The years ticked themselves down in her mind, like a countdown.
Ten years ago, Justin had been stolen from her.
Nine years ago, David divorced her. She couldn’t blame him. Losing a child put so much stress and strain on the parents that marriages often dissolved. In their case, David hadn’t just lost his son, he’d also lost his wife. From the time she’d regained consciousness after being stabbed, her every thought, her life, had focused on finding Justin. There simply hadn’t been anything left in her for David.
Eight years ago, while following yet another lead that had produced no information about Justin, she had recovered a stolen baby. The infant had been more dead than alive at the time, but had survived, and Milla had found some comfort for herself in seeing the mother’s hysterical joy on having the child returned. She herself didn’t have a happy ending, but perhaps she could produce happy endings for others.
Seven years ago, she had organized Finders. It was a group, some paid employees but mostly volunteers, who mobilized to hunt missing children, whether they were simply lost or had been stolen. Police departments across the country were underfunded and understaffed, and they simply didn’t have the time or manpower to adequately devote to the problem. The difference between finding a lost child dead or alive sometimes boiled down to how many bodies could be brought into the search. Milla was good at mobilizing. Thanks to her high visibility after Justin’s kidnapping, she was also very good at fund-raising.
Six years ago, David had remarried. It hurt more than she could have imagined. Part of her resented that he had rebuilt his life without her, without Justin, but for the most part she simply hurt. She’d loved David so much. She still loved him, though their time for being in love had ended the day Justin was stolen. David was, simply, the best man she’d ever known. Everyone handled grief differently, and David had handled his by throwing himself into his work, by saving lives that would otherwise have been lost. He’d had the practice of medicine to get him through the pain. And Milla had continued her unrelenting search for her son.
Five years ago, Finders had accepted its first missing persons case. They didn’t just search for lost children now, they would look for anyone who was lost. The pain of those left behind, wondering what had happened, was too great for her to ignore.
Four years ago, David and his new wife had had a child. Milla had been agonized when she heard his wife was pregnant. What if it was a boy, another son? It was small of her and she knew it, but she didn’t think she could bear it if David’s child was a boy. To her immeasurable relief, they’d had a daughter. And Milla kept looking for her own child.
Three years ago, at the family Christmas celebration at her parents’ home in Ohio, her brother, Ross, had brusquely told her it was time to get on with her life and stop letting something that had happened seven years before dominate all their family get-togethers. To her horror, her sister, Julia, hadn’t spoken up in her defense, and had refused to meet her gaze. Since then, Milla saw her parents only when her siblings weren’t also visiting. The holidays were lonely, but she didn’t think she’d ever be able to forgive Ross for his callousness.
Two years ago, she’d heard the name Diaz for the first time. After eight years of nothing, finally, there was a whisper of information that could possibly have a connection to Justin.
A year ago, David and his wife had a second child, a son. When she heard, Milla cried herself to sleep that night.
Tonight . . . tonight, she’d seen him, the monster who had destroyed her. She’d been so close, only to come up empty-handed once again.
But he was still alive. That had been a deeply buried fear, that he would die before she could talk to him. She didn’t care what happened to him, so long as she could find out from him what he’d done with her baby. And now that she knew for certain he was alive, and what area he was in, she would intensify her search. She’d hunt him down like a rabid dog, or die herself in the effort.
4
A little after four-thirty, Milla let herself into her condo. She was bone-tired, and so dispirited she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and hide under the covers.
So close.
She couldn’t get the refrain out of her head. For years she’d kept her hope and determination alive with almost nothing to go on, yet now that she’d actually seen the man and knew he was still alive, knew what area he was in, she felt nothing but despair for having failed to capture him.
“I won’t let it get me down,” she said aloud, going into the bathroom and stripping off her filthy clothes. “I won’t.” That was how she’d gotten through the hell of the past ten years, by simply refusing to give in. Sometimes she felt like one of the Japanese soldiers after World War II, fighting on long after the war was over because they couldn’t accept the outcome.
You’ll never find him, people had said. Get on with your life, her own brother had told her. Justin had been so young when he was taken that she had no idea of how he would look, no way of identifying him short of DNA tests, and she couldn’t go around the country demanding that all ten-year-old boys have DNA tests. That was assuming he was even in the United States. He could be anywhere. He could be in Canada, or still in Mexico. One well-meaning but totally demented woman had even told her it might help to have a funeral for him, and lay him to rest.
The fact that the woman was still alive was a testament to Milla’s self-control.
Justin was not dead. If she ceased believing that, she wouldn’t be able to function.