She could hear her mother’s voice from just hours ago: You know you would never be left alone, her mother said. If something ever did happen—and I’m not saying that anything will—but you need to know you will always be taken care of, sweetheart. Your aunt Meg would take care of you—

“Oh my God,” Leah said, fear grabbing hold of her like a hand closing around her throat. She wasn’t supposed to open the door to strangers, but he was from the sheriff’s department and he knew her name. He wouldn’t know her name if he was a stranger. Someone had to have told him.

“She’s in pretty bad shape, Leah,” he said. “We need to go now.”

Her mother needed her. What if she died? What if she died before Leah could get to her and tell her how sorry she was for all the hateful things she’d said that morning?

She had to go.

Chapter 50

50

“Ballencoa had to know she was here,” Tanner said. “Since when do we assume he ever tells the truth about anything?”

“The time line doesn’t lie,” Mendez said. “He moved here the beginning of May. How could he know Lauren was going to move here a month later? She didn’t send him a change of address card ahead of time.”

He remembered Lauren saying that very thing to him when he had pulled her over that first afternoon.

Do you have any reason to think he might know you’re here?

I didn’t send him the ‘We’re Moving’ notice, she had snapped. Do you think I’m an idiot?

Had Ballencoa seen her by chance—as Lauren had claimed she had seen him by chance in the Pavilions parking lot? Was it dumb luck that he had come across her?

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Mendez muttered. “And if Lauren thought he knew she was here, she would have been looking over her shoulder. She would have noticed his vehicle when she came out of the shooting range that day.

“She didn’t think he knew she was here,” he said. “That’s why she was so freaked out when she found that photograph. If she was the one hunting him, how did he know where to find her?”

A bad feeling scratching at the back of his neck, he went to the phone and called Latent Prints.

“Did you guys lift anything usable off that photograph I brought you a couple of days ago?”

“Actually, yes. A thumb and two pretty good partials,” the tech told him. “We haven’t heard anything back yet.”

“Check on that, will you?” Mendez said. “ASAP, please. I’m at extension thirty-four.”

The call came back ten minutes later.

“I’ve got your hit, detective. The print is a probable match to a former guest of the state penal system.”