Every Fear by Rick Mofina Read Free Book Online Page A

had come at this stage. Dupree had been updated by e-mail and joined the call on his cell phone. The analyst read the script aloud to Grace and Dupree twice for accuracy.
    “It’s good. Move it,” Dupree said.
    “Good with me. Kick it now,” Grace added.
    Less than four minutes later, every TV and radio broadcast across Washington State was simultaneously interrupted with a burst tone alert followed by three shrill beeps, then the message:
This is an activation of the Alert System. The following is critical information on an abducted child in the Ballard area of Seattle in King County, Washington. The FBI and Seattle Police Department are seeking assistance locating Dylan James Colson, age seven months, abducted from the 3400 block of Calvington Avenue during a hit-and-run of his mother, Maria Jane Colson, agetwenty-nine. Dylan James Colson is believed to be in danger. He has light hair and was last seen wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and white sneakers. He may be in the company of a White female approximately 30 years of age and a White male, approximately 30 years of age. They may be traveling in a red 2002 Chrysler Town & Country minivan that is missing a windshield wiper. The rear door has a small customized mural showing the sun and trees. If you have any information on this matter contact the Seattle Police Department or the FBI immediately.
    The alert was also flashed over electronic highway signs and was sent out by e-mails, faxes, and voice and text messages to websites, municipal, county, and state government transportation agencies, and to the fleets of private companies who participated in the alert system.
    The alert did not stop within Washington’s borders. It was also carried under agreement in the same manner in Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.
    “The alert is going to reach millions of people, Grace, it’s going to boost our chances,” Perelli said.
    She didn’t answer. She was watching the TV suspended from the ceiling in the hospital lounge, a few steps from the intensive care unit where Maria Colson had just come out of surgery.
    The grim-faced surgeon had informed investigators that it would be several hours before there was any chance of her regaining consciousness.
    Even if she did recover, could she tell me anything that would help — anything that would solve her own murder? Grace’s fingertips touched the microcassette recorder in her pocket as she braced for a dying declaration.
    Have we done everything? Are we missing anything? Grace wasn’t one-hundred-percent certain. And there was that guy from the Mirror. She found his card. Jason Wade. He was right on the money, the way he’d found Lani Tychina. He was a good reporter. And she was a good detective.
    So why was she doubting herself?
    Maybe it was because she was worried the choices she’d made in her life were the wrong ones. Maybe she was tired of coming home to an empty apartment, tired of feeling that she was missing something.
    The air in the room was oppressive with antiseptic smells. Maria’s aunt and uncle talked softly in a far corner. As the clock over the nurses’ station swept time forward, Grace took stock of the cheerless walls, the drab vinyl couches, the outdated copies of Newsweek and People, and a well-thumbed King James edition of the Bible.
    This wasn’t a waiting room, this was a terminal where hope confronted death; where frightened families pleaded with God and where a lonely Homicide detective and her partner awaited the outcome.
    Perelli rubbed his tired eyes. For his part, he acknowledged he didn’t know everything about Grace. Could you ever know all that a person carried in theirheart? But what he knew of her, he knew well and her second-guessing was evident to him. He took her aside, speaking quietly. “We’re doing all we can. We’re doing it right. The alert will help us.”
    She looked at him and nodded.
    In the corner, Maria Colson’s