Lost

The car might as well have been coated with Anthrax, the way he kept his distance. But he proved amazingly adept at unlocking the back gate connecting their property to Eugene’s.

“Buck!” she yelled, as he threw open the gate and ran off. “Buck!”

Seething, she followed and locked up after him. Jared was waiting for her in the doorway when she returned. Even as she accepted that her father wasn’t Jared’s problem, she was ticked that he hadn’t helped to stop him.

“You okay?”

“Considering that it’s been this way since I was ten?” She shrugged. “Even before my mother died, it was no picnic. Why am I ever surprised that he’s inept at being a parent? All he cares about is that his clothes get washed, there’s money to swipe to buy booze, and he has a bed to fall into—provided he’s sober enough to find it.”

None of this was news to Jared, but then, she didn’t see why he was asking if she was okay, either. That was the most useless question to ask a person at a hospital, in the company of the police, or dealing with a funeral.

“I need to open,” she muttered, leaving him by the Firebird to return up front.

As she raised the garage’s overhead doors, she saw the sky was beginning to resemble the lavender shade of Faith’s favorite nail polish. The unwelcome analogy made her grateful to see a customer immediately pull in, although the late-model Cadillac wouldn’t have been her choice.

He sure is early, Michaele thought, as Garth Powers shut off his vehicle. Although she liked him well enough, he wasn’t one of her favorite customers and she’d never felt the impulse to drool over him the way some females in town did. But all in all, who could say anything really negative about Mr. Clean?

The ex-sports star offered a warm, if tired, smile as she rounded the car, and once again she was reminded of how men almost always aged more gracefully than women.

“Morning, Michaele. Would you fill her up for me, please?”

A tight-lipped nod was the best she could do, and she quickly had the hose set, the pump running. “Need any checking under the hood?”

“No need. Just had her serviced at the dealer in Tyler. Is that Jared in there? He’s up and at ’em early.”

“So are you.” Because that sounded too curt, she added, “He’s been up all night working a case.” What the heck, she thought. He was going to hear the news within the next hour or so, anyway.

Garth did a double take. “Trouble?”

“Faith’s missing.”

“What?”

She repeated the spare few bits of information she’d shared with her father only minutes before.

“Has Fite been arrested?”

The question reminded her that even after all these years, he didn’t know the community—aside from the students—the way Jessica did. “If there’s one thing I do know, it’s that Pete Fite can barely bring himself to put down one of his dogs when they get old or sick. He’d never hurt anyone.”

That only made Garth more upset. “My God,” he uttered. “It is happening again.”

13

Jared lingered by the Firebird only long enough to satisfy himself that it hadn’t been tampered with, but when he followed Michaele and saw Garth’s Cadillac, he knew he’d made a tactical mistake.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Garth demanded the instant he joined them. “Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

Mindful of Michaele’s sharp gaze, Jared replied, “I would have checked in with you soon enough.”

“What did you mean ‘again’?” Michaele asked Garth.

Ignoring her, Garth snapped, “I have priorities, too. Exactly 703 of them. How do I protect those kids when you’re keeping me in the dark?”

“Try not making irresponsible intellectual leaps.”

“How can you say that? He left his message in my school!”

Jared narrowed his eyes. “Stow it!”

“You still think it’s a prank,” Garth said, incredulous. “But what if you’re wrong? What if that sicko’s got Faith, and next targets one of those kids?”

The pump clicked off; however, Michaele stayed put. “What message?”

“Damn it, Garth,” Jared growled, “you’re out of line here. There’s no evidence of a connection.”

“And there won’t be, because you refused to take it seriously! You should have taken samples, Jared.”

“That’s enough!”

“Hey!” Michaele shouted, smacking the roof of the sedan with her fist. “The next guy who treats me as though I’m this oil spot on the concrete gets a close encounter with this fist. Now one of you tell me what’s going on!”

For several seconds her demand hung heavily in the air. It was Garth who broke the silence. “I’m sorry, Jared. By remaining silent, I become an accomplice. Michaele, someone left a message at the school yesterday evening. Jared’s convinced that the message was merely a prank in bad taste about Sandy, because of the timing and all. But if the message is true and Faith ran into this guy, you deserve to know what you’re up against.”

Linking Sandy to her sister had the obvious effect on Michaele. Jared watched her face turn gray; her demeanor resembled something caving in on itself.

“Sandy was murdered in her own home…her own bed,” she murmured. “Butchered. Oh, God…”

“Don’t go there,” Jared said, automatically reaching out to steady her. “The only connection is the timing.”

She brushed him off. “Six years today. Who could forget something so horrible happening here in our town? That poor girl stabbed…her throat cut…and the killer was never caught!”

“Michaele, listen to me. It’s a prank.”

“There was something written above Sandy’s bed. Is that what was at the school? ‘Welcome to Hell’?”

“The numbers were there again,” Garth replied. “But this time he simply wrote ‘I’m back.”’

“All right, that’s enough,” Jared snapped. “She doesn’t need this.”

“I’ll decide what I can and can’t handle!”

Seething, Michaele jerked the nozzle free and slammed it back on the pump. Then she refastened the cap. “I can’t believe this. You had a clue, a warning of trouble, and you kept it from us?”

“While you’re busy working yourself into a knot, try remembering that crap written at the scene of the crime was published in every paper in Texas, and picked up by the media in half the country,” Jared said coldly. “Perfect fodder for every halfwit copycat in the mood to get some attention.”

“But you don’t know for sure, and now Faith could be lying out there with her throat cut!”

Hearing his worst fears voiced, Jared struck back—at the messenger. “Pay her and get the fuck out of here,” he ordered Garth.

“I need answers,” Garth argued.

“Get in line.”

“Those kids are my responsibility. Do you know what their parents are going to say when this gets out? You’ll be lucky not to wind up with a town-wide panic on your hands.”

Thanks to you. Jared wished he’d gotten that sample he’d taken secretly sent out last night. But because he’d gone home and buried his own bitterness and bad memories in a few beers, the sample hadn’t left until a while ago.

His delay in replying won a bitter smile from Garth. He began handing Michaele the money for the gas, saying, “You have my sympathies.”

She waved off payment. “We’re even. If it weren’t for you, I guess I’d still be in the dark—about a lot of things. Just tell me one more thing. Exactly when did you find that message?”

“About an hour after the last club and practice session let out.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked straight at Jared. “You knew. Something was terribly wrong, and you said nothing. It never crossed your mind that a warning, some kind of outreach to the public might have been in order?”

Jared felt as though he were standing in a huge vacuum, where everything sane and reassuring was being sucked away. “Listen to yourself. To protect whom? Faith? At the time she was miles from here. How would that have helped her?”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything!”

As she stormed off, Jared fought the strong urge to hit something.

“Sorry,” Garth said. “But you deserved that.”

“I think I told you to take a hike.”

“You owe me an answer, and I can’t give you much time.”

Jared knew that, and knew what he was up against. He was a small-town cop, used to settling drunken brawls and officiating over fender benders. His department hadn’t even been able to resolve most of the burglaries that had been on the increase in the past year. This situation with Faith was fast rising out of his league, and Cuddy’s, as well. “Give me another twenty-four hours before you make any announcements. People are going to be upset enough about Faith to make everyone cautious, which is what you want, anyway.”

“Except for one technicality, namely, the who in the fear quotient. No.” Garth shook his head. “If you don’t have news by noon, or, better yet, have Faith back safe and sound, I’m going to hold an assembly and make an appropriate announcement. We owe them that. There needs to be time to notify parents and assume safeguards.”

Jared stepped back from the car. He’d lost ground and had to accept it. “Do what you can.”

“Noon, then. And that’s only if nothing else happens. If we’re contacted again, or—” Garth started the engine and shifted into gear “—well, I don’t suppose I need to tell you that’s when choice will be out of my hands, too.”

“You’re perfectly clear, all right,” Jared muttered after the departing car.

Despite Garth’s having complicated things for him, Jared wasn’t totally lacking in sympathy for his friend. It was the situation and the stress that was making him overlook so much—like asking about Garth’s bandaged hand. Hell, had things turned out differently, Garth would be his brother-in-law.

After the death of Jessica and Sandy’s parents, Garth had been almost a foster father to Jess’s kid sister. Later, once she’d earned her business degree, he’d given her a job at the school despite some minor flack about nepotism. Fortunately, Sandy had proven herself capable, running the entire administrative office, as well as coaching the girl’s twirling team. When the team brought home their first state championship trophy during a dry year when the boys couldn’t win anything for the town, Sandy had been a local heroine. And that was why Faith’s disappearance was going to be so hard on the community: the ex-high school cheerleader inspired the same affection from people.

Drawing a deep breath, he went in search of Michaele, and found her hunched over her workstation preparing a service form. Jared noted the pronounced shaking of her hands, and the way she kept clenching her teeth as though fighting some emotional onslaught.

He wanted to hold her, as he had last night, to offer her comfort and maybe take a little for himself. But he knew that trying would set her off. “I’m sorry,” he said instead.

“I had a right to know.”

No, she wasn’t going to beat around the bush, he thought. She’d never been that way about anything, except when it came to him. That was one of the many things he admired about her…when it wasn’t driving him nuts.

“I know. Why do you think I’m here instead of back at the office like I should have been ten minutes ago?”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

“What you heard me say to Garth, I meant. I don’t believe there’s a connection. Equally critical for you to understand is that no matter why I do what I do, hurting you isn’t on the agenda.”

She made a mistake and ruthlessly scratched it out. Then, because that made an even uglier mess, she ripped up the form and tossed it away. Her rigid stance told him that only pride was holding her together.

“Look at me, Mike.”

She ignored him.

“Then do me a favor—go home. I’ll have someone collect Buck and bring him to the house, too. You’ve been up all night. You can’t—”

“Don’t!” she ground out. “Just find my sister. That’s all I want from you. Find Faith, and then leave me the hell alone—!”

“Chief? Chief!”

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