"Agent Nyler!" Gail raced into Nyler's office and handed him a sheet of paper, a printout bearing a full-page photograph. "This just came in from the State Patrol."
Agent Nyler took one glance at the picture and looked up meaningfully at Kara and Craig. They jumped to Nyler's side. It was a photo of a car leaving a ferry—a silver Volkswagen, two doors…and Zach was clearly in view in the back seat!
"That's him!" Craig declared with a surge of hope.
"He seems okay," Kara noted, relieved. "And look"—she pointed to Zach's side—"two Asian men, just like he said."
"And that must be your father," Craig said to Eddie, indicating the graying man in the passenger seat. It was his first look at the man Zach had known as Grandfather.
"Yeah, that's him," Eddie confirmed sadly. He had stepped behind Craig to view the picture with them.
"Where are they?" Nyler asked Gail, leaving the photograph in Kara's hands.
"They disembarked from the ferry in Edmonds twenty minutes ago," Gail informed him.
"Twenty minutes?" Craig moaned. "They could be to Everett by now."
Agent Nyler clicked his tongue, thinking. "Or Woodinville, or Seattle. The question is, are they heading north from Edmonds, maybe to the Canadian border, or somewhere else? Perhaps to Lerwick's house?" He turned to Eddie.
"His house is only ten minutes from the ferry," Eddie mused. "If he were going home, the officers watching his block would have called it in by now."
"Mmm," Nyler nodded. "So north, south, or east?" He clicked his tongue again and turned to Gail. "Put the offices in Everett and Bellingham on alert in case they go that way. Woodinville, too. Contact the Edmonds PD again and make sure they're watching. And inform the Seattle Police. They could still come back this way."
Eddie rubbed his red goatee. "You might want to contact the Coast Guard. My father's more likely to try to smuggle Zach out of the country by ship than to put him on a plane or train. And driving to Canada—it's just not his style. He won't risk having Zach out where people might notice him."
Nyler nodded. "Alert the Coast Guard," he said to Gail, keeping his eyes on Eddie.
"There's one other thing," Gail offered. "The officer who called in the report reviewed the ferry's onboard video and said the two Asian men forced their way into the vehicle."
"They kidnapped my father?" Eddie asked, incredulous.
"They were armed. They struck him in the face and tied his hands."
"What's going on here?" Nyler wondered. He looked at Eddie, who shook his head, bewildered.
Gail hurried out of the room. Craig turned to Agent Nyler. "What now? More waiting?" He met Nyler's eyes—they were sympathetic.
"We have hundreds of Seattle's finest out there searching for your son, and we're hot on their trail. We are going to find them. In the meantime, as for the four of us"—he looked at Craig, Kara, and Eddie in turn, and sighed—"yes, we wait." He stretched a hand to rub the back of his neck. "I hate waiting."