The so-called blue-collar criminals—bank robbers and drug dealers—weren’t so bad to deal with. For them, getting caught and doing time was an accepted risk, a cost of doing business. They were professionals, like she was. In a weird way, they understood that Allison was just doing her job.
It was the other ones, the ones who had been fairly upstanding citizens until they snapped at dinner and stabbed their spouse or decided that bank robbery was a perfect way to balance the family budget. Those were the ones you needed to watch out for. Their feelings for Allison were personal. Personal—and dangerous. For now, she would be extra careful, and Rod had alerted the Portland police to make additional patrols past her house.
Her watch said 6:21. She told herself that she wouldn’t pick up the white stick again until 6:30. The test only took three minutes, but she wanted to be sure. How many times had she watched one of these stupid tests, willing two crossed lines to show up in the results window but seeing only one?
“I’ll be back in about forty minutes, honey,” Marshall called from the living room. She heard the sound of the front door closing.
Allison hadn’t told him she was going to take the test today. She was four days late, but she had been four days late before. After so many failed tests, so many months in which being even a day late had filled her with feverish speculation, Marshall no longer inquired too closely into the details.
When they started this journey two years ago, she had been sure that she and Marshall would conceive easily. Any teenager could have a baby. How hard could it be? She and Marshall had always been scrupulous about birth control. Now it seemed like a bitter joke. She had wasted hundreds of dollars preventing something that would never have happened anyway.
They had started trying a month after her thirty-first birthday, giddy to be “playing without a net.” At the end of the first month, Allison was sure she was pregnant: her breasts felt different, the taste of food changed, and she often felt dizzy when she stood up. But then her period arrived on schedule.
As the months passed she got more serious, tracked her temperature, made charts. Even though she had read all the statistics about how fertility declined with every passing year, it hadn’t seemed like they applied to her.
How many crime victims had she met who had never believed that anything bad could happen to them? Because they were special?
“It’s in your hands, Lord,” she murmured. The idea was one she struggled with every day, at home and at work. How much was she responsible for? How much was out of her control? She had never been good at letting go.
To distract herself, Allison turned on the small TV they kept in the bedroom on top of an oak highboy. After a Subaru commercial, the Channel Four news anchor said, “And now we have a special bulletin from our crime reporter, Cassidy Shaw. Cassidy?”
Allison’s old friend stood in front of a beautiful white Victorian house. She wore a coral suit that set off her blonde shoulder-length hair. Her blue eyes looked startlingly topaz—either she was wearing colored contacts or the TV set needed to be adjusted.
“A family is asking for your help in finding a teenager who has been missing from Northwest Portland since yesterday afternoon,” Cassidy said, wearing the expression reporters reserved for serious events. “Seventeen-year- old Katie Converse left her parents a note saying she was taking the family dog for a walk—and she has not been seen since. Here’s a recent photo of Katie, who is on winter break from the United States Senate’s page program.”
The camera cut to a photograph of a pretty blonde girl with a snub nose and a dusting of freckles. Allison caught her breath. Even though Katie was blonde and Lindsay had dark hair, it was almost like looking at her sister when she was Katie’s age. The nose was the same, the shape of her eyes, even the same shy half smile. Lindsay, back when she was young and innocent and full of life.
Cassidy continued, “Katie is five feet, two inches tall and weighs 105 pounds. She has blue eyes, blonde hair, and freckles. She was last seen wearing a black sweater, blue jeans, a navy blue Columbia parka, and Nike tennis shoes. The dog, named Jalape?o, is a black Lab mix.
“Authorities are investigating. The family asks that if you have seen Katie, to please call the number on your screen. This is Cassidy Shaw, reporting from Northwest Portland.”
Allison said a quick prayer that the girl would be safe. But a young woman like that would have no reason to run away, not if she was already living away from home. Nor was she likely to be out partying. Allison knew a little bit about the page program. It was fiercely competitive, attracting smart, serious, college-bound students whose idea of fun was the mock state legislature. The kind of kid Allison had been, back when she and Cassidy were in high school.