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 might still be out there somewhere.” He pointed in the direction of where it had gone down.
She came up next to him, fighting the urge to cover his hand on the railing with hers. The wistful tone in his voice made her ache for a time when they hadn’t had any real worries. “You haven’t swum out there to see it?”
“No. When I got here, I hit the ground running and haven’t stopped since. My partner and I are very busy.” A deep sigh escaped his lips. “I should know what was going on with Amy, too. I feel like I’ve let her down, and now she’s in trouble.”
This time she did touch his upper arm, drawing his full attention. Although her gesture was an act of comfort, she felt strange because she found herself attracted to a man who was a good friend’s kid brother—one she had dealt with as a young teenage boy with a crush on her. “Ginny was having problems with Amy. She hit sixteen, and according to your sister, Amy changed overnight.”
He shifted toward her, her hand dropping to her side. “Did you find anything on her computer to help find her?”
“The name on the email account of skullandcrossbones is a Kip Thomas. Do you know someone by that name?”
“No.”
“I’ve asked Gabe to see what he can find out about this person who supposedly lives in Naples. It could be a fake name and address. That’s not hard to do when setting up an email account.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“A journal she kept up until ten days ago. She deleted it, but I was able to recover it. Did something happen at that time?”
A faraway look darkened his blue eyes to a storm. “That’s when I grounded her for coming in two hours late from a date. She’d just gotten off from being grounded a few days ago.”
“Who did she go out with?”
“She told me Brady Lawson, a guy she used to date during the school year, but I’m pretty sure it was Preston. I didn’t see the car she came home in, but I heard it. It sounded like Preston’s GTO. Lately she has been going out with Preston, and she knew I didn’t think he was the right kind of guy for her.” He rotated around and sat back on the railing, folding his arms over his chest. “Did you read the journal?”
“Yes, a lot of angst. Brady and she broke up two months ago, then she met another guy she thought was hot.”
“Did she say who?”
“No. She called him Hottie. Apparently they spent time in the swamp, partying.”
“That Preston.” His features strengthened into a scowl. “But I don’t know for sure and that’s the problem.” A nerve twitched in his cheek.
“She talked a lot about a girl named Laurie. Do you know her?”
“Yes, Laurie and Amy were BFFs, or so she told me on a number of occasions.”
“Then I suggest we go talk to her best friend first.”
“Right now?”
“No, after Gabe searches the area with the bloodhound. I figure you’ll want to be here in case he turns up anything useful.”
“Yes. Maybe the dog will find Amy’s trail and lead us right to her.” Hope flared in his expression for a few seconds.
“If nothing is found to help us, we can go talk to Laurie. She might know something about where Amy would go if she was afraid.”
“Frankly the place I would say she would go was Laurie’s, but when I called earlier no one answered the phone.” Michael shuddered, his shoulders drooping. “This is a peaceful