“I saw him leave the building at nine fifty-six. He passed the camera on the east end of the building at nine fifty-seven, which is closest to the administration building. He never made it to the camera over the back entrance to that building, which would have been the closest point of entry to see the superintendent. He would have had to swipe his keycard to get in that way, or if he went in the front entrance, the receptionist would have seen him. If that building is open, there is always someone at that desk. Security measure. They can’t get up from it and walk away, even to the copy machine down the hall, without leaving someone in their place. Someone would have seen him. He never made it there.”
“So somebody either grabbed him, or lured him away, from the side of the building closest to the student parking lot and the administration building,” Quint summarized. “Pretty bold.”
“I’m thinking he was lured,” she answered. “Lucas isn’t all brawn, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. That’s a lot of dead weight if someone knocked him out, and you’d have to expend a lot of energy to fight him. In broad daylight? Another no.”
“I didn’t go to Tejeda Springs,” Quint told her. “So what’s on that end of the school that would allow it to look natural for him to go to, and no one would suspect?”
“The entrance the students go in from the parking lot, as well as to the gym and locker rooms, if they’re coming from the tennis courts or even the soccer practice fields. The loading dock. The greenhouse. Keep going straight back, and the access road curls around to the auto shop and the baseball fields. Eventually, you circle the whole building—art wing, two-story portion that houses math and world languages—then you come out onto the western side of the school and the teacher’s parking lot.”
“So he could be anywhere,” Squirrel surmised.
“Who would take a teenage girl and the principal?” Crash asked.
“Someone who’s pissed at the school,” Elyxandre told him.
“Student with an axe to grind,” Quint added.
“A student or local who knows the school makes the most sense of our possible suspects,” she agreed.
“Well, it’s not Kennedy’s father,” Quint told her. “CPS made a house call this morning to inform him that his daughter is missing, and he was so drunk they could barely wake him. According to his normal watering hole, he was there from opening to closing, and never left his usual spot for longer than it took to go to the bathroom.”
“That leaves us with my ex and Ryker Sealy. I talked to Ezra, and he said Ryker never left class today, but one of the three classes they don’t have together does fit within the time frame.”
Quint whistled sharply and waved over a young officer standing at the trailhead. He asked Elyxandre, “Where would Ezra be right now?”
A tone rang, and students began to pour out of the building toward the parking lot and the buses. “He said he was heading to the library to study since there’s no football practice today.”
He turned to the officer. “Find the library and Ezra Vaughn. If you can, have Ryker Sealy paged. Have them both brought to the office, but put them in separate rooms.”
The young cop nodded and jogged toward the school building.
“We’ll need to talk to the three teachers of the classes the boys don’t share and see if he left the room at all. Wouldn’t hurt to double-check Ezra’s information that he didn’t leave any of the ones they were in together as well. I could check the cameras, but the teachers would be faster. I will have to use them to ensure he stayed in at lunch. But…” She sucked in her bottom lip. When she’d first suspected he might be responsible for thedamage at her home with the landscaping, she researched him. What she found didn’t help his case. “He’s an Eagle Scout. Did his final project on survival training on a weeklong solo camping trip this summer, somewhere along the US-Mexico border.”
Quint grunted. “And he definitely has an axe to grind with Lucas over homecoming. Last but not least, your ex.”
“We’ll have to call his chief and make sure he’s at work. He’s big into camping, fishing, all that stuff. Hunter. He wouldn’t know the park, but he’s got the skills to hide and survive.”
“Great.” Quint rubbed the bridge of his nose, then put his sunglasses back on. Looking at Elyxandre, he asked, “Do you think we’re wasting resources here at the preserve?”
She hesitated. “No…” The word was elongated. “It would probably be the best place to hide someone if you knew how to navigate off the trails. The park isn’t that large that you’d go missing forever if you went off them. But it could definitely take time to find someone. A day or so. You’d need to know the park.”
Crash pointed out the obvious. “Sounds like the kid is your best bet. He’s local. He’s got the skills to pull off the technical ends as well as access to the school. He wouldn’t look out of place, plus he’s known to both missing individuals. They’d trust him, to a certain point. Can’t you just go collect him?”
“He’s a minor,” Quint reminded him. “Plus, his daddy’s the superintendent. He’ll lawyer up before we even say, ‘You have the right.’ We won’t get anything out of him. If it’s him, we need to catch him with his victims.”
“It just seems too… easy,” Elyxandre complained. “Ryker could certainly be responsible for all the damage at my house. He’s got computer skills, so he could have been our hoaxer, as well as been responsible for the damage at school. He could have overpowered Kennedy and taken her somewhere. He knows the school and could navigate the preserve. But would Lucas have lost the upper hand to him?”
“Kid sounds smart. Wouldn’t be the first time a teen had turned full-blown psychopath.”
Squirrel and Crash picked up their backpacks and shouldered them. “We’ll head into the preserve. If we find anything, we’ll send up a flare. Penelope and Moose will be here to relieve us in two hours.”
“Be careful,” Quint cautioned. “No heroics.”
The two firefighters turned and moved into the park.
“You okay?” Quint asked.
“Not even close. I just found him. I can’t lose him. Not now.”
