The text from my thirteen-year-old daughter arrived at 2:11 on a Friday afternoon, and the words were so unlike her that I left work without telling my supervisor where I was going. “Mom, pick me up 45 min early. Don’t park there.” A second message came before I could answer: “Behind the gym. Please just come.”
Chapter 1
My daughter, Ellie, was not dramatic. She was the child who made color-coded study guides, packed an umbrella when the forecast said twenty percent chance of rain, and reminded me three days before the electric bill was due because she had once seen me forget it. So when she added, “Don’t call me,” I closed the spreadsheet on my office computer, grabbed my purse, and walked out of the accounting firm with my heart hammering against my ribs.
I reached Westbrook Middle School twelve minutes later. The usual pickup lane was already filling with minivans and grandparents in sedans, but I kept driving, circling past the football field and turning onto the narrow service road behind the gymnasium. There, beyond the dumpsters and the fenced tennis courts, Ellie stood alone beneath a maple tree with her backpack clutched against her chest.
The instant I stopped, she ran.
She yanked open the passenger door, threw herself inside, and punched the lock button before I had even taken my foot off the brake. Then she bent low, breathing hard, her face pale beneath the freckles across her nose. I reached for her shoulder, but she caught my wrist.
“Mom, don’t turn around.”
“Ellie, what happened?”
“Look in the mirror. Just your rearview mirror.”
My eyes lifted.
Forty yards behind us, where the service road curved beside the baseball field, a gray sedan sat beneath a row of pine trees. Its headlights were off. The engine was running.
I felt something cold move through my chest. “Do you know that car?”
“I know it’s been following me.”
I looked at her then, despite her warning. “What do you mean, following you?”
“Drive first.”
There was no hysteria in her voice, and that frightened me more than tears would have. I shifted into drive and pulled away from the gym. The gray sedan remained still for perhaps five seconds.
Then it followed.
I did not turn toward home.
Ellie watched the passenger-side mirror while I drove through two residential streets, took an unnecessary right at the pharmacy, then doubled back toward downtown. The sedan stayed three or four cars behind us, never close enough to look aggressive and never far enough to lose us.
“Call 911,” I said.
“No. Go to the police station. It’s six minutes away.”
“How long has this been happening?”
“Four days.”
I nearly missed the next light. “Four days?”
“I needed to be sure.”
That sentence sounded so much like me that, under other circumstances, I might have smiled. I had spent eighteen years as a certified public accountant teaching clients not to trust impressions when evidence was available. Ellie had apparently listened too well.
The gray sedan turned when we turned onto Jefferson Avenue.
By the time I pulled into the covered entrance of the Westbrook Police Department, my hands were shaking badly enough that I had to try twice to shut off the ignition. A uniformed officer came outside after seeing us hurry from the car, and within minutes we were sitting in a small interview room with Detective Daniel Pierce, a broad-shouldered man in his late fifties who had the calm manner of someone who had learned that frightened people needed silence more than speeches.
He placed two bottles of water on the table. “Start wherever you want.”
I opened my mouth, but Ellie spoke first.
“Monday, I thought it was a coincidence.”
She pulled a small spiral notebook from her backpack and laid it on the table. In handwriting so neat it looked printed, she had recorded times, locations, and descriptions.
On Monday, she had taken the long path around the athletic field instead of walking toward our normal pickup spot. The gray sedan had appeared near the crosswalk. On Tuesday, she stayed late in the library after asking her science teacher for permission to finish a project. The car waited.
On Wednesday, without telling anyone why, she asked me to pick her up at the community pool three blocks from school. I remembered being irritated by the change and teasing her about becoming high-maintenance.
The gray car had been there too.
“Yesterday I walked to Ava Reynolds’s house,” Ellie said. “It followed until I went inside.”
Detective Pierce stopped writing. “Did Ava know you were testing the car?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
“No. Not even Mom.”
He looked at me.
I shook my head.
“And today?” he asked.
“I told Mom to come early and park behind the gym. Nobody knew.”
Pierce leaned back. “But the sedan did.”
Ellie nodded.
For the first time since she entered my car, her composure cracked. Her lower lip trembled, and she pressed it between her teeth.
Detective Pierce took the notebook and left the room. Fifteen minutes later he returned with a laptop and turned the screen toward us. Traffic cameras had captured the sedan following my Honda through downtown. One image showed the license plate clearly.
Pierce entered the number into a state database.
His expression changed.
“What?” I asked.
He looked from me to Ellie. “That plate belongs to a blue Ford pickup reported stolen last month.”
The room suddenly felt smaller.
“So whoever is following her stole a car?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. But they’re using stolen plates, which tells me they don’t want the vehicle traced.”
Ellie reached under the table and took my hand.
Pierce was quiet for a moment before asking, “Mrs. Morgan, who knows your daughter’s routine well enough to predict where she’ll be?”
I thought of neighbors, teachers, friends, my ex-husband living twelve hundred miles away, and half a dozen people who had been inside our home.
Then Pierce asked a different question.
“Who knows your routine well enough to know where both of you will be?”
And suddenly, without understanding why, I thought of my mother.
Then I thought of my younger brother.
And for the first time in my life, I wished I hadn’t.
