“Oh, right.” Disappointment strained his voice.
“I was just wondering if—”
“My wife’s not back. I haven’t heard from her. I’ve got to go. I’m here in the hospital with my two-year-old, and she’s about as sick as she can get.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry. Really. Sorry for bothering you.”
I expected a rapid beep to follow as he hung up on me. But he didn’t hang up.
“Look . . .” he said a moment later, stopping for a heavy breath. “I can tell you something about your daughter, but you’re not going to want to hear it.”
“What is it?” My voice sounded weak in my ears. He did know something.
“Lady, I’m just going to come out and tell you, then maybe you can quit wondering about where she’s been and what she’s been doing. Just like I’ve been able to quit wondering about my wife.”
Taking in a rigid breath, I managed to say, “Perhaps you’d better explain.”
“She’s a prostitute.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m calling a spade a spade. I found both my wife and your daughter on a website where they do stuff with men for money.”
I didn’t know his wife or what kind of past she’d had. But Kara wouldn’t do this. “You’re mistaken. My daughter doesn’t need money. I send her through more than enough.”
“Well, maybe she wanted more than what you were sending. You can look up the website yourself. You have to register and pay if you want to try sending her a message.”
A band of pressure tightened on my forehead as I emptied my handbag on the bed and grabbed a pen and notebook from the tangle of items. “Okay, yes, give it to me.”
I wrote down a username and the name of a website, but I was shaking my head the whole time. “It must be another girl who looks like Kara.”
“You can judge that for yourself. Anyway, I’ll leave it with you.”
The phone went dead.
Maybe I would have preferred he’d hung up before telling me any of this.
In all the scenarios I’d had in my head, this hadn’t been one of them. I’d set up an automatic payment of $500 per week for food and accommodation—surely that was enough? And she’d had an extra job at the shoe store on weekends. What more did she need?
Of course he was mistaken. He’d barely even looked at Kara’s photo when I’d shown it to him. I wasn’t going to find Kara on this horrible website.
I took my tablet from the nearby desk and typed in the website name. The homepage of the site wasn’t what I expected. It was all very discreet. Just plain black, a logo and the word ENTER.
Giving myself a username based on an expensive car model, I signed up.
I began the search for Lilac Lolita.
So many girls. So many very young girls with variations on the name Lolita. I shivered as I thought of the customers who wanted their very own Lolita.
There she was.
My daughter.
Kara.
Unmistakable.
No, no, no.
She barely looked like herself. She wasn’t the girl I’d said goodbye to at the airport. The face in the photo seemed so . . . deadened. The light gone from her eyes. How had she changed so much in such a short time?
It was incredible that Gray had recognised her from the photo I’d shown him—a picture of her sitting in the shady spot near our swimming pool, sweet in her white sundress. She looked nothing like that on this terrible website. In my mind, Kara was some kind of composite of baby, child and teenager. I wasn’t ready for her to become a woman. I certainly wasn’t ready for this.
Clicking on her photo, I brought up her profile page and quickly scanned the description she’d given. She said she wanted to be spoiled by a daddy figure. I was thankful the page gave no indication of the intimate things she’d be willing to do.
She’d been a member for four months. She shouldn’t be on here. The site said it did background checks. Obviously, they didn’t, else they would have discovered her age.
It was too late to call the police station. I’d have to call tomorrow.
No, I couldn’t wait.
I had to call.
Leaving the page up, I called the detective’s number.
Someone else answered. A Detective Annabelle Yarris.
“Yes, hello, this is Mrs Lundquist. I recently reported that my daughter was missing—Kara. I have some new information.”
“Is it urgent?”
“Well . . . it could be. I just found out my daughter signed up with an escort site. And she’s missing. She’s only seventeen.”