LITMIR.BIZ

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clothes.”

      The pregnant teacher laughed. “That’s not saying much, Pat! How many outfits do you have? A sweat suit for winter and a white T -shirt for summer?”

      But Mrs. Lucas merely shrugged and brushed imaginary lint from her white T -shirt. “But you know what I mean? Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re dating or just friends.”

      “And sometimes it’s not, the way they hang on each other,” the pregnant one said. “I remember hearing she was dating one of the theatre students. But then again, actors and relationships...here today, gone tomorrow.”

      “But seriously,” Jenna said, “if we could figure out who her boyfriend is—”

      Mrs. Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You seem awfully focussed on a boyfriend. Do you know something we don’t?”

      Jenna felt her face burn. Damn! Just when she was beginning to feel more confident with the woman, her stare reduced Jenna to a small child again. “No, no! I just think...you know how boyfriends can be. Jealous, possessive. He could be the culprit.”

      Looking unconvinced, Mrs. Lucas snapped her tupperware shut and carried her coffee mug to the sink. “Well, it’s a stretch. Much more likely that some pervert got her. The jail sentences they get, and the way these girls dress, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

      The bell rang, and a collective groan rose from the tables as teachers pushed back their chairs, picked up their papers and filed out the door as if heading out to battle. Jenna sat alone with her thoughts. Mrs. Lucas could be right. Certainly there were enough perverts on the prowl for vulnerable prey. But if Crystal was right, Lea had been going to meet her boyfriend, who did not share her passion for the relationship. He was a successful boy with a great future ahead of him that was not to be derailed by the demands of a clingy, overly possessive girl. Within this school alone, how many boys would fit that bill?

      Pleasant Park High School was a large, prestigious school with special programs for the artistically gifted, and among its students were the future authors, musicians, painters and actors of the country. Some never pursued their talents beyond high school, but others went on to headline on Broadway or write a Governor General’s Award winning novel. Talent, promise—and massive egos—abounded at Pleasant Park. What if Lea’s boyfriend had been among that elite crowd? She had been dating an actor who would certainly fit the bill.

      Jenna lingered in the now empty staff room. It was really up to the police to track down Lea’s boyfriend, but they were probably narrow-minded jerks with no imagination to see beyond the obvious. No kid would confide in them in a million years. But if she told them what she knew, they would demand to know her source, and her social work standards of practice were clear. Client confidentiality could not be broken just to spread a vague rumour. In fact, she could not even mention Crystal’s name. But that wouldn’t stop them from bullying her to get it out of her. Cops didn’t give a damn about sensitivities or confidentiality, only about results.

      She needed an outside source. If she could discover the name of Lea’s boyfriend on her own, she could hand him over to the police without having to mention Crystal’s name. Crystal would be protected, the boyfriend exposed, and perhaps, just perhaps, Lea would be rescued before he could do her any serious harm.

      A woman had to do something, Jenna thought as she marched off in the direction of the drama room.

      Three

      Two o’clock that afternoon found Green inside the car again, hunched over the radio. The news on the missing girl was brief. Dozens of officers and volunteers had been dispatched to search the wooded areas along Ottawa’s waterways, and a photo of the girl had been released to the public with an appeal for anyone with any information to contact the police. Superintendent Barbara Devine, the head of CID, had even secured a ten-second sound bite which she used to assure the public, with a ferocity and confidence she couldn’t possibly feel, that the police had made the girl’s safe return their number one priority. No expenses spared, no resources untapped.

      Quite the attitude reversal for Devine, for whom purse strings, bottom lines and promotional prospects were usually the top priorities, Green thought. She must have been pressured by the higher-ups in the food chain, who were ever mindful of public image and positive press. After all, beautiful, blonde, innocent schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities.

      All schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities, even blue-haired ones, Green thought as he dialled home once more. Still no answer. He was just leaving another message on Hannah’s cell when Sharon opened the car door and slipped in beside him. This time she looked neither annoyed nor reproachful. Her gentle fingers caressed his arm.

      “Why don’t you drive into the city and check on her?”

      He looked at her in surprise. Was she as worried as he? Was she saying his anxiety was more than the paranoia of a police officer who’d seen too much of the depraved side of human nature?

      “It’s only an hour and a half drive,” she added. “You can be back before suppertime.”

      “But this was supposed to be our family time.”

      “I know.” She flashed him a wry smile. “But Tony’s having a nap, and he’ll hardly notice you’re gone. And Hannah is family too. You have to take care of this.”

      He hugged her, buried his face in her dark curls. “Thank you.”

      She held him. “Bring her back with you, okay? Kicking and screaming, if need be.”

      Taking nothing but his wallet, keys and cell phone, Green drove at breakneck speed up the busy, twisting Highway 15, grateful that his little Subaru had all-wheel-drive, but wishing it was equipped with lights and siren too. Eighty-six minutes later, he was weaving through the narrow, leafy streets of his west end neighbourhood. The house looked empty and undisturbed. Today’s Ottawa Citizen still sat in the middle of the front porch where the delivery boy had tossed it, and the mail bulged from the box.

      Green unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall. It echoed eerily, as if it had been abandoned for a week instead of a mere day. A shout to Hannah elicited no response, and a rapid search of the premises yielded no trace of her. He tried not to panic. This was the same girl who had climbed onto a plane in Vancouver on a whim when she was barely sixteen years old and had flown east to visit the father she had never known. The same girl who, upon arrival, had hung out on the streets of Ottawa for days without a word to either parent before fate had delivered her into Green’s hands. She was no stranger to the grand gesture of liberation. But she was still an innocent girl, albeit blue-haired instead of blonde, and now finishing her first year at an alternative high school, a far cry from your model student.

      He debated phoning his father, who lived in a small senior’s residence in Sandy Hill. Hannah had adored her gentle, oldworld grandfather ever since their first meeting, and she showed him a sensitivity and affection she never shared with her father. But Sid Green was eighty-five, frail and partially deaf. Scars from the Holocaust had left him with a weak heart and a penchant for paranoia that no amount of security on Canadian soil could ever quite counter. Even a casual question about Hannah’s whereabouts would send him spinning into panic. Until Green had exhausted all other avenues, he would not put his father through that.

      He stood in the middle of her bedroom, looking for clues. Its severe black decor—Sharon called it eggplant, but it looked black to him—reflected a goth influence but she had recently added some brightly coloured posters of music groups other than Three Inches of Blood and Avenged Sevenfold. The clothing strewn across the floor was red, turquoise and even pink. Progress.

      He looked for her school bag. It wasn’t there. Nor was her cell phone or her school agenda book, despite a detailed search under the piles of books and papers that littered every surface. He did, however, turn up her little black purse and her wallet, complete with credit card, bus pass and student ID . Also in the wallet, he noted with resignation, was a fake ID with her photo and name, but a date of birth four years earlier that her real one. It bore a Vancouver address, leading him

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