Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

didn’t see her get in. As soon as his back was turned, I ran across the street. I didn’t want to be late for the bus.”

“It’s okay,” Ayaan said, her voice gentle. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Danika.” She looked up at Elle, eyebrows raised to ask whether she had any questions.

Not wanting to surprise the girl with an unfamiliar voice, Elle scribbled on her notes. Next to the word scarf, she wrote color? and underlined it before turning the paper to face Ayaan.

“Do you remember what color the scarf was, Danika?” Ayaan asked.

“Orange. Bright orange like one of those cones at soccer practice.”

Elle wrote the description down, her penmanship sloppy from shaking fingers.

Ayaan looked at her for a moment, as if expecting another question, but Elle shook her head. “That’s great, Danika. You’ve been so helpful. Do you think you might be able to describe what he looks like to someone so they can draw him?”

“I don’t know. I’m scared.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you, okay? I promise.”

Elle squeezed her burning eyes shut and rubbed her chest. A pair of eyes flashed in her mind, red-rimmed and so dark blue they were almost black. When she opened her eyes again, Ayaan was still watching her carefully.

“Can I talk to your mom again real quick, honey?” Ayaan asked.

Camilla’s voice came through the speaker. “Yes?”

“Camilla, I think your daughter has some really critical information to our investigation. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Amanda Jordan is missing, and we are treating her disappearance as a kidnapping.”

“Yes. I’m keeping Danika home from school until she’s found. I will not let my daughter out of my sight until I know she will be safe.”

She will never be safe, Elle wanted to say. None of us are.

Ayaan said, “That’s fine. Do you think you could bring her in to the station today, if possible? I want to get her to sit with a forensic artist and describe the man she saw.”

“Today?”

“I know it’s last-minute, but this is critical. Every second Amanda is missing becomes more dangerous for her. If your daughter could help us find her before she gets hurt, it’s worth a little inconvenience, don’t you think?”

After a moment, Camilla said, “Okay. Oui. I will bring her after lunch.”

The results of the composite sketch seemed to be printed on the back of Elle’s eyelids whenever she closed her eyes. The man looked to be in his fifties, with a square bald head, big sunglasses, and a neon orange scarf wrapped under his nose. Elle had spent the afternoon comparing the sketch to known sex offenders in the area, only to come up short. Ayaan had shown it to Amanda’s parents, but the man was unfamiliar to them. Definitely not someone who worked with Dave. After his Twitter activities were confirmed by the police and Danika failed to pick him out of a photo array, Graham Wallace had been released.

Somehow, another day had passed and there was still no trace of Amanda.

No body, either, though. That, at least, gave Elle hope.

Sash had made them dinner at her house, wanted all the details on what was happening with the podcast, but Elle had barely been able to stay engaged in the conversation. She’d been relieved when Martín changed the subject by asking Natalie about her science class. As much as she’d hoped an evening with the Hunters would take her mind off the case for a moment, it had been a lost cause. When she looked at Natalie, all Elle could think about was Amanda—where she was, who had taken her.

Right now, the composite sketch was probably playing all across the twenty-four-hour news cycle in the area, splashed on local stations and websites and social media. A network of officers was on the lookout across the Twin Cities metro for a blue van with no license plates. All of this stuff was being taken care of without her. Elle had shared it on her channels, boosted it with paid ad space. There was nothing else she could do, not tonight.

But she couldn’t sleep.

Elle lay with eyes wide open next to her lightly snoring husband. She couldn’t get Danika’s description out of her mind. The brightly colored scarf had to be a coincidence. It was just because she was so deeply immersed in the TCK case for her podcast that she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She had waited years for a new lead. She was so close it was like a physical ache, a hunger pang. That was the only reason she was drawing connections between him and Amanda’s disappearance.

“You need to come with me. Your dad was in an accident.”

That excuse had probably been used by thousands of kidnappers throughout the years to get little girls into their vehicles. But she couldn’t shake it. Ayaan and her team had come up dry on any reasons why Amanda or her family would be targeted for revenge. Her well-orchestrated kidnapping in broad daylight by a man who knew her name suggested an organized criminal with a fixation on the little girl. No ransom call had come through, which meant that the remaining options were grim for Amanda. If Elle was going to work this case right, it was her job to consider every possibility—even the most outrageous. The problem was, the most outrageous possibility didn’t seem so unlikely right now.

Maybe it was because of the podcast, or because of Leo’s possible tip and sudden murder. Maybe it was old trauma trying to resolve itself in her brain.

Or maybe it was that stupid orange scarf.

She glanced at Martín, sound asleep. Not even he would believe her about this.

Elle knew TCK’s work—knew his signatures and idiosyncrasies like she knew the voice of her favorite singer. It was absurd that he would start killing again after more than twenty years, ridiculous that she was even thinking this way. But she couldn’t turn off that voice in her head.

12:05 a.m. glared from the clock next to her