Bree nodded and we drove across Seventeenth, down the block past Mozart Place, and found a spot to park near the Children’s Health Center. It was a quarter to twelve when we walked back toward the intersection, carrying that snapshot of Ava, months old now. Part of me wondered whether this was a wild-goose—
“There she is, Alex!” Bree cried, and pointed south on Seventeenth, to the west side of the street.
Ava was walking toward the dealers along the wall of the empty store. She must have heard Bree’s voice, because she went on instant alert, scanned the area, and spotted me starting to trot in her direction.
She turned on a dime and exploded back the way she’d come.
“Ava!” I yelled, and took off after her.
“We just want to talk!” Bree shouted as she flanked Ava on the east sidewalk.
Ava sped up. She obviously knew this part of the city, because when she cleared the back of the Euclid Market, she darted west, jumping a low fence made of planks and dropping into an overgrown lot that had become a dump of sorts.
By the time I reached the lot, Ava had scrambled across two mattresses and was well up a mound of dirt and old construction debris. The abandoned lot sat at the corner of an alley that led back toward Eighteenth. That was where I thought she was heading. That was where Bree thought she was going, too, because I spotted my wife angling at the alleyway.
“Ava!” I shouted, trying to stop her.
But there was no stopping her, and she didn’t go for the alley. Like a spooked squirrel, she sprang onto a chain-link fence at the rear of the lot, climbed it, then grabbed the top of a wooden fence beyond. She hauled herself over both fences into darkness.
I scrambled up to the first fence and looked over the second. Ava was across the backyard of one row house and climbing into the next.
“We want to help you!” I yelled.
But she never slowed. We had lost her all over again.
“At least she’s here in DC,” I said as we trudged back to the car. “As long as she stays, we’ll find her again.”
Bree, however, was quiet and somber the entire way home.
“She doesn’t trust us anymore,” she said as we climbed up onto the porch.
“I know,” I said. “And I don’t know why.”
“Guilt?” Bree said, putting her key in the lock and opening the door into the front hallway.
It was past midnight and the house was dark. By my count we had about eighteen hours until Cam Nguyen and the babies would be killed.
I pulled out my phone to see if the police artists had e-mailed or texted me. They had not.
“Beer?” Bree asked.
“I don’t think I could sleep without one,” I said, turning on the light in the dining room.
She fished two beers out of the little fridge we were relying on during the remodel, opened one, and handed it to me.
The house phone rang. It surprised us not only because of the late hour but also because it seemed the only people who used the number anymore were telemarketers. I checked caller ID, didn’t recognize the number, and answered harshly, “Kind of late to be selling something, isn’t it?”
“It’s me.”
“Ava?” I said, punching on the speakerphone. “Where are you?”
“We’ll come right away,” Bree said anxiously.
“Please,” Ava said, choking with tears. “Don’t try to find me anymore. Please just forget me.”
“Ava.”
“It’s the only thing you can do for me now,” she said, and hung up.