“Beck—I mean Mercy, she was here. She tracked me down somehow.”
A dumbfounded Pine stood there shaking.
“Mercy was at your house?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
When Atkins told her Pine barked, “And you’re just calling me now!” Pine felt like her head was about to explode. She could barely breathe.
“She was very upset. Which made me very upset. I’ve been crying for what seems like days. But I finally decided I needed to call and let you know what happened.”
Pine got her nerves under control and refocused. “What did she want?”
“She wanted to know if I had a way to get in touch with Desiree.”
“And what did you say?”
“I . . . I had a phone number. I know I should have told you, but I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Forget about that. It doesn’t matter now. Just tell me, did you give Desiree’s number to Mercy?”
“Yes, I did. But she doesn’t go by Mercy. She goes by Eloise now, El for short. She didn’t tell me her last name. Eloise is from the children’s book. That’s what she told me. I brought her a copy of it while she was . . . with Joe and Desiree. I . . . I did try to help her, you know,” she added in a pitiful tone.
When Pine said nothing, Wanda added, “Why would she want the phone number? I really don’t think Desiree will talk to her. I mean, why would she?”
“That’s not why she wanted it,” said Pine.
“What do you mean?” Wanda added, her voice now laced with panic. “Wait, can she track Desiree down from just her phone number?”
“Yes,” said Pine, who had a sick feeling that that was exactly what Mercy was going to do and might already have done. In fact, Pine could have gotten that information faster through paying to access an internet search database than waiting for the Bureau to provide it. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. “There are ways on the internet to get a physical address from a phone number.”
“My God. Then she might already be wherever Desiree is, if it’s not too far away from Huntsville.”
Pine was almost in a trance. Her heart soared because as of this morning her sister was alive. But if she was going to try to get to Desiree? Her throat was so dry she had trouble talking. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself because her legs seemed to have lost their ability to support her. A simple question occurred to her. “What . . . what did she look like?”
“Tall, even taller than you. And very strong looking. But she was always that way. And her beautiful hair was all gone. She had cut it so close to her scalp, oh, it was sad. She looked like she was—”
“—in the military,” said Pine, suddenly remembering something.
“Yes, exactly, now I’d also wanted to let you know that some other people were here asking questions and—”
Pine heard but really didn’t register these words. She dropped her phone on the bed and rushed from the room. She banged off the walls in the hall and didn’t even bother with the elevator. She took the stairs, leaping three steps at a time. She hit the main floor, burst through the door, shoved two attendants and one guest out of the way, and sprinted through the lobby on her way to the hotel’s gym.
Please, please, please. Mother of God please.
One needed a hotel key card to access the gym. Pine didn’t bother to use hers, she simply kicked the door open. She looked frantically around and her hopes plummeted. The only person there was an elderly man reading an iPad on a recumbent exercise bike. He had nearly fallen off it when she forced the door open. Pine ran over to him and described Mercy to him.