At midnight, she’d wanted the state law enforcement people—shoot, she’d wanted the National Guard; but now the thought of bringing them in meant accepting that Faith might be lost to them. Not quite ready to take that psychological step, she was almost relieved when Buck reappeared.
“Ain’t you got somebody else to harass?” he muttered to Jared.
“Stop it,” Michaele replied. “There’s been bad news. It’s about Faith.”
Immediately her father’s sullen attitude vanished. He looked from her to Jared. “What about her? What’s wrong?”
“She’s missing,” Michaele said. “She never came home yesterday.”
A myriad of emotions played over her father’s face—incomprehension, denial, anger—but the sudden slump of his shoulders told her that he understood. “There’s gotta be…”
When he didn’t finish the statement, Michaele shook her head. “We don’t know the reason. And to complicate things, her car’s been found. It was in Pete’s driveway.”
Buck frowned, though his bloodshot eyes focused on nothing. “Pete Fite? Why would she be staying with him?”
“She’s not. That’s the point. She had no reason to be there.”
“Why, that dirty slug. I’ll tear him in two if he—”
“Pete is incidental in this, Buck.”
“As far as anything or anyone can be ruled out so far,” Jared added.
Michaele shot him a thanks-for-nothing look. “Pete was as upset as I was,” she told her father. “The car was just abandoned there.”
Heaven knew what was going on in her father’s mind. His facial muscles twitched and spasmed.
“Must be with a friend.”
“I don’t think so. I had a call. He made it clear that she wouldn’t be coming back.”
Dazed, Buck stared at her. “Where’s she going?”
“Nowhere that I know of. At least, not willingly. We think someone’s kidnapped her.”
At that troubling pronouncement, he began fidgeting. He dug deep into the pocket of his overalls and came up with a single crumpled bill and several coins. Michaele understood he was checking to see if he had enough to buy a pint of whatever rotgut he could find.
“Don’t even think it,” she intoned. “I need you here. We haven’t managed it in years, and maybe we’ll never do it well, but for once we have to stand together like a real family.”
“Sure. You’re right. But I have to…I’ll be back in a few minutes. Just need a sip of something to wash away the cobwebs.”
“For crying out loud, are you planning on staying comatose so you can’t be asked to identify a body?”
He brushed past her and lurched into the garage. Michaele followed, but it was a waste of time. When he escaped out the back door, she swore. “Don’t you dare touch that Firebird! It’s evidence!”
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