You'll Thank Me for This Nina Siegal (red white and royal blue hardcover .txt) 📖

Police vehicles had assembled in the south parking lot of the Hoge Veluwe National Park, encircling the meth camp. The parents had been called; the Scout program had been informed; an Amber Alert had been sent out across the Netherlands, just in case. But the investigation was centered around the grimy, soiled, chemical-smelling, drug-cooking lab in the forest.

It was no longer the middle of the night—it was now nearing dawn. Calls to Martijn were all unanswered; Rutger still hadn’t heard from Riekje, Lotte, or Margot. Every minute that passed, Grace knew, was another minute that threatened the life of her daughter. Whoever had been at this meth lab camp could have attacked all of them, could have put her, and the others, in the back of a van and sped off with them, maybe even to another country by now. Where had they gone, and who had taken them?

The police detective in charge, a tall man with a dour expression affixed to his chiseled, serious face, approached Grace and introduced himself. “I’m Detective Ricardo van Dijk, and we’re going to get this situation under control as quickly as possible,” he assured her. “To make it simple for you, I’m your point of contact. You can call me Dick. Anything you need, come to me. Anything you need to share, tell me. I’ll keep you apprised of our progress every step of the way. I promise that we will do our utmost to resolve this and get your daughter back to you. I understand how scary it can be when children go missing. We need to act fast.”

This Dick van Dijk didn’t look anything like the Dick Van Dyke of Grace’s youth, he of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This Ricardo had caramel-colored skin and striking, pale blue eyes, which she guessed suggested Dutch and Surinamese heritage. There was something Dick Van Dyke avuncular about him, though. He had a calm, comforting energy and seemed to be someone she could trust to handle things, in spite of the militaristic staccato of his speech.

He informed her that the other parents were on their way here. His men would sweep the area of the meth camp in search of useful clues as to the whereabouts of Karin and anyone else who had been staying in the vicinity. He said that other agents were being sent out to patrol the rest of the park.

While waiting for the cops to arrive, Grace and Maaike had already scoured every bit of ground around the tarp. They’d found Karin’s black jeans and a blue sweatshirt, and a pair of her socks with giraffes on the side, covered in mud. That alone had been unnerving. At first, she’d been afraid that she would discover Karin’s body somewhere in the mud, and her heart had raced and raced, but it seemed they had covered the entire area and there were no human bodies. Only lots of chemicals and plastic garbage.

“My suspicion is that your daughter was not here long,” Detective van Dijk said, confirming what she already suspected was true.

“Why do you think that?” asked Grace.

“All that’s here is her backpack and its contents. My gut tells me she was robbed, not kidnapped, and that her backpack may have been stolen from her elsewhere, somewhere on the trail over there. I’ve sent some men to scour that area for clues.”

He was trying to calm her, but the word “kidnapped” traveled up her spine like an electrical current and reverberated.

Grace and Maaike had also asked the other police officers several times if they could join the search, but Detective van Dijk had insisted that they remain with him to answer questions. “If there is a real danger in the woods, you both could be potential victims of it as well,” he said. “It would be irresponsible of me to allow anyone else to get lost right now.” He promised them that his team was doing everything they could to scour the park, but having “two women out there with a bunch of domesticated dogs is only going to complicate matters.”

“But they had her here,” said Grace. “The danger was these people in this camp, wasn’t it?”

Detective van Dijk shook his head, remaining calm and considered. “Maybe she wasn’t ever in contact with them at all,” he said. “It’s possible she left her backpack somewhere and they found it, or snatched it from her and brought it here.” Her daughter’s backpack stolen at random by meth addicts while she was hiking—this was, apparently, the optimistic scenario.

“And the blood on her shirt?”

“I’m not sure it’s blood. Has an unusual chemical odor. If it is blood, it could also be someone else’s,” he said officiously. “Someone else may have been hurt and used the nearest available rag, a shirt that wouldn’t fit anyone in the camp, to stanch the wound. Our men will put the shirt through forensic testing.”

“Where are the people who were living here—the…the junkies or whatever they are? Where have they gone?”

“My sergeant is checking with park rangers and the organized crime division to see what surveillance of this area is available,” he said. “Whatever they encounter, we will know about it quickly,” he added.

“Organized crime division?” she said. “You mean they may have known that this meth camp was here already?”

“Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time. Lots of meth labs are springing up in our parks lately. Maybe you’ve read about it in the papers. It doesn’t take much to cook meth, so they make their pop-up kitchens everywhere. Most of the things you need are just household items. You’ve probably seen Breaking Bad? Big market for the stuff. We’ve disrupted labs on houseboats and cargo ships. Less so in national parks, but yes, it can happen. Lots of un-surveilled land. Usually they’re here for no more than a few days before they’re detected. Sometimes we don’t know about them until they’re gone, leaving all their garbage behind.”

Grace took this in. Her mind was racing, and