Chapter 11 - The Girl in the Red Coat
The nurse refused to speculate. She sealed the paperwork and sent it to the hospital's compliance office. Vincent arranged for Clara to be seen by a specialist that afternoon.
Meanwhile, Luca traced the red-coated woman from the traffic image. Her name was Marisol Vega. She had worked for Elena as a nanny before the disappearance, then vanished from every payroll record in Chicago.
A security camera outside a bus station showed Marisol buying two tickets to Madison four years earlier. One was for an adult. The other was for a child.
Vincent watched the footage three times.
"Find her," he said.
"Quietly?" Luca asked.
"No. Safely. I want her to know we are looking for Elena, not hunting her."
Clara listened from the sofa. "If Elena is alive, why hasn't she come back?"
"Because she believes I let her go," Vincent said. "And because someone made sure she had a reason to be afraid of me."
A secure email arrived from an attorney in Madison. It included a recent photograph of a woman outside a grocery store. Her hair was shorter, her face older, but Vincent knew her immediately.
Elena.
A little girl stood beside her, holding a paper bag with a silver star drawn on it.
Sofia.
Vincent reached for the desk, suddenly needing something solid beneath his hand.
Then he noticed the date on the photograph.
May you like
Marisol's old address led to an apartment that had been empty for years. A neighbor remembered a woman who paid rent in cash and took a little girl to the library every Saturday. She had left suddenly after a dark SUV began parking across the street.
It had been taken three days earlier.
