“Now we hope she calls you back.” They waited thirty minutes in uncomfortable silence, but the phone never rang. Sam put her notebook and a pen on the coffee table. “Give me her phone number and a list of where she might be. Friends, hangouts, anything you know about her whereabouts. If you have phone numbers for the friends, that would help.”

“I don’t know much about her friends. She keeps a lot of things to herself.”

At that, Sam snapped. “You understand that as her mother it behooves you to know what she’s doing and who she’s doing it with, right?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“I’ll tell you exactly how it’s my business. Kids like yours, allowed to run free and do whatever the hell they want whenever they want, are the ones who end up in trouble, Mrs. Danziger. Sometimes they end up in very grave trouble, which leads them to my homicide squad or worse yet, the morgue. Not to mention, your lovely daughter checked my niece out of a boarding school in Virginia last night, and now my niece is in the ICU at GW, and your daughter is nowhere to be found. So don’t tell me it’s none of my business!”

“Sam.” The single word from Avery brought her out of the exhaustion-fueled rage and back to the reality that she was getting nowhere fast with Mrs. Danziger, who was now crying softly.

“I’m so sorry about your niece. I don’t know what Hoda was thinking going to Virginia. She knows she’s not allowed to leave the city without telling me.”

“How did she get to Virginia, Mrs. Danziger?” Avery asked.

Sam was thankful to him for taking over the interview because she was on the verge of ripping the stupid woman’s stomach out her mouth and bitch-slapping her with it.

“She...she has a car. It’s an old Toyota Camry.”

“We need the license plate number and registration information. Can you get that for us?”

“I’ll see if I can find it.” Probably grateful for anything that took her away from Sam’s hateful glare, she got up and bolted from the room.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked in that goddamned accent that made her want to punch him.

She had to remind herself that he was helping her and wasn’t part of the problem. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“I’m tired, and I’m furious, but I’m fine.”

Mrs. Danziger returned with some paperwork and made a wide circle around Sam to hand it to Avery.

He flipped through it quickly, made a couple of notes and handed it back to her with his business card. “When you hear from your daughter, I want you to call me.”

“I will.”

“I also need a recent photo of her.”

“I have some on my phone.”