The Amateurs_Last Seen by Sara Shepard

Author:Sara Shepard [Shepard, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hot Key
Published: 2018-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

AT 7:00 A.M. the next day, Maddox leaned against his Jeep in the parking lot of a roadside Motel 6 and stretched his calves. He’d run seven miles this morning, and even though he’d had to wake up at 5:00 to do so, even though he had to jog down a creepy stretch of highway with barely any shoulder, it had felt delicious, cleansing, and necessary.

He spied Seneca across the parking lot, coming out of the lobby. She walked over to him, wordlessly handing him a cup of coffee she must have grabbed from the check-in desk. “Thanks,” he said, and took a long sip. So did Seneca. The coffee tasted tinny, just the way Seneca hated it, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her hair was wild around her face, uncombed.

Maddox cleared his throat. “Tough time sleeping?”

She looked at him blearily. “Didn’t you?”

Maddox nodded. “I only got a couple of hours. Running sort of cleared my head, though.”

Seneca opened her mouth, looking like she was going to say something snarky about his addiction to exercise, but then wilted. “I wish I had something like running.”

“You can always come with me. I’d go slow, just for you.” He gave her a little wink, expecting her to jab back with something like, Hey, who says I’m slow? But Seneca just stared into her coffee cup.

She looked so miserable. It was weird, not knowing the right thing to say to her anymore. He wanted to tell her he understood. He wanted to tell her how panicked he felt, too—they had mere hours left to find Aerin, and things weren’t looking good. He also wanted to say he wished she’d talk to him more, open up. But the words felt jammed in his throat. How was it that they’d felt so connected just two days ago, and now they were like strangers?

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Maybe you can sleep on our way to the Lords’?” he suggested, but by the look Seneca gave him, he had a feeling she was up for good.

He went back into the room and showered, and then Madison roused from sleep, had coffee, and they were ready to go. No one said much as they climbed into the Jeep and Maddox started the motor. “What’s the Lords’ address again?” Maddox asked aloud.

Seneca read it off. Maddox typed it into the GPS on his phone. The sun blazed in his eyes as he made a left onto the parkway. Was it crazy they were going to the same place Brett had already tried? Did they really think they’d get farther than he did? It was possible—for one thing, Brett was so much younger when he questioned the couple, and he was still emotionally scarred from all that had happened. But still, Maddox wasn’t sure.

“Take the next exit,” Madison recited, reading the GPS app on Maddox’s phone. They were going west. In the articles about the fire involving Candace’s children, Candace’s parents were listed as living in a town called West Prune, New Jersey; twenty years later, 411.

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