DeeJay nodded. “I’m betting he did.”
“I won’t be surprised at this point. I’ve had Sarah Ironheart going over the phone logs for the hotline. There’s no personal information about the nature of the call in them, but I can tell you she found one thing, and she’s got a whole lot more to go through. I didn’t realize the service was that busy. Anyway, to get to the point, the last boy who disappeared called the line and talked to Sweet three days before he vanished. Just one call.”
DeeJay felt her heart flip. Then her stomach turned over. “My God,” she whispered. When Cade had brought it up earlier, it had been just a speculation, and they’d been doing a lot of speculating. Her emotional reaction had been milder before because she didn’t know if it was true. It was entirely different to discover that that man had actually been setting his lures by holding himself out as someone who could help these kids.
“Makes you sick, doesn’t it?” Gage agreed. “Gain their trust and then go from there. You were right, DeeJay. Absolutely right. He lures them.”
Being right didn’t make her feel any better. Not one bit. “It was just one call. We still don’t have anything for a warrant.”
“Not a thing,” Gage agreed. “But when this many pieces start to fit, you know that you’ve got a good theory. Now we have to catch the bastard somehow.”
“And that’s what we’re here about,” Cade said. Again he looked at DeeJay, and now she felt about an inch tall. She didn’t want him deferring to her all the time. Damn her and her native distrust and her stupid blowup earlier.
“You go ahead,” she said. “You were the one who saw it.”
“Saw what?” Gage demanded.
“Calvin Sweet came to see us. He wants us out at his place by dawn tomorrow to take some photos of the mountains.”
Gage leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “My, my, he’s a little eager to get you out there. Both of you? Why not just DeeJay?”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” DeeJay said. “Then I asked myself a question. We’re supposedly here to write a travel piece. Would anybody give a damn if we just didn’t show up again? Even our landlord wouldn’t wonder for a while. But Cade would, if I didn’t come back.”
Gage swore quite inventively. DeeJay hadn’t heard anyone cut loose like that since she left the army, and she couldn’t help grinning.
“What’s there to smile about?” Cade asked.
“I’d like to introduce you both to a master sergeant I used to know.”
Both men smiled as they understood. But then Cade returned them to business.
“The thing is, for me this was all theory—good theory but still just theory—until I met Sweet.”
Gage’s brow lifted. “What convinced you?”
“You know him, maybe too well to see it. But he looks like he could be the brother of any one of his victims.”
Gage closed his eyes a minute, then his face seemed to sag. “You’re right. Damn it, you’re right.”
“It jolted me the instant I saw him. Maybe because I’ve spent so much time looking at the photos of those boys and hadn’t met Sweet before. Did you ever find a photo of his mother?”