As far as I was concerned withholding at this point was just as bad as an outright lie. I didn’t tag him on it . . . not yet anyway. I let him talk. He got to the part where he hadn’t stopped Kyra from going to the restroom all by herself, and it was all I could do to keep myself from choking the guy. The both of them.
What had they been thinking? Especially if they seriously believed they’d been sniffed out by something trying to communicate in some sort of white noise?
Goddamn it!
“So what now?” I asked Griffin, bypassing the two jackasses who’d already managed to lose Kyra once.
She pursed her lips, and I wondered if her head was even in the game, or if her brain was scrambled from being so near Tyler again.
Jesus, what the hell was wrong with everyone? Was I the only rational one left around here?
When no one answered, my impatience reached the boiling point. “Nothing?” I prodded. “Then let me break it down for you. I think one of you knows more than you’re letting on.” With supreme discipline, I managed to keep from stabbing Kyra’s dad with my critical gaze. “But this isn’t the time to hold anything back. Kyra’s in trouble and if we don’t figure this thing out, who knows what they’re gonna do to her.”
“They . . . ? But how can we get her back if they’ve taken her again?” Tyler started, and I couldn’t help thinking he was a few bricks shy of a load.
“Jesus, Griff!” I exploded, pissed we were talking about alien abductions when we knew damned well this was foul play of the human variety. “Show them the freaking picture.”
Griffin’s eyes turned to accusatory slits, and I wondered when she’d planned to share. Without explanation, she pulled out her phone and passed them the image of Kyra’s limp body being hauled through the parking lot. “Do any of these guys look familiar?” she asked.
I knew the moment Ben recognized his daughter in the crappy photo, because his shoulders stiffened. “Kyr,” he breathed, and the way he said it redeemed him for the moment. That kind of anguish can’t be faked. But he shook his head. “I don’t know these guys.”
“Me neither,” Tyler added, his voice hollow. Then he leaned closer. “Wait a sec.” He squinted, his finger lifting to the phone and tapping it. He pointed to a fuzzy image of a girl with pale blond hair who was off to the side. “Her. She was there. She went in the bathroom right after Kyra did.”
Hope swelled inside me. A lead. Flimsy, but a lead all the same. “Jett’s gotten nowhere trying to ID the two guys. Maybe he’ll have more luck with the girl. It’s worth a shot.” I hoped to God Jett could work his magic.
“Look, right before she . . . well, whatever happened to her.” Tyler hesitated, took a deep breath, then continued. “Kyra and I were talking. I was telling her about something . . . a dream I’d had about her.”
I scowled at him. This wasn’t the time and I really didn’t want to hear about them . . . not about them talking and especially not about dreams he’d had about her. Frankly, if Kyra wasn’t in trouble, I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to him at all. Ever.
When I glanced Griffin’s way, I saw the same thing in her expression. While I had a knot in my stomach, hers was smack in the middle of her forehead, in the pinched crease between her eyebrows.
Oblivious, because he was Tyler and “oblivious” should have been his middle name if you asked me, the kid kept going. “I told her I think there’s someplace we’re supposed to be . . . maybe go. I keep dreaming about these . . . maps.” He made a face, like this was supposed to be tough on him too—a stupid dream. “But the thing was, she already knew about it.”
Griffin leaned forward, more interested than I could pretend to be. “Maps?” she asked, her eyebrows screwed up in a different way now—less worried and more curious. “What kinds of maps?”
“That’s what was weird about it. Not ordinary maps, of roads or anything. Just a bunch of”—he shrugged—“I don’t know . . . scribbles mostly.”
Scribbles? Kyra was out there, and he was blathering on about scribbles?
“Can you show them to us?” Griffin asked.
Tyler looked uncertainly from me to Ben and then to Griffin. “I can try.”
He reached down in front of him and used his hand to clear a spot in the ground, brushing the dirt so it was smooth and flat. Then he picked up a stick and began to scratch out shapes. There were lines, both straight and curved. Loops that intersected other loops. Complete spheres, partial crescents, and sharp points with acute and obtuse angles.
Scribbles. The whole thing looked like complete garbage. A total waste of time.
I stood up, tired of doing nothing. I’d find Jett and together we’d figure out a way to get a lead on the blond girl in the image. We’d find Kyra with or without these useless lumps.
I was about to say as much when I glanced one more time at the second-rate sand sketches Tyler had drawn.
“Holy . . . ,” I started. “That’s no map. I mean it is, but it isn’t, not really.”