“Now what?”
“Door number two—the couple we’d chosen as second best.”
“You’d better warn them. I’ll talk to them, if you want.”
Lenora rubbed her hand up and down the back of her short hair. “Maybe you’d better.”
The next day, Jo gave the runner-up couple a crash course on Ursa Alien Dupree. They were nice people. The husband ran an engineering consulting firm, and his wife was a former gym teacher who now stayed home with their six-year-old son. They weren’t able to have any more biological children.
Jo talked to Ursa before the couple came in, begging her to cooperate. Ursa refused, insisting that she only wanted to live with Jo. Once again, Jo left the hospital with Ursa’s plaintive sobs haunting her.
When Jo returned to the hospital the next day, the foster couple was in Ursa’s room for their second visit. Jo was going to leave, but they asked her to stay. “Let’s talk,” the wife said. “I want us all to be friends.”
Jo tried to get Ursa to open up, but she was sullen and only answered direct questions with curt replies. When Jo tried to show the foster parents Ursa’s drawings, she said, “I don’t want them to see those! They’re private!”
When Jo told Ursa it would be nice to have a little brother, she said, “I don’t want any stupid little brother!”
“You’ll have a swimming pool, Ursa,” Jo said. “Won’t that be fun?”
“It won’t be!” Ursa said. “I only want to swim with you and Gabe in Summers Creek!”
“Please try to be the nice girl I know you are,” Jo said.
“I won’t be nice to them!” Ursa said. “I only want to live with you! You said you wanted that, too! Why are you trying to make me like them?”
“I’d better go,” Jo said.
“Yes,” Lenora said. “Thanks for trying.”
Jo hugged Ursa, but Ursa wouldn’t let her go. “Don’t leave!” she wept. “I’ll be nice! Don’t go!” Two nurses and Lenora had to pry her arms away. Ursa screamed, “Take me with you! I love you, Jo! I only want to be with you!” Jo hurried down the corridor, avoiding the somber gazes of the doctors and nurses.
At seven that night, Jo ate a cup of yogurt and a few grapes in her hotel room. She had to force herself to eat even that. She’d been nauseated and listless since her tearful phone call with Gabe that afternoon. In the morning she would say goodbye to Ursa for the last time. Staying was hurting her too much.
At eight, the first in a series of thunderstorms hit Saint Louis. The city would be under a tornado watch most of the night. Jo went to bed, blackout curtains drawn and air-conditioning turned high. She hardly heard the pounding of thunder and rain on her windows. She closed her eyes and went fetal beneath the covers, arms folded against her bony chest. At 9:52 she was awakened by an unexpected call. “Lenora?” Jo answered.
“She’s gone,” Lenora said.
Jo threw her legs over the side of the bed. “What do you mean? She went home with them?”
“She ran. We can’t find her.”
“How could she possibly get out of a hospital as secure as that?”
“You know how—she’s damn smart! They think she’s still hiding somewhere in the hospital, but they haven’t found her.”
“How long has she been missing?”
“It’s been about an hour since a nurse reported her missing.”
“Did the cameras catch anything?”
“They’re checking now. At first they thought finding her would be easy.”
“They don’t know Ursa.”
“But you do. You warned us. What if she got out? What if she’s out in the city?”
Ursa could have pulled that off, and getting out of the hospital would be her aim. But Jo didn’t say that out loud.
“She’s probably hiding in a patient room or something like that. I’m sure they’ll find her.”
“Will you come? I thought maybe if you called for her . . . if she heard your voice . . .”
“Of course. I’m on my way.”
“Meet me at the main door and I’ll get you in. They have everything locked down.”
A half hour later, Jo had been searching hospital rooms with Lenora for only ten minutes when a security guard stopped them. “She’s not in the hospital,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Lenora said.
“We were looking for a little girl in a hospital gown, but she’s wearing regular clothes. This is from a surveillance camera.” He held up a picture of Ursa walking down a hospital corridor.
Jo took the photo. Ursa was wearing Jo’s navy-blue University of Illinois T-shirt and her black yoga pants rolled up to look like capris. “Those are my clothes,” Jo said. “They’re the spare set I kept in my backpack in case I had to spend the night with Ursa. I noticed them missing a few days ago and thought they’d fallen out.” She scrutinized the photo more closely. Ursa had on her purple gym shoes. Jo had last seen them on Ursa the night of the shooting. “How did she get her shoes?”
“Those were all that could be salvaged of her bloody clothing the night she came in,” Lenora said. “Usually personal belongings are put in a bag and stored in the patient’s closet.”
“Does the video show how she got out of the hospital?” Jo asked.
The security guard nodded, his expression bleak. “She walked out the main lobby doors holding a man’s hand. That’s why it took so long to identify her on the footage. She had on regular clothes, and she appeared to be with the man.”
Jo had to hold on to the wall to stop from swaying.
“Do you think the man abducted her?” Lenora said.
“Considering the girl’s history, we’re afraid that’s a possibility,” the guard said.
“Have the police been notified?” Lenora asked.
“Every city cop is on it. They’ve put out an AMBER Alert, too.”
Jo had a flash of insight. “She wasn’t abducted. She held the man’s hand to look like she was with him.”
“You don’t know that!” Lenora said.
“I don’t,” Jo said. “But Ursa knew she couldn’t walk out those doors alone.”
“How would she get a complete stranger to hold her hand?”
“Believe me, Ursa has her ways.” Again, Jo studied the photograph. One of her hands was clenched tight around something. Maybe she’d taken more than clothing from Jo’s bag. Jo unzipped the front pocket of her backpack and found her hotel card key. She dug around for Gabe’s key, the spare she kept in the paper envelope. It was empty. “I may know where she’s going,” Jo said.
“Where?” Lenora said.
“Come with me,” Jo said, shrugging on her backpack.
“We have to tell the police,” Lenora said.
“The police can’t be involved until we find her. If she sees them, she’ll run.”
“Good point.”
Lenora grabbed her raincoat on their way out into another downpour. Jo still had on the oversize sweatshirt Gabe had left behind, now soaked through to her shirt from her walk to the hospital. Out in the city, police officers were everywhere, their squad car lights mirrored in pools of rain at all intersections.
“Poor girl,” Lenora said. “She must be terrified in this storm.”
“I doubt it,” Jo said. “Ursa loves thunderstorms.”
Lenora saw where they were headed. “Did she know the name of your hotel?”
“Last week she asked me a lot of questions about where I was staying. I just thought she was bored. She even asked if I used a metal key to get in my room, and I told her about the card keys.”
“That means she’s been plotting this for a while.”
“She was waiting to see how things turned out. She ran today because she’s desperate. She knows no one will help her—not even me.”
“Then maybe she won’t go to your room.”
“I know. That’s what worries me.”
“What if she decided to trust that man like she trusted you?” Lenora said. “If he hasn’t brought her to the police yet, he must have bad intentions.”
“I didn’t bring her to the police, and I didn’t have bad intentions.”
“But how long until that luck runs out?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
They entered the hotel and rushed to the elevator, Jo limping on her sore leg. The elevator stopped on several floors before they finally arrived at the sixth floor. At room 612, Jo put her key in the slot and pushed the door open.
Ursa wasn’t there. Lenora watched her check under the rumpled comforter and beneath the bed. She looked in the closet. There was only one place left to look. She flicked on the bathroom light and opened the shower curtain. Ursa was curled in a ball in the tub, her clothing and hair soaked with rain. She looked up at Jo with mournful brown eyes. “Jo . . . I ran away,” she said.
“I see that.” Jo lifted her out of the tub and held her.
Ursa clung to her, crying. “Don’t you love me anymore? Why do you want me to go live with those people?”
“I don’t. But there’s nothing else I can do.”