The name of the kid in the photo was Alicia Lavelle, and she was three years old when she disappeared. She was last seen with her mom on a fall day at the grocery store, then the post office, then nothing. She officially became a missing person the next day after what was described only as “a serious incident” at the family home.

That was almost twenty-five years ago.

There had been no concrete leads regarding her whereabouts in the years that had passed since. Jessica read the listing again. Then she studied the photo until the little girl’s features were seared onto her brain. But she didn’t have to. It was a face she already knew well.

The face in the photo was her own.

Jessica had seen enough pictures of herself as a kid in old family albums to know what she’d looked like at that age. But she’d never set eyes on this particular photo before.

She tapped out a rapid response to the email.

Who is this? Do I know you?

Jessica hit send and waited. A few seconds later, there was a new message. An automatically generated email advising that her message could not be delivered. She shut down the laptop.

She tucked a ten-dollar bill under the coffee cup, then slipped the laptop into her oversize shoulder bag and slid out of the booth. As she stood, Jessica’s legs turned to rubber, as though the coffee had been spiked with a generous measure of liquor. Ignoring the strange looks from Nancy, she made her way unsteadily toward the exit.

Outside in the parking lot, the temperature had hit the high eighties, and the heat from the steaming blacktop burned through the soles of her sneakers. Her armpits felt damp under the light cotton T-shirt she wore. She wiped sweaty hands on the back of her gray skinny jeans and walked over to a black Chevy Silverado languishing in the shade of a giant oak tree. The truck’s covered bed was large enough to hold two medium-size suitcases and a cardboard carton filled with the rest of her personal belongings. Everything she owned was stored in the back of a truck.

Jessica pointed the Silverado in the direction of the parking lot exit and punched letters and numbers into the car’s GPS system. There would be no interstate travel this time, no long days and longer nights spent on never-ending, identical-looking freeways. No need to toss a dime to decide which direction she was headed next. Her destination was a neighborhood in northeast LA, about forty miles away. Depending on traffic, it was a journey that should take no more than an hour.