Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [63]
“I want to bring Catherine down to meet Sarah. I think if they’re face-to-face we’ll know for sure.”
“That sounds like a good idea. When can you get here?”
“Unfortunately, not until late tonight. Catherine is teaching an art class, and she can’t miss it. I doubt we’ll get on the road before six o’clock. And it’s probably a three-hour drive from here. What’s happening on your end?”
“We’re at Sarah’s apartment. We found a pile of fake IDs and birth certificates for Sarah and Caitlyn,” he replied. “Sarah has been a dozen different people over the years, and it appears that she’s been on the run for a while.”
“That would jive with Catherine’s story.”
“Yes, it would. And if Sarah is Jessica, and she really grew up in foster care, then that could explain her lack of relatives. It would also give us a concrete place to start looking for her past. If she was in the foster care system, there have to be records.”
“Agreed. I also want to dig further into the Chicago connection. Jessica had neighbors, coworkers, friends there. Someone has to know more than we do.”
“You’d think so. By the way, Sarah’s neighbor here in LA called her Samantha.”
“Another alias.”
“Yes. Her neighbor also told us that someone may have tried to attack Sarah earlier this week, which could have triggered her run up the coast. There’s a sketch of the attacker here in the apartment, and Sarah seems to think it’s the same guy who was in her hospital room.”
“I wonder if Sarah was running here to see her old friend Catherine,” Dylan suggested. “Although, aside from a cryptic unsigned note, Catherine said she’s had no contact from Jessica in the past eight years. It’s possible I’m completely off base here. I hate to get your hopes up, Jake.”
“Well, until we know for sure, keep working the contact.”
“I will. I’ll let you know when we get on the road.”
Jake felt a rush of optimism as he ended the call. If they could trace Sarah to this Jessica, they would be a lot closer to finding out the story of her life, why she’d disappeared eight years ago, and what kind of trouble she’d been in. Maybe Chicago was where it had all started.
Slipping his phone back into his pocket, he looked around the apartment once more. Was he missing something? Sarah had zoned in on the hidden vent beneath the carpet. Were there other hiding places? Would she have been paranoid enough to use more than one location to secret away the clues to her past? The answer to that question was a definite yes.
He walked through the apartment, running his hands along the walls to see if he could find anything out of the ordinary. Nothing jumped out at him. He walked back to the bed, to the crib. He’d been trying very hard not to look at that crib, because it was the one piece of furniture in the room that really bothered him. Now he knew he had to face it head-on.
He moved over to the crib, putting his hands on the rail. Gazing down at the mattress, he could picture his daughter lying there with her blanket and her bear and her thumb in her mouth, and the image brought a knot of emotion to his throat. He couldn’t believe how much time had passed since he’d seen Caitlyn. She would be so much bigger now, talking, walking, a little person.
Would she remember him? When she saw him again, would she know he was her father? Or would he be a stranger to her?
It killed him that she probably wouldn’t recognize him now. She’d been away from him almost as long as she’d been with him, half of her short life.
Sarah had stolen so much from him—time he would never get back, moments he would never experience. He hated her for that. But the separation between him and his daughter was coming to an end. He would get Caitlyn back, and when he did he would never let her out of his sight again.
As for Sarah . . . he didn’t know what he would do about her. It had been easier to hate her when she was gone, when he wasn’t with her, when the good memories had been overwhelmed by the bad ones.
His gaze caught on a piece of fabric underneath the blanket. He moved the blanket aside and was shocked