We spent the next twenty minutes plotting our escape. We’d narrowed things down to a cruise or an island retreat when Tom burst into the coffee shop. Mac and I, who had literally had our heads together, jumped apart at his interruption.
“Clyde? Detective McKenzie?” He looked from Mac to me and back again. He seemed to have forgotten why he came in. He glanced at our still-clasped hands and his face turned pink.
“Andrews, what do you need?” Mac said.
“I . . . we need you at the station, sir. There’s someone who needs to speak to you.” Tom came to the table and lowered his voice. “It’s Skye Paxton. She says she has some information pertaining to the Rafe Godwin case.”
My pulse picked up speed. I hoped she wouldn’t tell him that I had known since the day before about Rafe and Morgan and their inheritance dispute.
“Does she have a parent with her?” Mac asked.
Tom shook his head. “She’s eighteen, which is good news for us because I wouldn’t want to question her with Bea Paxton in the room.”
“What’s wrong with Bea?” I asked.
“From what I’ve heard, she takes helicopter parenting to the Black Hawk level.”
39
I arrived home to find the dogs waiting at the door. I called Seth, but received no answer.
“Where’s Seth?” I asked Baxter and Tuffy.
Baxter seemed to shrug while Tuffy just glowered.
I found a note in the kitchen: Had to go out—be back soon.
I immediately pulled out my phone to see if I had missed a text from him. He never wrote notes. I scrolled through my messages and even checked my e-mail—nothing.
I sent a text: Where are you?
Instead of his usual rapid-fire response, it took a full five minutes until I received: At the mall.
There was a mall in Grand Rapids, but how did he get there, and why? He hated shopping.
What mall? How did you get there?
I’m with Faith. Skye drove us.
Something felt wrong. I knew that Skye had gone to the police station. I doubted she had driven her little sister and Seth to the mall just before coming into Crystal Haven to talk to the police.
Where are you, really?
No response. I waited ten minutes and sent several more texts demanding an answer. As each moment passed I got more worried. Seth had never done anything like this, at least not to me. I reminded myself that he had managed to get himself all the way to Michigan without alerting his mother. But this was different, wasn’t it? He wanted to be here, and he had no reason to hide anything from me.
I didn’t want to overreact, but my gut told me that something was seriously wrong.
I called Diana, who was at the hospital visiting Lucan. She pointed out that we used to disappear all the time and our parents had no way of contacting us. That sort of calmed me except that this was unusual for Seth. And I remembered the kind of trouble Diana and Alex and I got into when we disappeared and our parents couldn’t find us. Diana said she’d check with me later after she got home from the hospital.
When I called Alex, he agreed it sounded strange.
“He’s been texting Faith,” he said. “Maybe she talked him into going to the mall. Isn’t that what they do these days?”
I admitted that he might be with Faith, but neither of them could drive. I knew that Skye was busy at the police station, so how did he get there?
I decided to drive to the mall myself. It would only take twenty minutes, and I could search for him there. I left the dogs looking more forlorn than usual, and hopped in the Jeep.
An hour later, I’d walked the entire shopping center, investigated any store that I thought would attract a couple of young teens, and sent Seth a text every ten minutes.
Finally, I called Grace.
“Don’t freak out,” I said when she answered, “but Seth might be missing.”
“What do you mean missing?” she said. “I thought you were together all the time. How did this happen? You’re a police officer!” This from the woman who didn’t know if her kid was in New York or Michigan.
I took a deep breath. Arguing with Grace would not help me find Seth. “I went out for an hour this morning and when I came back, he was gone. He’s not answering his phone or his texts.”
“Let me get to a computer.”
I waited while Grace mumbled to herself on the other end of the line.
“I have GPS tracking on his phone in case he loses it,” she said. I heard a keyboard clicking in the background. “Let me see where the phone is.”
“I’m at the Grand Rapids mall right now. That’s where he said he was.”
“No, it says here the phone is off, but the last location is not at the mall.”
“Where is it?”
“It looks residential. I’ll send you the address. Call me as soon as you know anything.”