“What’s up?” Candice asked me.
I’d been carrying around Kyle’s photo all day, trying to link my energy in with his, and this was the first time I felt a connection. “Over here,” I said, hurrying toward the edge of the lot near a few huge buckeye trees.
I could hear Candice following me and I stopped next to the last tree. “What are you getting?” Candice whispered, coming alongside.
I put my hand on the tree and looked down at Kyle’s picture. A range of emotions went through me and a connection that I hadn’t expected. “Candice?” I said slowly, still feeling out the ether.
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember the name of the third missing girl?”
“You mean Leslie Coyle?”
“Yes.”
“What about her?”
“She was here.”
Candice didn’t speak, so I looked at her and noticed she was squinting at me. “What do you mean, she was here?”
“She and Kyle were together right here,” I explained, pointing to the ground.
“So you’re still convinced they knew each other?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“And she was the only one out of the three that you think hasn’t been murdered?”
“Her picture was too fuzzy to say for certain.”
“What do you think now that you’re feeling her energy?”
I looked up at her and met her eyes. “I think she’s alive.”
Candice stared at the tree we were next to. “Do you think they were abducted at the same time?”
“No,” I said, remembering the meeting we’d had in D.C. “Remember? Albright said Kyle was the second abduction and Leslie went missing five days later.”
“Albright also said Kyle disappeared on his way to the library,” Candice mused. “So maybe he got to right here and Leslie showed up.”
“What’s the connection?” I asked, puzzling over it.
“Maybe she came here to warn him,” Candice said.
“Or lure him somewhere,” I suggested as a chill went up my spine.
“Does your radar say she was in on his murder?”
I mentally checked that. “I don’t think so,” I said, scratching my head. “But there has to be a link between the three of them. Something that ties all this together.”
“Well, so far we know that at least two of the kids knew each other,” Candice offered. “The missing puzzle piece is how Bianca fits in.”
“And that’s what I can’t let go of,” I admitted. “I’ve been going around and around with all the clues she gave me when we met with her parents, and none of them go anywhere. So I have to ask myself why she would tell us to look in places that were all dead ends.”
Candice grimaced. “No pun intended, though, right?”
I gasped, realizing what I’d just said. “Oh, God! I didn’t mean it that way.”
The corners of Candice’s mouth lifted. “I know you didn’t,” she said kindly before she glanced at her watch. “I say we call it a wrap for today. It’ll take us a couple of hours to get home and it’s already after two.”
On the drive back I sifted through Bianca’s journals again. There was a clue in there that was staring me in the face, but what it was I couldn’t seem to find. My radar kept physically tugging backward, and that, for me, is a symbol to go to the past, so I didn’t argue; I dug around in her journals from the beginning of her freshman year and kept feeling that backward pull, so I switched to her senior year of high school, and the tugging stopped, but I couldn’t find anything that seemed like it fit.
I picked up the first journal I had from Bianca’s senior year of high school and I felt a strong tug forward. “Grrrr,” I growled out loud.
“Problem?” Candice asked from the driver’s seat.
I rubbed my eyes and laid my head back against the headrest. “I feel like I’m supposed to focus on the latter half of Bianca’s senior year of high school, but every time I go through that journal, nothing much pops out at me.”
“Is there a specific section that you think you might want to focus on?”
I closed my eyes and concentrated. In my mind’s eye I saw an Easter egg. “Easter’s usually in April, right?”
“Usually,” she agreed. “Right around spring break.”
I remembered that strong feeling I’d had at the task force meeting about a spring-break connection, so I flipped back to that section of her journal and began to read aloud the paragraphs that I’d nearly memorized. “ ‘Dad and I are at the MWCFC and this conference is totally cool. There were some interesting presentations and we’re meeting all these amazing people and there are tons of kids my age here. I’m hanging out with three kids mostly. They’re totally cool.’”
“Things appear to be totally cool,” Candice remarked.
I ignored her and kept reading. “ ‘ We’re going to hang out in L.’s room tonight and watch movies. I think she totally has it bad for N. H., but I don’t know whether he likes her back. Anyway, we’re going back home the day after tomorrow, which totally sucks, because then I’ll have to deal with the twenty questions from Mom about Dad’s new girlfriend. . . .’ ”
“Hold on,” Candice said.
“What?”
“Go back up to that part about hanging out in L.’s room.”
My eyes scanned the page to that section. “Yeah?”
Candice glanced over at me. “Do you think L. could be Leslie Coyle?”
My brow furrowed. “Maybe,” I said. “But who’s N. H.?”
“Newhouse,” she said simply. “Kyle was a jock, right? He probably went by his last name like most jocks his age.”
“Ohmigod!” I yelled as a thousand bells seemed to ding in my head. “How did I miss that before?”
Candice smiled. “I think we’ve hit our first jackpot,” she said, reaching for her cell phone and clicking through some screens until she came up with the number she wanted. She had the phone on speaker and we both heard it ring before being answered.
“Representative Lovelace,” Jeremy said.
“Hello, sir, it’s Candice and Abby.”
“Hello, ladies,” he replied. “Have you found anything?”
“Maybe,” Candice said, then motioned for me to talk.
“Mr. Lovelace, do you remember a conference that you attended with your daughter two years ago during her spring break?”
There was a pause, then, “Sure. She and I went to a caucus for Midwestern politicians. It was held in Chicago, and members of the state legislature were encouraged to bring their families. Bianca had a blast.”
I could feel a surge of adrenaline pumping through me. “Sir, do you remember who she hung out with during the caucus?”
There was another pause and then he said, “I don’t remember their names, but I do remember one young man was from Ohio. I think his name was Kevin or something. He was a good-looking kid. Then there was a girl. Lisa or something, and another young man that I only shook hands with once. I don’t remember his name or where he was from.”
Candice and I exchanged a look. “At that caucus did anyone personally threaten you or take a special interest in the group your daughter was hanging out with?”
“No,” Lovelace said, his voice suddenly cautious.
“Was there anything that happened at that event that was perhaps controversial?”
“Well, yeah,” Lovelace said. “I mean, whenever you get a group of politicians that large in one hotel, there’s bound to be some controversy.”
“Does anyone at all stand out in your mind that maybe you thought twice about or who seemed off to you?”
The line was silent for so long that I thought we’d dropped the call, but finally Lovelace said softly, “There was one man.”
“Who?” Candice and I asked together.
“During a committee meeting that I chaired on the downward spiral of our Midwestern economy, a gentleman who identified himself from my state go
t up and disrupted the meeting. He claimed to have been a former assembly-line worker and accused us of doing too little, too late to help the auto industry recover from the slide of recent years. He became so disruptive that he was eventually removed by hotel security.”
“Did he make any overt threats?”
Again, Lovelace was silent for a few seconds. “He did,” he said. “He said we’d all be sorry.”
“Who was on that committee?” I asked.
“There were several representatives,” Lovelace said. “I can’t remember all of them, but I have a copy of the minutes from that meeting somewhere. Can I dig it up and call you back?”
“Absolutely,” Candice said. “Please call us back as soon as possible.”
“Will do,” he said.
Candice and I waited twenty anxious minutes, but finally Lovelace called. “I’ve got the list,” he said.
“Shoot,” Candice commanded.
“The attendees were Representative Witlow, from Chicago; Representative Bentley, from Ohio; Senator Newhouse, also from Ohio; Representative Coyle, from Wisconsin—”
“Stop!” I nearly shouted, interrupting the representative, aware that I was bound by Gaston not to reveal any details of the other teens’ disappearance. “Mr. Lovelace, we’ll have to call you back.”
Candice clicked off from what had to be a rather stunned Lovelace and turned to me with a curious look in her eyes. “What’re you thinking?” she asked.
“We can’t hold on to this by ourselves,” I said. “We’ve got to go to the big guns and tell them about the connection.”
“Gaston?” she suggested.
I shook my head. “I think we should go to Dutch first, because if he finds out from Gaston that we’ve been working the case behind his back, he’ll be pissed.”
“Good point,” she said, handing me the phone.
My hands shook a little as I dialed his number. He hated when I went off on my own without telling him. “Ms. Fusco,” Dutch’s rich baritone said into my ear. “What’s up?”
“It’s me,” I said.
“Abs?”
“Yeah.”
“What sticky situation are you in now?”
I frowned. He knew me too well. “Don’t be mad,” I began.
Dutch sighed deliberately. “Great,” he said. “This is bound to be bad. Okay, out with it, Edgar.”
I swallowed, encouraged that he’d used his pet name for me at least, so I got on with it. “You know how Gaston kinda hinted that we needed to butt out of the Lovelace murder?”
Another sigh, then a groan sounded in my ear.
“Well, we didn’t exactly listen to instructions.” There was a long pause, so I said, “Dutch?”
“I’m here,” he said. “And I’m not surprised. What did you two come up with?”
“We found the connection between the kids and we think we have a lead on the killer.”
There was a low chuckle. “Oh, is that all?” he deadpanned.
The tension left my shoulders. “Pretty much.”
“Have you called Gaston yet?”
“We thought we’d start with you.”
“Nice of you.”
“I know, right?”
That got me another chuckle. “Okay, hang on, I just saw Gaston a few minutes ago. Let me go find him and tell him you’re on the line.”
Dutch put me on hold and I switched to speakerphone. We waited with the hold music filling the car for maybe three minutes before the line was picked up again. “Ms. Cooper?”
“Good afternoon, Agent Gaston,” I said. “I’m here with Candice and we’re just coming back from a quick visit to OSU.”
“Yes, Dutch filled me in on the fact that you’ve been doing a bit of investigating on your own.”
“Sir,” said Candice, “we were actually working it legitimately. Representative Lovelace hired us to look into his daughter’s death.”
“Yes,” said Gaston calmly. “He did that on my recommendation.”
Candice and I shared an astonished look. “Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he confirmed, and in the background I could swear I heard Dutch’s soft laughter.
“Er . . . thank you, sir,” I said.
“So what do you have for me?”
I filled him in on what I thought I’d picked up at OSU and Candice told him about the phone call to Representative Lovelace. When we finished, there were several seconds of silence, but then Agent Gaston said, “Very good work, ladies, and I mean that. I’m going to contact Representative Lovelace directly and bring the task force up to speed. Can I reach you at this number later?”
“Yes,” Candice and I said in unison.
“Excellent. Thank you and we’ll be in touch.”
Gaston clicked off and Candice and I traded high fives. “We rock,” she said smugly.
“Can you imagine what Harrison is going to say when Gaston tells him what we’ve found?”
Candice’s face turned down in a scowl. “Who cares what that asshole thinks?” she said with a wave of her hand.
I nodded, but then thought back to the week before when Harrison had paid his respects at her grandmother’s funeral. “Aw, maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all?” She looked at me as if I’d just told her that communism was good for the economy. “I’m serious,” I insisted. “He came to pay his respects last week at your grandmother’s funeral and I think that says more about him than how he reacts to people like me.”
Candice rolled her eyes. She wasn’t buying it. “Gaston couldn’t attend,” she pointed out. “So he probably forced Harrison to go in his place.”
I sighed. This was an argument I wasn’t going to win, so I let it drop.
We drove for the next hour in companionable silence when Candice’s phone rang. “Hello, Agent Gaston,” Candice said, putting us back on speaker.
“Ms. Fusco,” Gaston said warmly. “I’m here with Agent Harrison. Is Ms. Cooper still with you?”
“I’m here,” I sang.
“Excellent. We’ve spoken to Representative Lovelace and we’d like to ask for the two of you to join us tomorrow morning if you’re available.”
“Works for me,” I said, looking expectantly at Candice.
She looked frustrated and I didn’t understand why, but she grudgingly said, “We’ll be there.”
“Shall we say nine a.m. here at the bureau?” asked Gaston.
“That’s fine,” she said.
“Excellent. Have a good evening and we’ll see you in the morning.”
When we’d clicked off, I said, “You don’t look happy.”
Candice squared her shoulders and squinted in the dimming light at the road ahead. “I don’t want to work with Harrison again.”
“Who said anything about working with him?”
“What do you think they’re calling us in for, Abs? A cup of coffee and a chat about the weather?”
“You think they want us officially back on the case?”
“I do.”
That stumped me. I had kind of thought they’d bring us back in just to verify the information we’d gathered. I hadn’t made the leap that maybe they’d want us back on the case. “But the politics,” I said after I’d thought about it. “Wouldn’t bringing us back on be a big no-no?”
“Not if we’d made further headway than Harrison had without us,” Candice reasoned. “And my gut says we leaped him by a mile.”
“So you think he’ll be forced to work with us again.”
“Yep. And if we blow it or step out of line, he’ll blame Gaston and probably Dutch, and trust me on this, heads will roll.”
“That hardly seems fair,” I said. “I mean, why wouldn’t he just blame you and me?”
“Because we don’t work for the bureau,” she said simply. “We’re merely the pawns in this game. An experiment.”
I leaned back in my seat feeling tired and irritated with myself for saying yes to their offer before I’d had a chance to talk it
over with Candice. “I totally walked into that one, didn’t I?”
Candice nudged me with her elbow. “It might not be so bad. Let’s just go in there, hear the ground rules, and see if we can play by them. If not, we can always say no to the offer and walk away clean.”
“But that might be bad for Leslie,” I said with a nagging feeling I couldn’t shake that she was running out of time.
“It could be, yes.”
“I’m willing to take the political risk, then,” I said firmly. “If it might save her life, it’s worth it. I’ll talk it over with Dutch tonight, though, just to make sure he doesn’t mind me playing fast and loose with his career.”
“Good plan.”
“By the way, are you sure you don’t want to stay over one more night?”
Candice’s expression became melancholy and she reached over and squeezed my hand. “Thanks, Sundance, but it’s time for this cowgirl to get back to her own place and give you and Dutch a little alone time.”
I nodded, glad she was feeling strong enough to get on with her life, but worried about her nonetheless.
That night over dinner, Dutch and I discussed the pros and cons of Candice and me getting reinvolved with the missing teens. It aggravated me that there were more cons than pros. For the most part, Dutch completely agreed with Candice. We were damned if we did and damned if we didn’t, but at least he was okay with becoming a possible scapegoat if things got bad and the bureau needed someone to blame. “You seem pretty relaxed for someone who could lose his job if this thing goes south,” I noted.
Dutch shrugged. “I’ve still got the security business,” he said. “We’ll live.”
I smirked. Dutch made a whole lot more money managing his side business than he did as an FBI agent. “Still, I’d hate to see Gaston take the hit for this.”
“Abs,” he said patiently. “Don’t you think Gaston is aware of the risks?”
“Why’s he pushing so hard on our behalf?” I wondered.