good at reading people while working as a detective in Dallas.”
“Great, I’m glad you’re gonna help me. Our resources are stretched at best on a good day. This isn’t a good day. The officer who has some knowledge about computers is the one on vacation this week. He’s not even in town. That leaves me with only Wilson, Connors and Nichols.”
“That’s also something I can help you with, Gabe. It’s a necessity in my job. If it’s okay with you and Michael, I can dig around and see what I can come up with on Amy’s computer.” Kyra peered from the police chief to him.
Her professional facade had descended, but this side of Kyra was just as appealing as the one who had declared she would help him. For months Michael had figured he was in over his head with Amy, but it was official now. Although he was only thirty-three, he felt decades older than his seventeen-year-old kid sister. “I don’t have any problem with that. Chief?”
“Nope. Then that’s settled. I’ll leave it here for you to do whatever you do.” Gabe headed for the door. “I don’t see anything else in here that could help us find Amy.” He paused at the door. “Michael, show me which way she would have come into the house the last time.”
He panned the room, then joined Gabe in the hallway. “It had to be the back door through the kitchen.”
“What’s Amy’s cell-phone number?” The police chief trailed behind Michael toward the kitchen.
Michael gave it to him and added, “Remember she doesn’t have it with her.” He surveyed the floor for any red spots on the tile, then when he didn’t see any, he lifted his gaze to take in the rest of the room.
“Or so she wants us to think. We only have her word that ‘he’ has it.”
“You think she wrote that in the email because she knew she could be tracked by the cell’s GPS?”
“It’s possible, but not probable,” Gabe said, followed by a humorless chuckle. “We might be able to track the person who took Amy’s cell if he has it as she said. I’ll get Connors on it.”
“Turn the tables on the guy Amy is running from?”
“Ain’t technology great.” Gabe winked and sauntered toward the back door.
Michael certainly hadn’t had time to keep up with all the technology being developed—except in his field of medicine—with his work schedule. He was one of two doctors in a community with a large ratio of elderly people who needed a great deal of medical attention. And before he came back to Flamingo Cay, his life had been a living nightmare for the last year in Chicago. Still was. The image of Sarah at the accident that had taken her life continued to haunt him even after over a year. He hadn’t been able to save her.
He wasn’t going to lose his sister, too. “How are we going to find Amy? She’s in trouble.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to locate Amy the old-fashioned way.”
“How?”
“We talk to her friends, check places that she goes to, and I know someone who has a bloodhound that’s a pretty good tracker. I’ll give Harvey a call and have him bring Boomer to track Amy’s movements when she left here. Maybe we can locate her that way.”
Hunt his sister down like a fugitive? The thought knotted his gut into a tight, hard ball. “Whatever you think is best. I just know we need to get to her before the killer does.”
“Can you get me something that she’s worn lately?”
“Sure.” Michael made his way back to Amy’s bedroom. When he entered, Kyra peered up at him and smiled. “Find anything?” he asked.
“A few things. She’s gotten a couple of emails from this skullandcrossbones person during the past few weeks, mostly chatter about Preston. Before that nothing. Maybe the person is a new friend. Do you remember her talking about someone she’d befriended recently?”
“No. But then she and I didn’t talk all that much, especially lately. She sulked a lot. When I asked her what was wrong, she denied anything was.” He waved his hand toward the Patterson house. “Obviously that wasn’t true.” He strode to a pile of shirts and shorts lying next to Amy’s empty dirty-clothes hamper. “Gabe is going to try and track her with a dog.”
“That’s good. She’s in danger. She may not think coming in to the police is the best solution to her problem, but it is.”
“Why wouldn’t she turn herself in to the police?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she will when she has time to stop and think clearly. Right now she is in flight mode.”
He grabbed a shirt Amy had worn recently. “If we find her, would you be willing to be her bodyguard? Ginny told me about your company, and if a killer is after Amy, we’ll need the services of a good bodyguard. As Gabe said, he’s understaffed. I know you agreed to help the chief, but Amy’s safety is the most important thing right now.”
She opened her mouth to say something but snapped it closed. Pressing her lips together, she glanced away for a moment then reestablished eye contact. “I don’t normally act as a bodyguard myself, but yes, I’ll help. I’ll protect her if it comes to that.”
For the first time in a while he didn’t feel so alone dealing with his problems. “Thanks. This is so out of my league. I’m glad you decided to come home this week.” He held up the article of clothing. “I’d better get this to Gabe. Maybe we’ll have Amy home by the end of the day.”
Kyra watched him leave. The expression of hope on his face tore at her composure. She’d been involved with disappearances of teenagers before and so many of them didn’t turn out well. She owed it to Ginny and even Michael to find their sister and then protect her. She couldn’t leave at the end of the week, go back to Dallas and forget what was happening unless there was a resolution to Amy’s troubles.
Mentally she began making plans to call her secretary, then see if Elizabeth Caulder could cover for her if she was in Flamingo Cay longer than a week. What else did she need to do? A lot of that would depend on what happened with Amy. The thought she wouldn’t be found left Kyra cold in the midst of the summer heat. She would do what she could to make the outcome different.
She clicked on Amy’s icon for trash to see what she’d deleted lately. A blank screen greeted Kyra’s perusal. Amy had emptied her trash. It would take her a little longer, but files weren’t completely deleted off the computer until there was no more space and a file was written over a trashed one.
Later that morning, Kyra found Michael on the deck facing the Gulf. The blue water glittered as though thousands of shards of crystal had been strewn over its surface. “I didn’t know how much I misssed this until I came home.”
Gripping the railing, Michael hunched his shoulders and leaned farther into it. “I know that’s the way I felt when I came back here.” His look didn’t stray from the stretch of sea no more than a hundred yards away. “I remember once when I was twelve and found an old dinghy. I worked all summer to get it in shape. I had planned to go all the way to Key West in it.” He slid her a smile that vanished in a second. “I didn’t make it more than twenty or so feet offshore before I began to sink. I hadn’t repaired all the holes in the bottom, at least not well enough that they didn’t leak. That boat
