“Don’t talk then,” she said and followed me to the car.

I let her get in and thought about it as we drove out. “You can’t go with me,” I said.

“I know,” Casey said. “But I can be there when you get her. I’m good with kids, you know.” I knew she was smiling. I didn’t want to see it, not now. I looked over at her and tried not to think of what was about to happen.

I didn’t know anyway, not yet.

—

We drove out to a small subdivision on a cul-de-sac, five houses that were all being built at the same time, none of them finished. They had the walls up and the roofs on, and most of the windows, ready for the wind and rain, and working inside when the winter came, if it ever did. There was a time when I would have been happy enough to go through those houses, pulling out anything I could, tools, copper, even leftover bricks and wood. I wasn’t going back there, not now. We didn’t go down the cul-de-sac, but drove past and found a utility road about half a mile away where you could see the backs of the houses, three of them anyway. We parked and Casey looked at the map. “Is he still there?” I asked her. “He’s gone,” she said. We couldn’t be sure which house he’d been in, but it was good to have Mobley out of the way. Maybe he was gone for the night, not expecting me until the morning. I could only hope that no one was expecting me.

“Stay here and keep watching,” I told her. “If you see Eva come out by herself, get her and take her with you. Don’t wait for me.”

“Does anyone ever listen to that?”

“Don’t be like anyone else,” I said. It was going to be dark soon and my better judgment told me to wait and approach the house in the dark. I didn’t wait. I wanted to get Eva.

I grabbed the small black bag and opened it and handed the gun to Casey. I didn’t know what to do with it, and she saw me hesitate. “I know my way around a gun,” she said, “and I don’t have any problem using it on anyone who would kidnap a kid.” I looked at her; she was calm and her eyes were hard and strong and steady. “I mean it,” she said.

“Maybe you should go and I’ll stay here.” It wasn’t time for a joke.

“You know what you’re doing,” Casey said. “You’ve thought it through. You’re going to go get your daughter.”

“I’ll get her.”