UNSEEN by John Michael Hileman Read Free Book Online Page B

other residents in your apartment building, do any of them have regular access to your son?"
    " Mark does. He lives down the hall. He watches him sometimes, but he would never do this. He's always volunteering at places downtown, helping people in need. He would never do this."
    " What’s Mark's last name?"
    " Phillips."
    " Would you say he's the same size as the man in the video?"
    Holly stammered. "He's maybe... I don't know. I couldn't tell how tall the man in the video was."
    " Does he move like him?"
    " I don't know."
    " How long has he been your neighbor?"
    " Seven months." As the words came out, a chill ran down her back. If he was the killer, he would have had time to finish his business in the last place, and travel to Maine. There would have been plenty of time for him to get Gabe in his sights and to hatch a new plan.
    She didn't want to believe it was Mark, but how well did she really know him? She did know that he volunteered with needy people—but he could have made that up. She had left her son hours and hours with a man she hardly even knew. How could she have been so careless?
    " Do you know where he is now?"
    " At work, probably. He does construction. I don't know where."
    Grant flipped her phone open and pressed a few buttons. "We have a lead on a suspect. I want you to find everything you can on the neighbor, Mark Phillips. Yes. Then we’ll go have a chat with him. Bump him to the top of the list. He works construction, find out where. Okay. Thanks." She closed the phone and slid it back in her pocket. "Is there anyone else like Mark, someone Gabe felt comfortable with, perhaps a relative or a friend?"
    Holly felt so helpless. She wanted to spill her guts, because if anyone could save her son, she believed Agent Grant could. But the truth was a minefield. Her friends were not the type of people who would exactly appreciate a visit from the FBI.
    " I can't think of anyone," she said, disengaging from the conversation.
    " No one at all?"
    " No." She looked out the window with cold, dead eyes. "Do you mind if we take a break? I need a smoke."
    Agent Grant quietly assessed her chances of successfully continuing the questioning. The result must have been a low percentage, because she set her laptop on the coffee table. "Go ahead, take a break. Clear your head."
    Holly stood awkwardly and shuffled to the front door. A uniformed officer stood guard in the hallway, and there was one on the front steps of the apartment house as well. Three cruisers and two dark blue government cars lined the street.
    Holly crouched down on the stairs and lit up. She wanted something much more powerful, something to make it all go away, but she couldn't leave her son when he needed her most—not like her mother had done so many times. It disgusted Holly to see how much she was like her mother. But she was not going to run away this time. She would fight the ache in her head and stomach, and bear through the sweats, to turn over every rock to find her baby. He was all she had left to live for.

Chapter 8

    When Jake pulled onto his sister’s road, he saw her sitting on the stairs with a police officer looming behind her. She looked like their mother: dirty blond hair dangling down in coils, fair skin, dark eyeliner used generously around the eyes, and a black silk choker with a silver cross. Her dark clothes made her look like an off-work prostitute: a short jean skirt and two torn black t-shirts.
    To see her like this grieved him. She had been his sunshine for most of their childhood. When she was little she used to wake him with a kiss on the nose, and had always been the first to hug him when he was sad. She was his golden-haired angel—until she fell from heaven.
    Jake parked on the street, and he and Dan headed up the sidewalk toward the apartment house. She saw him from a distance, but kept smoking her cigarette and staring at the ground.
    " Mom called me,” he said when they reached the stairs. "How are you holding