You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

she was imagining other terrifying scenarios. That the junkies had fed meth to Karin or run off with her. That she was in some horrifying warehouse now, filled with international kingpins. That they were selling her into sex slavery, transporting her across borders. She felt Detective van Dijk’s hand on her shoulder. As if reading her mind, he said, “It’s best not to let the fear overtake you. We need you to stay sharp now so that we can use whatever information you may have to find her and get her back to you. Here’s what I can tell you: the fact that the other kids and two supervisors are also missing is in fact a good sign, at least as far as your daughter is concerned. My gut tells me that something entirely different is happening here, that may not have anything to do with this place. I just don’t know what yet.”

At least this was a little bit of relief to Grace. She needed more reassurances. “Please tell me that we’re going to find her,” she said.

He looked at her directly, his blue eyes translucent and focused. “As Dutch police, we don’t make those kinds of promises. But, Grace, I’m going to tell you that working with the Amber Alert in the Netherlands, we do boast a ninety-four percent success rate in finding lost kids within forty-eight hours. We’re especially good at it when we get early leads like we did in this case. So thank you for coming forward so quickly.”

“And the other six percent?” Grace wanted to know. “What happens to them?”

“Well, it’s interesting,” Detective van Dijk said, this time letting his eyes travel across the scenery. “The other six percent is most often a parent who makes off with their kid across international borders, to get them out of the reach of the other parent. We have a lot of that here, international child abduction. Sometimes it’s in the middle of a contentious divorce. Sometimes parents do it without even knowing that it’s illegal to run off with your kid to another country without the consent of the other parent. But usually they do know.”

Grace felt herself flush, a sudden heat in her chest and face. A parental abduction—could that be…It immediately struck her, like a punch to the gut, that Martijn could actually have something to do with this. He was missing too, but, well, that didn’t mean that he was also a victim. What if Detective van Dijk was right, that this meth camp had nothing to do with what had happened to Karin and the others?

“In most cases,” Dick van Dijk continued, “it’s the mothers who abduct the children, sometimes trying to get them out of the hands of bad husbands.” He paused. “I guess we can rule out that scenario, since I’m standing here talking to you.” He smiled ever so slightly, but the thought made her shiver.

Grace began to sweat inside her clothes. She unzipped her jacket and tugged at her collar. What he said made perfect sense. Wasn’t that what they always said? The people closest to you are the most likely ones to do you harm?

At that moment another police officer approached and pulled Ricardo aside. “Excuse me,” he said to Grace. “Detective, I need a private conference.” And the two of them walked away from her, just as her head began to reel from all the other possibilities of what could have happened to Karin. Could Martijn have followed her here on purpose? For what reason? To abduct her? But to where?

The two men had walked to a spot under a tree where the branches nearly grazed their heads. Watching them, she started to consider what Detective van Dijk had said and how it connected to what she had learned about Martijn that morning. Was it possible—could it be—that these things weren’t separate factors in her life, separate problems upending her existence, but one and the same? Could Martijn’s issues at home be linked to the problem with this dropping?

Maaike, who had been standing some yards off this whole time, trying to keep her dogs under control, lurched toward Grace on her booted foot as soon as she saw the police detectives move away. “Grace, did they give you any information?” she said softly. “Do they have any leads?”

Grace shook her head. “No, nothing yet,” she started. “Karin has been missing for hours, and we are only now trying to find out where she is. We’re so far behind. Maaike, I’m afraid, I’m terrified, and I don’t know what to do. I want to tell you something, and I need you to tell me if I’m crazy. Tell me if I’m losing my mind.”

Maaike nodded compassionately. “I’m sure this is all very upsetting,” she said. “You’re not losing your mind; you’re just naturally upset.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s that I’m afraid maybe my husband has something to do with this…” She didn’t say out loud the other thoughts she was thinking. “If it’s true, I’ll never forgive myself. To put her in danger…The only important thing in the world to me is Karin, and I’m afraid my husband, her stepfather, may have been involved…”

“I don’t understand,” Maaike said, steadying herself on her foot in the mud and rubbing Grace on the back. “Why would he be involved?”

Suddenly there was the sound of a car arriving, and a man and a woman jumped out. Grace recognized them from the drop-off: Margot’s parents. The mother was as thin as a praying mantis and the husband a stocky wrestler type, who walked directly to the police officers, demanding answers. “I want to know what has gone wrong here,” he said. “I thought my daughter was going to have an adventure, and we were going to have a night off.”

Detective van Dijk shook the father’s hand and started to explain how the operation was working.

“Please, Bart, allow the officers to do their work,” the mother implored. “Don’t get in their way.”

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