Hidden in the Everglades
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Michael hung back, opening and closing his hands at his sides. He peered at Preston lying faceup on the beach, then back at Kyra.
She approached him. “You’re not so sure, are you?”
He shook his head, bleakness in his eyes. “Not the way Amy has been acting lately. The first month I was back here everything was all right. Then at the start of the summer, she began to change into the little sister that Ginny warned me about.”
“What?”
“Wild, rebellious, stubborn.”
“Some of that describes a typical teenager. I can remember some of the things I pulled with Ginny.” She grinned. “And you took pleasure in letting your mom know all about it.”
For a fleeting second humor flashed into his eyes until his gaze fixed upon a point down the beach. Kyra turned and saw Gabe waiting for them four houses down.
“When we get this all straightened out, I hope we can talk.” Michael began walking. “The one thing I know about Amy is she wouldn’t hurt anyone. Just last week a bird flew into the glass window. She had me out there trying to revive it. I kept telling her I was a doctor for humans, not birds.”
Kyra fell into step next to him as he passed near the crime-scene tape. “Did the bird make it?”
For a long moment Michael didn’t say anything, only stared at Preston, a dark shadow in his eyes. Finally he blinked, shook his head slightly and focused on Kyra. “Yes, Twitter flew off an hour later as if nothing had happened.”
“Twitter?”
“Amy named the bird that. Now do you see why I don’t think she could have been involved? It had to be someone else.”
“Sometimes people get caught up in something they never intended.” Kyra touched his arm and stopped on the beach, compelling him to do likewise. “I used to investigate homicides for a living.”
“Yeah, Ginny told me.”
“You talked to Ginny about me?”
“You were Ginny’s best friend, even if you two didn’t get to see each other much in the past few years.”
“I don’t know about y’all, but I have a lot to do,” Gabe shouted, his fists on his hips, his glare directed at them.
“I forgot how impatient he can be,” Kyra said with a laugh and continued her trek toward the police chief. “My point in telling you that is if Amy is involved I might be able to help you.” The second the words were out of her mouth, Kyra wanted to snatch them back. Help Michael? How? She was only going to be here a week. Besides, what business was it of hers? She had so needed a break finally. Gabe was quite capable of finding the killer without her help.
“This little reunion will have to wait, y’all. Where’s Amy?” Gabe charged up the back steps to the deck and waited at the door while his foot tapped against the wooden planks. “We haven’t had a murder in Flamingo Cay in four years, and now I’ve got two in one day.”
Michael reached around Gabe and opened one of the double glass doors. “She went to her bedroom. I’ll go get her. Have a seat.” He waved toward the den, then headed down the hall.
Before going into Michael’s place, Kyra slipped off her swamp-soaked tennis shoes and strode to the outside water faucet and rinsed the mud off her legs and sneakers. After setting them out to dry, she entered the house.
Gabe removed his ball cap and scratched his thinning hair. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Then he plopped the hat—a sore subject with the town council, which thought he should wear his complete uniform—back on his head.
“Why do you say that?” Kyra asked as the sound of rushed footsteps resonated down the corridor.
A second later Michael appeared, his eyes huge, fear carving deep lines into his face. “She’s not in there.” He brought forward a bloody T-shirt. “But this was on the floor.” His hand quavered as he thrust it toward Gabe.
“This is Amy’s?” Gabe asked, making no move to take the article of clothing.
“Yes. She was wearing it yesterday.”
Kyra headed toward the kitchen but paused in the entrance. “And this morning when you saw her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see what she had on. All I saw was a glimpse of her before Wilson called me.”
“Where’s a paper sack?” Kyra had known the Hunt family for years, and although she and Ginny didn’t see each other in person much anymore, they did keep in touch by phone and email occasionally. Now she knew why she’d told Michael she would help—because of the years of friendship.
“In the top of the pantry. Why?” Michael clamped the edge of the T-shirt between his thumb and forefinger.
While she rummaged around in the pantry, Kyra heard Gabe explain about putting the shirt in the sack as evidence. When she found what she was looking for behind some pans, she returned to the living room. His forehead furrowed, Michael dropped the piece of clothing into the evidence bag.
“I need to take a look at the house. Is that okay?” Gabe asked, taking the sack.
Confusion clouding his eyes, Michael glanced from Gabe to Kyra. She gave him a nod, and he said, “Yes.”
“Kyra, do you want to help?” Gabe crossed toward the hallway. “I could always use an extra pair of eyes. In fact, I could hire you as a consultant so you could work this case. I could use your expertise as a homicide detective. Besides, you’ve seen more murders than me, and one of my officers is on vacation.”
“How about the sheriff and his deputies or the state police?”
“I’ll put a call in for some help, but I don’t know how much I’ll get until next week. They’re gonna be busy on St. Cloud Island. A big symposium on terrorism is being held there soon with some world leaders attending. I think something else is happening on Marco Island. Some big conference with the governor.”
She couldn’t turn down Gabe’s request when he was the reason she’d become a police officer in the first place. “Sure, if you need me, I’ll help but you don’t have to hire me as a consultant. I’ll poke around and see what I can come up with.” She twisted toward Michael, wanting to erase the worry from his face. “I didn’t see a gun on the floor by the body, and I didn’t see Amy with one. I think the only one who had a gun was the assailant.”
He peered at her as though she were speaking a foreign language.
“Preston and the other guy were shot. So where’s her gun if she shot them?” Kyra asked.
Michael’s eyes brightened. “Yeah. But why did she run away?”
“She was scared. People often react without thinking. Do you know any reason why she would go to the Pattersons’ house?”
He shook his head, the light dimming again in his eyes.
She closed the space between them. “I told Gabe I would help, and I will.”
“My most immediate concern is finding Amy. If the man shot at her, then he may be after her.”
She couldn’t dispute that—it was a very real possibility. “He fled into the swamp.”
“She loves the swamp. What if he was going after her?”
His every word held such alarm that Kyra was drawn again to comfort Michael. She touched his arm, his bicep bunching beneath her fingertips. “The sequence of events doesn’t support that. You were seeing her in this house while I was going after the killer.”
“Then where did she go?”
“Good question. We need to find her.” As Gabe disappeared down the hallway, Kyra inhaled deeply, smelling Michael’s scent—musk and antiseptic. “While we’re looking around, try calling her first then start calling her friends, if she doesn’t answer her cell. See if she’s with one of them or they know where she would go.”
“I can do that.” He dug into his pocket and withdrew his cell. “I also need to call my partner to tell him to cover for me for the next few days.”
Kyra left him making the first call. She seriously doubted Amy was over at a friend’s, but it gave Michael something to do while they searched the house. The person she’d seen running from the murder scene was frightened. What had Amy witnessed? What did Michael’s sister know that caused the assailant to shoot at her? Could Amy ID the killer?
When she entered the teen’s bedroom, Gabe closed a drawer. “I’m worried about Amy. If she witnessed a double homicide, the killer might not rest until he finds her.”
“I agree.” Kyra strolled toward a pegboard with photos pinned on it. She surveyed the array. “I haven’t seen pictures of Amy since she was much younger. But this is definitely the girl I saw at the house.” She tapped her finger at a girl in a photo in the center of the board—two girls, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, huge smiles on their faces.
“That’s Amy. I know that she has been in more trouble this past year than before, but I would never figure she would be involved in a murder even as a witness.”
“Can you tell me anything about Preston? Why would someone want to kill him? Who is the other victim?” Kyra used the eraser end of a pencil to wake up Amy’s computer. Amy’s screen saver came blazing to life. A scene of a swamp—dark, eerie, with deep shadows except where a sunray burst through the thick foliage to light the murky water.
“Preston is—was a bit on the wild side. I’ve seen Amy and him together around town. I’m not sure who the other guy is. He must be passing through. Wilson is working on that.”
“Could he have been involved in drugs?”
“Possibly. You think this is drug-related?”
“You know that drug dealers have used the Glades to smuggle in their poison so it’s a very real possibility.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. A few years back I would have said Amy would never have been caught up in something like that. Now I can’t.”
“Which means she could be in deeper trouble than just the police looking for her to question her.”
“Yup. The killer could be after her as a witness or a drug deal gone bad.”
“It won’t be the first time a murderer wants to silence a witness or a dealer wants to send a message about double-crossing him.” Noticing Amy’s internet server was still open, Kyra sat at the desk and punched some keys to bring up the girl’s email account. She clicked on the last message Amy sent. “Gabe, come look at this.” She peered over her shoulder at her mentor and glimpsed Michael standing in the doorway.
Both men approached the desk.
Michael hovered over Kyra to read, “I lost my cell at the cabin. He’s got it. Gotta get out of here. Hide. Meet me at our place.”
THREE
“He’s got her cell? Who? How?” Michael’s gut constricted. The throbbing in his head increased its tapping against his skull.
“Don’t know.” Kyra’s gaze connected with Michael’s. “Who’s this person she’s emailing called skullandcrossbones?”
“I would have said Preston, but he’s dead. I don’t know.” Why didn’t he? He’d tried to forge a bond with Amy, but—He couldn’t think straight with Kyra’s vanilla scent teasing his nostrils. When he’d been growing up, he’d fancied himself in love with Kyra, who thought of him only as Ginny’s kid brother. But what did a boy of fifteen or sixteen really know about love? He didn’t even think he had a good grasp on it now. Not after Sarah. He’d failed her when she’d needed him the most.
Gabe frowned. “Maybe that’s something I could ask her friends.”
“Let me do that. They might talk to me but not the police.” Michael remembered the short list of Amy’s girlfriends he’d called and the fact he’d gotten nowhere with them. They knew something and weren’t talking. But he had to do something to help Amy, and maybe after he pressed upon them the danger his sister was in, they would open up to him.
Indecision shadowed the police chief’s eyes.
“He might have a point. I could go with Michael. See if I can figure out who’s lying or telling the truth. I got pretty 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 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 little town. A kid shouldn’t have to be afraid for her life.”
“No, but sadly that’s not the way it is in this world.”
“Yeah, there are two dead young men to prove that. I saw my fair share of gunshot victims in the emergency room in Chicago. Some were caught up in gang wars. Others in drug deals gone bad. I thought I had left that behind.”
“As a police officer, I discovered evil can exist anywhere.”
“Wilson told me he didn’t know who the other victim at the Pattersons’ house was. He appeared older than Preston. Do you think this has anything to do with drugs or something like that?”
“Maybe. When I talked to Gabe a few minutes ago, he told me the other person who died at the scene was Preston’s cousin from Miami, Tyler Stevens. His cousin had been visiting and hadn’t been here long. He had the same black dagger tattooed on his neck as Preston did.”
“A gang?”
“Gabe is checking with the Miami police. “
He pushed away from the railing. “I never thought of Flamingo Cay and gangs in the same context.”
“He said they checked where the man I chased ran into the undergrowth and saw another set of prints near his and mine. Looked to be about a size-thirteen shoe, Gabe said. Since it rained last night, he thinks either someone was standing there watching the house or waiting for Amy or someone else.”
A gray tinge to his face, Michael sucked in a shaky breath then slowly released it. “Let’s see what progress Harvey and his bloodhound, Boomer, have made. Maybe they’ve already found a trail that will lead us right to Amy.”
Kyra hoped so, too, but what she wouldn’t voice to Michael was her concern over how they would find Amy. When his gaze snagged hers as he moved toward his back door, though, she glimpsed the same fear in his expression as she had. Amy could be dead somewhere nearby. Like the two young men at the Pattersons’.
She halted Michael’s progress into his house with, “Amy came back and changed. She was alive a while ago and got away from whoever killed those boys because I chased him to the canal in the opposite direction from here. I don’t think she had time to come home, change and somehow end up in the swamp being chased by the assailant.”