Chapter 15: The Search

"She went to her mother," Mitchell said, and he was already reaching for his keys.

"How do you know?"

"Because it's the only place in the world she'd run to."

We took the truck, and neither of us spoke on the road, and I held the wet gray phone in my lap.

The care home sat behind its hydrangeas with the flag hanging limp.

A man was already in the lobby.

He sat in a leather chair by the fish tank in a gray suit, with a paper cup of coffee on his knee.

I knew him from the Rainsford driveway, where he had held a car door for Bennett every Sunday for a year.

He stood when he saw us, and he smiled politely.

"Mr. Mitchell," he said. "Ms. Marrin. Mr. Bennett asked me to bring Miss Pennock home. She's not well."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"With her mother. I'm waiting for her to finish."

"How long have you been waiting?"

"Since five this morning."

Mitchell stopped in front of him.

"Who told you she was here?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say."

"Her phone's been in the bay since midnight," I said. "Nobody could track it. So who told you?"

The driver's smile didn't move.

"It's a short list of places she'd go, Ms. Marrin."

A woman with a walker had stopped in the hall to watch us, and so had a man in a bathrobe, and two nurses at the desk.

I raised my voice a little.

"Is that why you've been sitting in a lobby for five hours? Because Bennett has a list?"

"Ms. Marrin..."

"Because Lila doesn't want to go home, and you're going to take her anyway."

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