When school let out the group of friends met in the student lot. Amanda had reached out to Magda’s mother during her lunch period and had gotten the same story Reed had gotten from Mrs. Stone, except that as far as Magda’s mom knew, both girls were spending the next couple of nights at Paige’s house.
“Is it time to panic yet?” Danny asked.
“We need to do something,” Tom said immediately, his voice calm and sure. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this since lunch and we need to go looking for them.”
“Yeah, but where do we start?” Manny said. “We don’t have anything to go on.”
“I was thinking about what Shay said yesterday,” Tom began. Now that he had decided on a course of action, he surprised himself by realizing that his fear had largely been pushed aside. “Every time we said what we didn’t know, Shay pointed out what we did know. That’s how we have to go about this. We may not know what happened to James and the girls but we know where they were going. We’ll start there.”
He turned to Amanda. “You and Magda both have part time jobs at Tags. If I remember right, Magda was supposed to work last night. You and Manny check at the store to see if she ever showed up for her shift. That’ll help us narrow down the time that she went missing. We also know that she and Paige were going to stop by Grocery Barn to pick up some things for the clubhouse. Dimitri and I will check that out to see if anyone remembers seeing them. That will tell us if they went missing right after we all left the clubhouse or if it happened later than that.
“That just leaves James,” Tom said, turning to Danny and Reed. “We know James parked his car at the end of Willow Street yesterday when we went to the clubhouse. I parked right behind him and his car was gone when I came out of the woods a few minutes after he left. Since there are only so many ways he would go home from there it shouldn’t take long for you guys to check out the streets between the woods and his house. Whatever happened to him had to have happened somewhere along that route. You guys search the streets and see if you can find some trace of what happened to him.”
“What do you want us to look for?” Danny asked.
“His car,” Tom said. “We know the car never made it back to his house or my house. I’ll bet that if those guys did grab him, they left the car right where they grabbed him. If you find it you might also find some clue about what happened to him.”
Tom glanced at Dimitri and saw a troubled look on his friend’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“What about Shay?” Dimitri said, concern clearly evident in his voice.
“Shay is fine for now,” Tom said. He knew how Dimitri felt about Shay and silently berated himself for not realizing that he would be worried about her. “Reed texted her earlier,” he went on, explaining. “She’s got classes all day and a lab final this afternoon. We didn’t tell her about her sister yet so she wouldn’t worry. We can tell her what’s going on after we know more.”
Dimitri shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. If these guys are coming after us then Shay is in danger, too.” He looked directly in Tom’s eyes, his expression set in a look of stubborn determination. “It’s too dangerous for her to be out there by herself. I’m going to go get her.”
Danny clapped him on the shoulder. “You mean we’re going to go get her.”
Tom didn’t even consider arguing with them. “Okay, new plan. You guys go get Shay from school. Reed and I can check out the supermarket then we’ll search for James’ car. Everybody keep in touch. We’ll all meet up at the clubhouse later.”