Girl Missing by Tess Gerritsen

help?”
    “I want to find Maeve.”
    So it’s my help he wants , she thought. Not me in particular . She wondered why that fact should leave her feeling so disappointed. She said, “Lou Sykes is a good cop. If he can’t find her—”
    “That’s just it. He’s a cop . No one out there trusts cops. Certainly Maeve wouldn’t trust him. She’d think he was out to arrest her. Or reel her in for me.”
    “Is that what you’re trying to do?”
    “I just want to know she’s alive and well.”
    “She’s an adult, Adam. She can make her own choices.”
    “What if her choices are insane?”
    “Then she lives with them.”
    “You don’t understand. I made a promise to her mother. I promised that Maeve would be taken care of. So far I’ve done a pretty deplorable job.” He sighed. “At the very least, I should look for her.”
    “What if she doesn’t want to be found?”
    “Then she should tell me that, face-to-face. But I have to find her first. And you’re the only one I know who’s familiar with South Lexington.”
    Kat laughed. “Yeah, I guess it’s not the sort of neighborhood your dinner guests would frequent.”
    “I would appreciate it. I really would. Just show me the place. Put me in touch with some of the people. I’d reimburse you for your time, of course. You only have to say how much—”
    “Wait a minute.” She moved closer to him, her chin tilted up in astonishment. “You were going to pay me?”
    “I mean, it’s only appropriate—”
    “Forget it. Forget it . I’m a doctor, Quantrell, okay? I’m not the butler. I’m not the cook. I’m a doctor, and I already get paid for what I do.”
    “So?”
    “Which means I don’t need a moonlighting job. When I do a favor for a friend—and I’m not necessarily putting you in the category—I do it as a friend. Gratis.”
    “You want to do it out of the kindness of your heart. You want me to feel grateful. And I do, I really do.” He paused, then added softly: “I also really need your help.”
    Kat wasn’t philosophically opposed to helping her fellow man. And a devoted dad in search of his daughter, well, that was an appeal she could hardly refuse. But this particular dad was no charity case.
    Still …
    She walked over to her car and flung open the door. “Get in, Quantrell.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “We’re not taking your car, because a nice new Volvo’s an invitation to a chop job. So let’s go in mine.”
    “To South Lexington?”
    “You want an intro to the place, I know some people you can talk to. People who’d know what’s going on in the neighborhood.”
    Adam hesitated.
    “Listen,” she said. “You want to live dangerously or not?”
    He regarded her battered Subaru. Then he shrugged. “Why not?” he said, and climbed into her car.
    South Lexington was a different place at night. What by day had seemed merely drab and depressing had, by night, assumed new menace. Alleys seemed to snake away into nowhere, and in that darkness lurked all the terrible unknowns a mind could conjure.
    Kat parked beneath a streetlamp, and for a moment she studied the sidewalk, the buildings. A block away, a dozen or so teenagers had gathered on the corner. They looked harmless enough, just a bunch of kids engaged in the adolescent rites of spring.
    “It looks okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
    “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
    They got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk, toward Building Five. The teenagers, at once alerted to intruders in their territory, turned and stared. Automatically, Adam moved close beside Kat and tightly grasped her arm.
    The building was unlocked, so they went inside. The lobby was as she’d remembered it: dingy walls, nutmeg-colored carpet to hide the stains, half the hall lights burned out. The graffiti was a little more graphic and less poeticthan she remembered; the artwork had definitely taken a slide for the worse.
    The elevator, as always, was out of commission.
    “I don’t