‘I have it right here.’ He stopped her with a hand on her arm as she snatched the paper he’d extended her way. ‘I expect an update the second you have a chance; I don’t care what time it is. I don’t like what my sixth sense is telling me about this disappearance.’

Some people swore the eyes were windows to the soul, and with the shadows filling Hammond’s eyes, Alyssa believed it. ‘I don’t like what it’s telling me, either.’ She flung her bag over her shoulder and pushed past him.

Unable to stop them, memories of Jane Doe’s then Callie McCormick’s battered bodies haunted her as she raced to her car. She shook her head. This couldn’t be happening again. She wouldn’t let it.

Her nerves singed with a renewed sense of urgency, she tossed her bag into the passenger seat. The second the ignition caught, she ordered her Bluetooth to call Cord. Just as she was about to join the traffic, a group of kids on bikes executing complicated wheelies and other tricks passed in front of her, forcing her to wait instead of punching the gas and speeding to Katelyn Phillipson’s home.

‘Hello?’

‘We’ve got another one. Thirteen years old, didn’t return home from school.’ The days of terror following Isaac’s kidnapping, of realizing he wasn’t home, tried to drag her under, but she shut it down.

‘Um, Lys, this is Sara. Cord’s in the shower. If you want I can drag him out, or I can have him call you right back.’

Already overwhelmed with the pressing need to find Katelyn, Alyssa didn’t have time to be embarrassed that she hadn’t realized she was speaking to Cord’s wife and not him. ‘Yes, please have him call me back immediately.’

‘You know what, I just heard the water shut off. I’ll just go let him know now.’

Muffled words whispered through her speakers, and then Cord was on the phone, his voice tight and controlled, something she still wasn’t used to hearing from his normal laid-back personality. ‘Lys, what’s going on? Sara said something about another missing girl?’

‘Katelyn Phillipson, thirteen years old, never returned home after school. That’s all Hammond gave me. I’ll be driving near your neck of the woods, so I’ll swing by and pick you up.’ Her gaze swung from the time displayed on her dash to the red lights of stopped traffic in front of her. Damn construction. ‘I’ll be there in more than five, less than ten.’

‘I’ll be outside waiting.’

And then he was gone.

Less than twenty minutes later, Alyssa pulled up to the residence on Glendale Avenue in Northeast Albuquerque Acres where many homes went for at least half a million. This one probably soared closer to the million-dollar range. Like Rachel Otis and Jersey Andrews, Katelyn Phillipson came from wealth.

Cord released his seat belt, fingers on the door handle. ‘Ready?’

‘Not even a little,’ Alyssa answered truthfully. She took a calming breath, then climbed out of her SUV. They’d barely cleared the courtyard when the front door opened, revealing a tired-looking man in his late forties wearing rumpled clothes. His thinning hair stuck out in tufts where he’d run his fingers through it. Fear and frustration rolled off him in waves, something Alyssa was all too familiar with because it had been her and her family just six weeks ago.