*****
The library was quiet, and even more importantly, it was air conditioned. As soon as Gwen stepped in through the doors, she sighed in relief. She looked around, realizing that she hadn’t been inside the tiny library in years, and things had definitely changed since. The children’s section she and her mother had frequented every chance they got had been moved to the front of the library, probably so kids didn’t have to run screaming through the library to get to their designated area. Gwen almost smiled at the memory of racing as fast as she could while her mother followed more slowly, stopping to apologize to the elderly ladies that worked at the front desk.
Gwen followed Gabe towards the back of the library, where the adult sections were all located. He stopped at a small desk and signed his name on a sheet of paper before ushering her over to a row of computers along the far wall. One was occupied by a middle school aged kid who was playing some kind of video game, one that was probably too violent for his parents to allow him to play it at home so he snuck it in at the library after school.
Gabe pulled out a chair for Gwen and sat down in front of an empty computer. As it booted up, Gwen looked around, wondering if she would ever be able to set foot in this library again for pleasure instead of mystery. As Gabe opened internet explorer—a rather outdated looking version of it, Gwen noted—she turned her attention back to the screen. He typed something in too fast for her to see, and the page changed, revealing some kind of archive.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“The library has their own webpage for online news articles,” he said. “Any news story printed in the paper gets cataloged into here, and you can search for keywords that bring up similar stories to what you’re looking for. Whoever started the website years ago spent a lot of time collecting news stories from way back before we were born. Some of them I found go back as far as the seventies,” he said, his eyes wide with fascination as they scanned the screen.
“So what keyword are you using to look for any news article that might pertain to our family?” Gwen asked, finding herself as equally fascinated as Gabe. It was pretty amazing to think that she could find and read news stories from when her grandma was a little girl, learning what was going on in the world at the time. It could be a way to relate to the things her family experienced in their day.
“I’ve tried a couple different ones,” he said, never taking his eyes off the screen. “But so far, I haven’t been able to find much. There was an article about a great-uncle of ours that led the football team to victory years and years ago, and apparently he and our great aunt went to prom together and won prom king and prom queen. But other than that, our family has managed to pretty much stay out of the news.”
“I guess that’s a good thing,” she admitted.
He shrugged. “Makes our job a little harder. I don’t think we’ll find anything we’re looking for, at least not here. We’ll probably have to track down someone that knew them back in the day that could tell us about it, which I doubt will happen. Honestly, we’re probably going to be stuck in the dark until they decide to open up to us.”
“That’s never gonna happen,” Gwen said, her voice thick with disgust. “They’re more worried about keeping their secrets than they are about finding Ginny and putting a stop to whatever is going on. If they really wanted to help her, they’d let us all in on their secrets so that we knew what we were dealing with. We can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.”
“I agree. We’ll just have to be observant and make sure to pick up on any little clues. They’re giving things away even if they don’t realize it. We just have to be smart enough to catch on to them.” He looked over at Gwen and gave her a tiny smile. “Hey, don’t look so down. We’ll figure things out, no matter how long it takes. We’ll break their secrets, we’ll bring Ginny home for good, and we’ll do our best to go on with our lives. Things will be okay.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, turning her attention back to the screen.
They took turns thinking of different keywords they could use, but after an hour of finding nothing they had to admit that they were barking up the wrong tree. The older woman at the desk told them their time was up, and they logged off, feeling like they had just wasted valuable time they could have spent looking for Ginny. She dragged her feet as they made their way out of the library and back into the blazing summer heat. While she wondered what they were going to do next, Gwen noticed someone out of the corner of her eyes.
She turned, startled to find someone standing under the shade of a nearby tree. He was probably six foot even, and he looked to be around Gabe’s age, maybe a little older. He had light brown skin and dark brown hair that was shaved down on the sides and close cut on top, leaving just enough to fall across his forehead. She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were from that distance, but her heart did a little flip in her chest as she took in his strong jaw and sharp cheekbones.
He wasn’t the largest or most imposing man she’d ever seen, but there was something about the way he stood that made her think he wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to mess with. Maybe it was his wide shoulders or his thick biceps that were crossed over his chest as he leaned against the tree, or maybe it was the intensity on his face as he stared at her unabashedly. His eyes had locked onto her the second she left the library, and even though she met his gaze, he refused to look away or even look embarrassed to be caught staring.
She looked away, feeling uncomfortable under his intense stare. “Gabe?”
He looked up from his phone, his thumbs hovering over the keypad. “What?”
She looked back, and the guy was gone. She frowned, feeling deeply unsettled by his sudden appearance and even more sudden disappearance. “Nothing,” she said finally, her voice quiet. She didn’t know who that guy was, but it was pretty obvious to her that he had been waiting for them while they were in the library. What could he have wanted from us? As she followed Gabe to the car, a thought hit her, and she almost stopped and insisted on going back to the library to look for him.
What if that was Ginny’s mystery contact?