They waited for Josh to mull it over. He sat on the sofa, the frenetic energy of a few minutes ago giving way to a weary resignation. After a long moment of silence, he withdrew his phone from his pocket and placed the call quickly, almost as if he was afraid to take even another second to think about it.

“Put it on Speaker,” Malone said.

Josh did as he asked, and they listened to the phone ring and ring before voicemail picked up.

“This is Troy Hamilton. I can’t take your call right now, so please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Um, Dad, it’s me, Josh, calling you back. Call me when you get this message.” He ended the call and looked up at them. “What now?”

“Now we wait for him to return your call,” Malone said.

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AVERY DROVE SHELBY home to the townhouse they now shared in the District’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, his mind whirling with what Sam and Malone had told him about Troy Hamilton. There was no fucking way on God’s green earth that Troy Hamilton kidnapped a child and passed him off as his own for thirty years. No way.

He couldn’t deny, however, that Josh Hamilton bore a striking resemblance to the age-progression photo. But that didn’t prove a goddamned thing, and even if Josh turned out to be Taylor Rollings, that didn’t mean Troy took him or had any knowledge of a kidnapping.

The whole thing was so far beyond preposterous as to be laughable.

“Are you going to tell me about it?” Shelby asked as they made their way through streets congested by cars heading to the Capitals home game at the Verizon Center.

“I’m still trying to process what I just heard.”

“Can I help?”

He glanced at her and then back at the road, wanting to tell her but conditioned to keep his work to himself.

“If it makes any difference, I already know about Josh Hamilton’s possible connection to the missing kid in Tennessee.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was at the house the other day when Sam brought him home. I didn’t know then that he was your director’s son, but since we heard about the all-points bulletin earlier, I put two and two together to get holy moly.”

“Yeah, that’s putting it mildly.”

“What’re you thinking?”

“That there’s no fucking way that Troy had anything to do with kidnapping someone else’s kid. There’s just no way.”

“If it’s true that Josh is really Taylor, maybe there’s some sort of reasonable explanation for how he came to be in the Hamiltons’ custody.”

“What kind of explanation would be reasonable? No matter how it came to happen, if it’s true, his career is over and his reputation will be shredded.”