While showering.
When Mom disappeared, almost everything valuable had been left at home.
Her jewelry.
Her purse.
Her belongings.
But that ring was missing.
Jett looked at my face.
“You recognize it.”
I nodded.
Of course he knew about it.
I had shown photographs of my mother and that ring to almost everyone I worked with.
I grabbed the bag.
The couple from the night before had somehow possessed the one object Mom was wearing when she vanished.
My mind immediately went somewhere terrible.
If they had the ring, they knew something about her.
Maybe they knew exactly where she was.
Jett opened his office and pulled up the restaurant security footage.
We watched table twelve.
At first, everything looked ordinary.
Then the woman opened her purse.
She searched around inside and pulled something out.
As she withdrew her hand, a tiny object caught against the purse clasp.
The ring.
It slipped from her fingers.
Neither of them noticed.
It landed on the seat, rolled toward the wall, and disappeared into the narrow gap behind the booth.
“That’s how it got there,” Jett whispered.
Then something else happened.
The husband’s phone lit up.
He answered.
Whatever the person on the other end said made him go completely still.
He turned the phone toward his wife.
