The Girl and the Hidden Trail (Emma Griffin® FBI Mystery Book 39) by A.J. Rivers

Author:A.J. Rivers [Rivers, A.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A.J. Rivers
Published: 2026-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

By the time we stop for lunch, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and we’ve made no headway in finding Hudson Collins. The information from the school record about when he withdrew Bridget from school shows she was taken out only a couple of weeks before the mysterious Valentine’s Day post, a week after the anniversary of her mother’s death.

I was able to find the company Hudson had worked for in Hunters Ridge, but all they could tell me was that he quit without notice that February. He left no forwarding address, and there was never any contact from future employers for a reference.

“We know he left Hunters Ridge,” I say, peeling the paper wrapper off the end of the straw in my peach lemonade and crinkling it between my fingers before tossing it onto the restaurant table. “They’d been renting the same house for eight years and just abandoned it. Didn’t tell the landlord they were leaving or anything. They were just gone. In less than a month, he withdrew Bridget from school, quit his job, closed his bank account, and abandoned his house. He definitely left town. But where the hell did he go?”

“I have no idea. There’s nothing to follow. It’s like both he and Bridget just ceased to exist,” Noah says.

“As far as we can tell. Unfortunately, all we have access to is public information. We don’t have anything that would get us a warrant for his financial records or anything like that. Judges don’t like to grant warrants on the basis of ‘It seems weird, and I want to know.’”

“They should.”

“Seems like a bit of a slippery slope. But it would come in seriously handy in situations like this. We’re right on the border. If I could prove that it was related to a missing child, it would be a valid request. But what we have is a potentially formerly missing adult woman who shared a memory about a child who would now be an adult,” I say.

“Not quite as compelling.”

“No. Bridget was never reported missing, so officially, she’s not missing. There’s no legal requirement for being publicly findable. Her school records don’t have any notations about teachers or the administration suspecting abuse or neglect. There was never a child protection issue. She was never considered at risk. Her father had every legal right to take her out of school if he wanted to. He could move her wherever he wanted to go. As long as he enrolled her in school wherever they ended up, he wouldn’t be on the hook for truancy issues.

“I just don’t understand how there is nothing out there about either of them. They don’t show up on any other social media. No news reports. He’s not on any of the job hiring or résumé websites. They withdrew from life in Hunters Ridge and then just vaporized.”

“It’s possible he changed his name. And maybe even hers,” Noah says.

“But why? That’s not a normal reaction to your wife dying. People don’t respond to a tragedy like that by cutting their losses and starting over with new names.

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