“Could it have been his father?” Dylan asked between calls.

  Lucy shook her head. “No, it wasn’t him. I already checked.”

  When she finished her calls, she continued to hold tightly to the phone, now with both hands in her lap. “Nobody knows anything,” she said, turning to face the window.

  Connor glanced at Lucy but did not respond. Neither did Dylan or Olin. They all seemed to understand the best thing they could do for Lucy was to give her a moment to process the situation.

  By the time they reached the aquarium, Lucy had managed to pull herself together. Crying, she said, was not going to help her get her son back. She had to be strong.

  Connor could tell from the way her hands shook that she was still a mess of emotion inside. He knew from experience that sooner or later, it would all come flooding out. But she was also right. Crying was not going to help her get her son back, and he was impressed by the strength and resolve she seemed to have harnessed at this moment.

  Ms. Grindon was waiting for them by the entrance. Lucy made a quick round of introductions, and Ms. Grindon clarified that they should call her Ellie. Then Ellie said a detective from the Atlanta Police Department was inside reviewing the security footage. “There are cameras everywhere here. Detective . . .” She paused to look at the card she was holding. “Detective Stewart Pierce said there’s a good chance we’ll be able to get a look at the guy. He seems pretty confident we’ll get Jerry back soon.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Connor said. He turned to the same security guard Ellie had questioned earlier. “You didn’t see anything, did you?”

  The security guard shook his head. “Nothing unusual. Like I was telling her,”—he nodded at Ellie—“maybe if I could see a picture—”

  “A picture?” Lucy said as she began fishing around in her purse. “I’ve got a picture.” She withdrew her phone, tapped and swiped, then turned the screen around so the security guard could see it. On the screen was the image of a young boy smiling for the camera.

  The security guard looked at it for several seconds, then said, “I’m sorry. I thought it might help, but there are too many kids coming in and out of this place. They all start to look the same, you know?”

  That was probably true, Connor thought. If the security guard was paying close attention to anything, it wouldn’t be the faces of the children who passed through these doors from open to close. He turned back to Ellie. “How many chaperones came on the trip?”

  “Four.”

  “While we’re waiting for Detective Pierce to come back, do you mind if we talk to them? Maybe one of them saw something.”

  Ellie cast a doubtful glance in Lucy’s direction. “I don’t know. Maybe it would be best to let the detective handle this.”

  When Lucy introduced Connor and his team, she had done so only by name. “They’re PIs,” she now told Ellie. “They’re good, too. Remember that case with the actor that was all over the news not too long ago? Chris Miller? They’re the ones who solved it.”

  “You brought PIs with you?”

  “I work for them.”

  Ellie mulled this over, then shrugged in Connor’s direction. “I guess if Lucy thinks it’s okay for you to talk to the chaperones, it’s all right with me.”

  “Maybe the kids, too,” Dylan suggested.

  This time, Ellie looked even more reluctant.

  “They might have seen something the chaperones didn’t,” Connor added.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to let the detective handle all this?” Ellie asked Lucy.

  “I want my son back. As far as I’m concerned, the more people who are looking for him, the better.”

  Ellie sighed. “Well, there was one kid. Marcus Redding. He’s the one who told me he saw Jerry leaving with the man. He’s Jerry’s best friend.”

  Olin shrugged, then looked from Connor to Dylan. “I guess that’s a good place to start.”

  Ellie gestured for the group to follow her. “They’re still in the cafeteria. Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Ellie led Marcus away from the other students so they could talk to him privately. Surrounded by so many adults, he looked uneasy. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  “No,” Ellie assured him.

  “We just want to hear what you saw in your own words,” Connor said, pulling over a nearby chair and sitting down. He hoped it would help put Marcus at ease if he had at least one fewer adult towering over him. “What did you see?”

  “I mean . . . I don’t know,” Marcus responded, then looked up at his teacher. “Ms. Grindon, I told you about this already. Jerry left with a man. They came out of the bathroom together and just left. That’s all I saw. Really.”

  “Could you describe him for us?”

  Marcus shook his head. “He was wearing a baseball cap. I couldn’t see his face. Not really.”

  “How tall was he?” Dylan asked.

  Marcus looked back at Connor. “Like you, I guess.”

  “What about his weight? Was he a big guy?”

  “Average.”

  “What was he wearing?” Connor asked.

  “Just, like, clothes, you know? Nothing special.”

  Connor leaned forward, clasped his hands together, and looked Marcus in the eye. “This is very important. Do you remember anything at all that stood out? Anything that might make the guy different from me or”—he pointed to Olin—“him.”

  Marcus nervously shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down at his feet. “He had a beard.”

  “Okay, that’s good. That’s something, right?” Connor said, looking up at the other adults, who nodded in response. “Do you remember what color it was?”

  “It was dark. Like, brown . . . or black, maybe.”

  “Does that sound like anyone you know?” he asked Lucy. “A man who’s about my height and weight with a beard?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I can think of.”

  “I have a question,” Ellie said. “You were supposed to stay with Jerry. Why weren’t you in the bathroom with him?”

  “It just kind of happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Marcus looked toward some kids in the distance. “I’ve had enough trouble with Eddie for today, Ms. Grindon. If I tell you, you gotta promise you won’t say anything.”

  Ellie did not look happy, but she crossed her heart and said, “I promise. Now, what is it?”

  “Jerry just got up to take his tray to the trash when Eddie smeared pudding all over his shirt. That’s why he went to the bathroom. So I stayed where I was, you know, to save our seats.”

  Ellie’s face reddened with annoyance and she, too, turned to look at the same kids Marcus had. One of them, Connor figured, must be Eddie.

  They wrapped up their conversation with Marcus quickly. There was not much else he seemed to know, and Connor was anxious to see if Eddie might be able to fill in any details Marcus had not.

  After all, there was a good chance Eddie had been watching the bathroom after Jerry went inside, if only so he could make fun of Jerry when he came back out. Maybe he’d had a better view of the kidnapper.

  Although Connor thought he might have to tell Eddie he knew the boy had been picking on Jerry to elicit the truth, he assured Marcus they would not mention his name before they told him to return to his seat. It turned out, though, he did not even have to tell Eddie that much.

  Eddie burst into tears as soon as Ellie called him over. “It was all a mistake, really. I thought it was just supposed to be for fun. If I had known how this was going to end up, I wouldn’t have taken his money, I promise.”

  When Eddie had started talking, Connor was certain he was referring to the pudding incident. Now that he had mentioned money, he wasn’t so sure. “What money? What are you talking about?”

  “A man gave me five dollars to go up to Jerry and smear pudding on his shirt,” he said through his festival of snot and tears.

  The adults looked at each other. All of them seemed to understand who that man had to be.

  “Can you tell us what he looked like?” Connor asked. He could feel a glimmer of hope beginning to take root. No matter what Detective Pierce found on the CCTV footage, it sounded like they had a witness. Somebody who had seen the man up close. That could be worth a lot in a case like this.

  Eddie took several short breaths as he tried to get control of himself. He wiped away the tears on his cheeks, even though new ones continued to fall. “He was wearing a baseball cap. One of those with, like, a Braves logo on it. And a sweatshirt.”

  “What about his face? Was there anything distinctive about it?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

  “What do you mean you couldn’t see?” Lucy asked. “How could you not see? You were standing right there in front of him.” She sounded like she was starting to panic again.

  Eddie began to sob more loudly.

  Connor shot her a look. Talking to Eddie like that was counterproductive, he wanted to tell her. But she didn’t see his expression—all of her attention was on the boy—and Connor decided that, no matter what Lucy had said, he should keep his eyes on Eddie, too.

  “It’s all right,” he told Eddie. “Just tell us what you can. Why couldn’t you see what he looked like?”

  “Well, there was the baseball cap, and he had a beard, and he had these huge sunglasses on.” Eddie stopped wiping his cheeks long enough to hold both hands up to his eyes to illustrate how big the sunglasses were.

  “Ms. Grindon.”

  Ellie, along with everyone else, turned toward the man’s voice. Connor could tell from the gray suit he was wearing that this must be Detective Stewart Pierce. After all, who else would come dressed like that to an aquarium?

  “So, it’s the famous Connor Callahan,” Stewart said after Ellie made the introductions and sent Eddie away. He pointed a finger at Connor. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but this is not your case, got it?”

  Connor barely even nodded before the detective ran a hand through his disheveled hair and asked to speak to Lucy alone.

  Lucy accompanied the detective down the stairs. They were gone for a long time. After a while, Ellie said she should get back to the students, leaving Connor and his friends alone to wait for Lucy’s return.

  They silently watched Ellie confer with the other chaperones and then lead the students away. Whether the plan was to continue with the field trip or take the students back to the school, Connor couldn’t guess. Either way, he thought, it seemed like a good idea to get them out of the cafeteria. He wasn’t sure they knew what happened, but with Eddie and Marcus to spread the story, it wouldn’t be long until all the children would be talking about the man who had taken Jerry away. And the more time the students spent confined in the cafeteria, the more serious it would seem.

  At least if the news spread while they were on the move, it would be couched in some semblance of normalcy and thus perhaps shared with more curiosity than alarm.

  The last thing kids that age needed was to be afraid of every stranger they met, scarred by their proximity to an abduction.

  “I guess the kidnapper used the pudding trick to get Jerry away from the rest of the students,” Olin said.

  Connor nodded in agreement. “Seems like it.”

  “Are we really going to sit this one out?” Dylan asked.

  Connor looked at her. His face told her everything that needed to be said. Still, he replied, “Not if Lucy doesn’t want us to.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The detective spoke to Connor and his friends only briefly when he returned, and only to find out where Marcus had gone.

  “Pierce wants to see if he can get prints off the money,” Lucy explained.

  “They went that way,” Dylan said, pointing. “We’re not sure if they left or . . .” She did not bother to finish her thought since the detective was already walking away.

  Lucy watched him go. Once he was out of sight, she turned back to Connor. “There’s nothing useful on the CCTV.”

  That did not surprise him. From the moment he heard the kidnapper was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, he assumed it was in an effort to thwart the security cameras. He doubted the detective would do any better with the money. A man that careful would have applied liquid latex to his fingertips or found another way to obscure the prints.

  “Detective Pierce had a technician install some software on my phone, though,” Lucy continued. “It will let the police listen in when the kidnapper calls. So no matter what, it’s not like we’re at a dead end.”

  Connor remembered the police in New York had installed something similar on his phone when his parents were abducted. It had been pointless, since no kidnapper ever called, and Connor worried it might prove pointless for her, too.

  Of course, the statistics were on Lucy’s side. Most kidnappings were about money. He shouldn’t let his own unusual experience color his expectations of hers, he told himself. They would just have to wait.

  There wasn’t anything else they could do, anyway.

  Lucy drove the group back to the office where Connor, Olin, and Dylan had left their cars. When she came to a stop in the parking lot, she looked over at Dylan and asked, “Would you mind coming back to the house with me?” She then turned her gaze to Connor and Olin, who were in the backseat. “All of you? I’m going to have to tell my mom about this, and I’d rather not do it alone. Besides, I’d feel better if you all were around.”

  “What’s wrong?” Gretchen asked Lucy when her daughter entered the house. “What are you doing home so early?” Then, before Lucy could answer, she looked at Connor, Olin, and Dylan, and followed up her first two questions with another: “Who are all these people?”

  Lucy directed Gretchen to the living room and told her to sit down. Gretchen selected a spot on the sofa and Lucy sat beside her. Then she relayed the story of the abduction as succinctly as possible. Every so often, Connor or Dylan, who had perched themselves on floral-print chairs on the opposite side of the coffee table, would add an additional detail where they felt it was important. Olin, who was standing behind them and seemed uncomfortable to be part of this intimate moment between mother and daughter, did not speak at all.

  By the time they were done, the blood had drained from Gretchen’s face. She collapsed back into the sofa as if she no longer had the strength to sit upright.

  “We’re going to get him back,” Dylan assured her.

  Lucy took hold of her mom’s hand. “I know how you feel. I’m scared, too. But between them”—she was referring to Connor and his friends—“and the police, we’ve got the best people we could have on this. Right now, we just have to try to be strong.”

  Suddenly, Connor’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, so he silenced the ringer and let the call roll over to voicemail. No matter who it was, he thought, it couldn’t be more important than what he was already dealing with.

  Then, seconds later, the phone rang again, and he decided that if he wanted to get rid of the caller, he was going to have to answer after all. He excused himself from the conversation, walked into the foyer, and clicked on the display to answer.

  “Hello,” he said, trying to keep his voice down so that it didn’t carry into the living room. He suspected it might be Reid, looking for an update on the case. Of course, it was too early to expect an update of any substance. They had spoken only hours ago. Nonetheless, Connor had learned some clients expected to hear from him every few hours, even if there was nothing to say, and Reid struck him as the kind of person who might expect just that.

  But it wasn’t Reid, and the first three words out of the caller’s mouth chilled Connor in a way few things had. “Hickory. Dickory. Dock.”

  The voice that delivered those words was deep and raspy. It sounded like the caller had stepped right out of a horror movie, and the silence that followed was all-consuming. Connor could no longer hear the conversation in the living room or the floorboards squeaking ever so slightly when he shifted his weight. For several seconds, he even forgot to breathe. When he did, he inhaled sharply and let the air out with a sudden, “Who is this?”

  The question came out louder than he meant for it to. Everyone in the living room turned to look at him. He met their eyes for a moment, and then looked away. Softer now, he added, “What do you want?”

  “I have the boy.”

  “What do you want?” Connor repeated, with more intensity but without raising his voice.

  “I want you to try to find him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Good luck. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  The caller hung up before Connor could speak again.

  Connor felt trapped in a whirlwind of emotion as he slowly let the phone fall away from his ear. He looked from the device to Lucy and back, trying to make sense of the call he had just received.

  Was this a game? A contest of wits? A madman out to prove he was smarter than Connor and his friends?

  He pulled the note that had been left on the door out of his pocket and read it again.

  Hickory, Dickory, Dock.

  The mouse ran up the clock.

  The clock struck one.

  The mouse was Done.

  Hickory.

  Dickory.

  Dock.

  He now saw similarities between it and the abduction he had not noticed before. The first was obvious—The clock struck one. Connor had received the call from Lucy at roughly 1:15 p.m. That meant the kidnapper had been planning a lunchtime abduction from the beginning.

  The second—Hickory. Dickory. Dock.—was clearly intended to be a calling card of sorts. Any generic claim of responsibility for the kidnapping would have been met with skepticism. Especially since the call had come into Connor’s phone instead of Lucy’s.

  Although there were not yet any news stories about the abduction (and there might never be), word about it had no doubt spread through the aquarium staff. On top of that, teachers had probably told teachers, children had probably told their parents, parents may have told their friends. It was quite possible there were already hundreds of people talking about what had happened.

 

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