Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [55]
“I rarely need a boost,” he said.
She smiled at his cocky statement. “So you’re one of those men who thinks being tired is a weakness.”
“I’m not tired,” he countered. “I’m concerned about my brother’s child. It’s important that we find her as soon as possible.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about the fact that your friend and my friend could possibly be the same person. It seems amazing to me that Jessica would have a baby, though. How old is the little girl?”
“Sixteen months,” Dylan replied.
Catherine shook her head. “It’s so difficult to believe. In my head Jessica is a young girl. But she’s not. She’s twenty-eight years old now. So much time has passed since I saw her.”
“Let’s not let any more time pass,” he said quickly, sensing that Catherine was the type of person who could get lost in her own head. Hell, maybe that was what she and her friend Jessica had in common. “Let’s get back to business. You told me that Jessica made her cross-country trip with another girl. Tell me more about her.”
“That was Teresa Meyers. She was in foster care with us, too. She was the same age as Jessica, but totally different in personality. She prided herself on being a tough chick, you know what I mean?”
He nodded. He’d run into more than a few of those in the field of journalism. “Where is Teresa now?”
Catherine shook her head. “I don’t know. I tried to find her after Jessica disappeared in Chicago, but I couldn’t locate her. She didn’t go back to any of her previous addresses, and quite frankly I didn’t have the money to hire anyone to look for her.”
“So Teresa knew how to disappear, too? What? Did they take you aside in foster care and give you a hands-on guide for how to vanish without a trace?”
Catherine shrugged away his sarcasm. “They didn’t care enough to do that. Kids in foster care don’t have roots. If you’re not a cute baby someone wants to adopt, you float around the system, moving from house to house, with no regard for any kind of permanence or feeling of security. That’s the way Jessica, Teresa, and I grew up. It’s what we were used to. We didn’t worry about telling people where we were, because there wasn’t anyone to tell. No one gave a damn.”
Despite her matter-of-fact tone, anger burned in her eyes, and Dylan felt like a shit for his comments. “I apologize.”
“You should. At any rate, I don’t know where Teresa is. Nor do I know where Jessica is. That’s the bottom line.”
“But they could be together. They could have kept in touch after Teresa left Chicago?”
“Yes, but if Jessica knew where Teresa was, she kept the information in her head, because it wasn’t written down on any of the papers in her apartment. Although she did have her purse with her when she disappeared.”
“Really?” Dylan said, surprised by that fact.
“As far as we can tell, yes. That’s the clue that led the police to speculate that there was no foul play involved.”
“Well, I think there’s only one way to answer your questions and mine. You need to come with me to LA to meet Sarah, to see if she’s Jessica. We can go right now. I’ll drive.”
Catherine’s hesitation disturbed him.
“What? You don’t want to go?” he asked in amazement.
“Of course I want to go, but I have a job. I teach an art class at the local community college on Friday afternoons, and today is the midterm exam. I can’t miss it.”
“What time is it over?”
“Five o’clock.”
He didn’t want to wait until the end of the day. They were three hours north of LA, and at this rate they wouldn’t be able to meet up with Jake and Sarah until later in the evening. But he had no choice. Catherine was his best lead. “We’ll go after your class.”
Catherine stared back at him, uncertainty in her eyes.
“What now?” he asked.
“It has occurred to me over the years that maybe Jessica had a reason to disappear, and by trying to find her I might be putting her in danger. I wonder if I did exactly that when I called the police last night.
It might be better for me to wait here. If Jessica wants to find me, she’ll find me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know where you are. You were in New