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“How ’bout you give me your best guess,” Levi pushed.
“I don’t know, he liked to go fishing, maybe the pool. He dated Kara Turner for a while, maybe over there,” Levi said, then drained the last of his drink. “That’s all I can really think of.”
“Okay,” Levi said, letting Cutter’s lie drop for now. He’d get him into the station for a formal interview tomorrow, pin him down then. In the meantime, he’d keep a close eye on Brock, follow him. Maybe he’d lead him right to Ethan Doyle. “If you think of anything else, give me a call, got it?” Levi said pointedly.
“Sure thing,” Cutter said, dropping his drink into the garbage can. “I hope you find him.”
“Me too,” Levi said as Cutter walked away.The kid is lying,Levi thought. But why? Was he protecting Ethan Doyle or himself?
Three hundred miles away, not far from Leroy, Nebraska, Nebraska State Trooper Phillip Loeb was traveling west on I-80. He had received an alert to be on the lookout for a 1990 silver Datsun pickup truck and damned if there wasn’t one in his rearview mirror. That was some bad business over in Iowa. Two dead, two missing.
Of course, he’d have to get a better look, run the plates. It was probably a false alarm—they usually were.
Loeb slowed his cruiser hoping that the truck would come up beside him to get a look inside, but as he reduced his speed, so did the truck. Several vehicles passed the trooper but the silver truck lagged farther behind. Interesting.
Loeb couldn’t get a good look at the occupants in the truck from his vantage point, but he could see there were two people in the cab. His pulse quickened. He needed to get behind that truck. He called dispatch with his position but the closest trooper was forty miles away. Loeb didn’t want to wait that long for backup to arrive but also knew that the lives of two teens could be at stake.
Again, Loeb slowed down, but so did the truck, allowing several vehicles to come between them. The driver was definitely trying to evade him.
Just as Loeb pulled off to the side of the road to let the truck pass him, the driver stomped on the gas. As it roared past the idling cruiser, Loeb got a glimpse of the passenger—a young woman who stared back at him in terror.
Loeb pulled back onto the road and began pursuing the truck, now traveling in excess of eighty miles per hour.
“Dammit,” Loeb muttered. He flipped on his siren and lights but had to wait for several vehicles to get out of his way before he could safely return to the road. He accelerated, the red needle on the speedometer hovering around ninety miles per hour.
The cars in front of him were quickly pulling off the road to let him pass until there was only one vehicle between Loeb and the truck. The car, driven by an oblivious young man, wasn’t slowing down, wasn’t pulling off to the side.
Loeb moved to the left lane to pass the car, and that’s when he realized his mistake. The driver of the truck yanked the steering wheel to the right, barely catching the exit.
There was no way Loeb was able to follow suit and he watched helplessly while the exit flew by. Cursing under his breath, Loeb slowed and at the next break in the median made a U-turn.
By the time Loeb made it to the exit ramp, the silver truck was long gone.
Agent Santos stood in the middle of Becky Allen’s small bedroom and tried to step into the mind of a thirteen-year-old. The room was messy, with an unmade bed and clothes tossed onto the floor. Tacked to the wood-paneled walls were posters of Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, and the Backstreet Boys.
She had looked through Becky’s drawers, beneath the bed, in the closet—all the obvious spots—but found nothing of particular interest. A new backpack with the tag still on it sat in the corner of the room next to two Walmart bags filled with supplies for the coming school year: notebooks, folders, binders, markers, pens, and pencils.
From what Santos could see, Becky listened to pop music, read books from the Goosebumps and The Baby-Sitters Club series, and from the crumpled-up wrappers beneath her bed, had an affinity for Laffy Taffy and caramel apple suckers. Nothing to indicate that Becky had a secret life. Still, she was missing along with a sixteen-year-old boy. The question was, did she go willingly?
Santos sat on the edge of Becky’s bed and lifted one of the Walmart bags from the floor. Inside were notebooks in a variety of colors and a package of fine-tipped markers that had been opened. Santos pulled out the stack of notebooks. She opened the one on top, and sure enough, Becky had written her name on the inside cover using fat, round bubble letters. She flipped through the empty pages until a flash of color caught her eye.
Santos examined the page crammed with doodles of flowers, hearts, stars, and random letters. Among the frenzy of color Santos’s eyes landed on a series of letters traced heavily in blue ink. BJA+ED. Becky Jean Allen. Ethan Doyle.
Maybe Becky had left willingly with Ethan. Young love gone rogue? Another Bonnie and Clyde or Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate? Star-crossed lovers who went on deadly crime sprees. Santos had a few more questions for Margo and Kevin Allen.
Not relishing having this conversation with the Allens, Santos carried the notebook back to the kitchen. Elbows on the table, Margo was resting her head in her hands and Kevin was talking on the phone, his voice breaking with emotion.
Kevin quickly disconnected his call and, wiping his eyes, said, “My sister. I was telling her what was going on.”
“We need to keep the lines open,” Margo said sharply. “In case Becky calls.”
Kevin began to argue, but Santos interjected by holding up Becky’s notebook, opened to the page of doodles, then set it on the table in front of Margo. Kevin peered over Margo’s shoulder to get a better look.
“What?” Kevin asked. “It’s just a bunch of scribbles.”
Agent Santos tapped the initials with her finger. “BJA+ED. Did Becky and Ethan have any kind of relationship?” she asked.
“Relationship?” Margo repeated indignantly. “She’s barely thirteen! Thirteen-year-olds don’t have relationships. They have crushes.”
