“Can you call her so we can have another lesson soon?”

“I will.”

Savi diverts her attention back to the face painting and the many options on the cardboard stand. “I want a tiger!”

Crystal glances at her phone again and sees two missed calls from Pam and a short text from Rebecca, but it’s cryptic. She suppresses the urge to immediately call her back. Rebecca will call when she can. She doesn’t want to come off as needy or desperate.

“Look, Mom.” Savi lifts her hands and roars. “I’m going to be a tiger.” Savi’s face has already been painted a bright orange with a giant dirty makeup sponge.

“Vicious.” Crystal laughs.

Savi closes her eyes and lets the artist continue.

Crystal makes polite conversation with the girl and glances over her shoulder, to where Savi thought she saw Rebecca. But no one is there.

Only shadows from the trees.

24

BEC

I put Jake on speaker. My hands shake as I await his news.

“Alright, so there’s a nearby museum that has a surveillance camera. I’ve requested the tapes, which should give us a pretty clear shot of the park and maybe even show us what happened. I’m also going to check street cameras.”

“That’s good,” Jess offers. “When do you get the footage?”

“Not sure. Working on it.”

Bated breath drains from my lungs. “Did you get my voice mail about the footprint?”

“I did. I’m looking into that as well. Maybe another hospital we can try outside the area, but it looks like a company issue, not a hospital one.”

I tell him about my calls to the other hospitals and the flyers, even though Jess slaps me on the arm.

“Rebecca.” His disappointment is swift. “You can’t do things like that. There’s a reason we don’t put out an immediate blast. It’s strategic. You could have just compromised this case.”

“I had to do something,” I say.

“I know you feel that way, but that’s not helping.” Something muffles his voice, then he’s back on. “Look, I’m on a pretty intense case, but I’ll keep you updated. Keep your phone on.”

I look toward Jess. “Now what?”

“We do what he says. Keep your phone on. We’ll keep hunting on Facebook. We might not know where your kid is, but we can try and find out who this one belongs to. I’ll look at all the forums, photos of women in the area with their babies. See if we can do some digging.”

I nod. The baby’s cry stalks the charged silence, and we keep walking to placate him. I ignore the part of me screaming that these early hours are critical. And here I am, walking home from a parade, taking care of another baby like I don’t have a care in the world.

Coward.

“Rebecca! Jess!”