, I’m a little tired of you telling me what’s going to happen here. You walk into my home and…”

“You stole our daughter,” I countered. “You may not have been the one who showed up in my yard and took her, but as far as I’m concerned, you might as well have. You have no rights here. You wanna argue about it? Let’s step outside then.”

“Joe,” Lauren said. “Easy.”

“We’ve raised her,” Alex said, his voice rising. “We’ve taken care of her. We’ve given her a good life.”

“You’ve given her a phony life,” I said. “You are not her parents and you should stop with that charade right about now. The only thing you are—the only thing—is culpable in a child’s abduction. So, you’ll keep your ass here in this house. You won’t move. You won’t do a goddamn thing unless I tell you to.”

“Or what?” he said, squinting at me, then waving his hand in the air. “What are you gonna do?”

I stood. “First, I’ll call the police. Then I’ll call the federal authorities. Then I’ll call my friend here at DCFS. You’ll be arrested. You’ll be vilified.” I pointed down the hallway. “And you’ll lose custody of your real daughter.”

The anger drained from his face and his wife clutched at his arm.

“And make no mistake,” I said. “That’s all probably going to happen anyway. The only difference is how fast it’s going to happen. We can do it now or you can buy yourself some time and start preparing.”

They exchanged nervous glances, the severity of the situation finally settling on them.

“So. Alex,” I said. “That’s what I’m gonna do if you so much as move two inches off that couch. We’re going to Bryce’s home. You will sit here until I tell you not to. And if the phone rings and it’s my daughter, you’ll call me immediately. And then you’ll sit down and wait for me to show up and tell you what to do.”

Valerie’s head was on Alex’s shoulder and she was crying again.

“Any more questions?” I asked.

Neither of them moved.

I looked at Lauren. “You have a card and a pen?”

She nodded and pulled both from her bag. I scribbled my cell on the back of her business card and laid it on the coffee table.

“You have my cell and you have Lauren’s,” I said. “You hear from her, you call one of us. Immediately.”

Alex’s eyes drifted toward the card. “I just want her to be okay. So we can explain. That we didn’t know.”

He looked sad, torn, distraught. Tired. He’d probably been worried sick for the last few days, wondering where Elizabeth had gone off to and what she was doing. He looked like he really cared about her, like a father would about his daughter.

The only problem with that was that he wasn’t her father.

I was.

FORTY-SEVEN

Lauren was plugging Bryce’s address into the GPS when my phone rang. I saw the number, thought about letting it go to voicemail, then answered. “Hey, Isabel.”

“Hi,” she said. “Where are you?”

“In the car and I’m busy,” I said. “What’s up?”

“It’s Rodney,” she said. “The detective we talked to?”

“Right.”

“He’s had a stroke,” she said. “He’s in the hospital. Not life-threatening, but there’s some impairment and he’s going to be there for a few days. Tess called me this morning.”

“Oh, wow,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Lauren held the GPS up with the address on the screen. It said we were seventeen minutes away. I nodded at her.

“How busy are you?” she asked.

“Very,” I said. “But I can’t get into it right now.”

“Okay, I understand,” she said. “But here’s the thing. He’s asking to see you.”

“He wants to see me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Tess just said that he’s saying he wants to talk with you. And it’s not like he’s out of it and just mumbling. He’s coherent. The impairment is in his movement, I guess. But he’s insistent that he wants to talk with you.”

“I can’t do it right now, Isabel,” I said, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m in the middle of something.”