Stanley saw the call from Gordon come in as he drove north on 37. He reached over to turn his phone off. He wanted to answer it. But some jerk named Reinhardt from the National Security Agency—the NSA, for God’s sake!—had come to his hotel last night and told him he was off the case.
Stanley had laughed at him, but when he’d called in to check it turned out to be true. He and most of his team were being pulled out. They were going back to Austin, and a bunch of new people were coming in, under NSA direction.
The TV spot he’d watched last night with Gordon after leaving the City Diner had shown the little girl running in a playground. She was beautiful. Smart, too, from what he’d gathered from the interviews. And the hell of it was, they’d had a chance with this one. Whoever had taken the kid was mixed up in too many other things. He was getting fancy, and that meant they might catch him in a mistake.
What the hell did the NSA know about kidnappings? Reinhardt hadn’t even seemed interested in the file.
But it wasn’t supposed to matter. Stanley was supposed to give everything he had to Reinhardt, get out of town, and have no further contact with anyone regarding the case.
Fifteen minutes later, he still gripped the phone. His hand ached, but he hadn’t noticed.
That little girl. Katie Bradshaw. She could still be alive. The thing with the dress had struck him as a clumsy attempt at misdirection. He still didn’t understand what had happened at the beach. But he would have figured it out.