A countywide alert went out within minutes.
Rick’s truck was located through a toll-camera image forty miles north.
He was heading toward the wooded area near an old hunting cabin owned by his uncle.
The same cabin Mia mentioned in the video.
Laura heard the location and stopped breathing.
“The hole.”
Detective Vasquez took her by both shoulders.
“We are going to find them.”
Police would not let us follow.
Laura sat in my living room wrapped in a blanket while officers searched her house.
I made tea no one drank.
Every few minutes, she asked whether anyone had called.
No one had.
At one point, she looked toward my window.
“The children chose your house first.”
I turned to her.
“Why?”
“Because Ben broke your flowerpot last summer.”
I remembered.
A baseball came over the fence and knocked a clay pot from my porch.
Ben appeared at my door crying before I even noticed it was broken.
