Pushing away the comforter, he then removed his T-shirt and his scrubs. She relished the thought of what awaited. He lay down, and then gestured for her to join him. She slipped out of her jacket and her jeans.

In the dim light from the hall, she watched his eyes watch her—every part of her—as she undressed. She’d worn her pale pink sweater, the one she’d come to love because he’d once told her she looked beautiful in it. “It makes your face glow,” he’d said. She started to remove it just as John’s phone rang. Sharp. Loud. Incessant.

He groaned as it kept ringing. “I would shout out every single swear word I know, but it wouldn’t change the fact that I have to answer it.”

“Right,” Annie replied. Being in a relationship with a police officer had both perks and pitfalls.

He rolled to one side and freed the phone from its charger. “Sergeant Lyons,” he said while Annie climbed onto the bed and nestled beside him. “She is.”

Then Annie sensed his body grow rigid. He sat up. “They’re at your house.” He paused. “Aren’t they?” Another pause. “Where are you? Aren’t you on the Cape? I thought the boats were canceled.” He paused again. Then he stood up, his jaw set firmly, one hand on one hip, his libido wilted. “Are you fuc . . . Are you kidding me?” He darted to a corner of the room and grabbed his jeans from the back of a chair. He yanked them on with one hand.

Annie snapped on the bedside lamp. Something was wrong. Lucy . . .

“I’ll be right there,” he said, then hung up and quickly called another number. He waited . . . and waited . . . as lines of frustration deepened on his face. “It’s Dad,” he hissed into the phone. “Where are you? Call me. Now.” He disconnected the call and shoved the phone into his pocket. “Damn her,” he grumbled. “What the hell is she up to?”

Annie quickly started to dress. “Is she okay?”

“Good question. My daughter seems to have disappeared. For that matter, so has Maggie.” He pulled on his shirt.

“I take it that Maggie’s mother isn’t on the Cape?”

“She came back on the two thirty. So Lucy lied.”

Annie bit her lip.

Wiping his hands across his face, he said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re a cop,” she said, as she straightened her pink sweater. “You do know what to do. Try to imagine that she’s someone else’s kid.” Then she brushed back her hair and followed him down the stairs.

“Come with me?” he asked.

“Of course.” She stopped him at the door, put a hand on his arm. “John, she’ll be all right. She’s a teenager.”

“I know that all too well.”

* * *

“What did your daughter say?” John grilled Maggie’s mother.