Betrayed Read Online Free Page A

making coffee and trying to be as useful as possible without being intrusive. More time passed. At midday, the rescue control van pulled into the drive way. Blood drained from my head and my limbs felt heavy, as if I was moving through a sea of mud.
    The expression on the rescuer’s face said it all. The SAP K9 dog unit had called off the search, saying it was too dangerous an area for the 4x4 Club volunteers to be working. Evidence of armed robbery and other violent crimes had been found in the area; it was known to the police as a den for drug dealers and prostitutes, as well as various other criminal activities; car hijackers and smash-and-grabbers fre quented the area. My mouth was parched, my lips dry. This, then, was the place where Tracey might be lying scared, cold, even dying.
    The rescuer explained that the dogs had caused some excitement when they picked up the scent of a decomposing cow’s head in a dump not far off the road, but they had discovered no trace of Tracey’s scent anywhere near where the car had been found.
    Alarm bells went off in my head. If she had left the car voluntarily , on her own two feet, surely traces of her scent would have been on the road, in the grass, somewhere. Or was the information about where the car had been found false? There were no answers.
    As I shook the rescuer’s hand, thanking him and his colleagues for their help, a niggling thought swam dimly at the back of my mind , out of reach. But I couldn’t quite pluck a fully formed question from those depths into the light.

Waiting
    A car headed up the driveway and an elderly gentleman got out. Looking at the rescue vehicle that was just pulling away, he apologised for intruding at a bad time and asked me to sign for a summons. Blind , automatic, I signed. Back in the safety of my kitchen I saw that it wa s for Tracey – a minor traffic offence. I pushed it into a crevice betwee n the kitchen cupboards. I had far greater things to worry about.
    Then like a bolt of lightning came the question that had been pecking at my brain. When the police K9 unit had called the 4x4 Club volunteers off the rescue, had the dog unit carried on the search for my daughter? Hands sweating, I grabbed the phone and dialled the 4x4 rescuer.
    I couldn’t believe my ears. The K9 unit had packed up and gone home at the same time as the volunteers. My knees buckled and I sat down, afraid I would fall. They had given up, knowing that a young girl was missing in what they considered an area “too dangerous” fo r grown, trained men.
    I was angry, desperate. Head in hands, battling tears that threatened to overwhelm me, I told myself to hold it together because it was becoming more and more evident that finding out what had happened to Tracey was going to be my responsibility. The authori ties seemed uncommitted to their duty, indifferent to my family’s suffering.
    Armed only with outrage and determination, I scoured the tele phone directory for private numbers of high-powered police offi cials. When I found the private cellphone number of a Senior-Superinten dent Barend Luyt, I had no qualms about interrupting him at home on a weekend. My child was missing and the department under his control wasn’t performing their duties to the best of their ability. He answered after a couple of rings, but all politeness evaporated when I started to explain my mission.
    â€œWhat right do you have to contact me on my private number?” he shouted. “Your daughter probably went out drinking for the weekend and will walk in Monday morning with a ‘sorry Mom’!”
    I seethed. How dare this stranger judge her? How dare someone who had never met my daughter tell me what she would or wouldn’t do? He clicked off. I dialled again but he had turned off his phone and gone back to his life. A life in which his children were safe, his wife not tormented by not knowing where they were.
    That night the nightmares