Buried (Bone Secrets, #3)(66)

“Chuck?” she asked.

“Chuck’s downstairs.” Michael gestured at his open door. “I’m staying next door, and I’m looking for my girlfriend. Have you seen her?”

Annoyance crossed the owl’s face, and her nose lifted into the air. “No. Not today. Last night, I heard her though. Last night…I heard both of you. I would have called Chuck, but I assumed he was asleep, and I figured it’d be rude to disturb his sleep.” She shut the door.

“Ah…sorry about that,” he said to the closed door. He pounded again on the other two doors. No answer.

“Fuck.” He dashed back down the stairs. His heart was doing a serious drumbeat in his chest, and it wasn’t from all the stairmastering.

Chuck stood in the center of the lobby. “I asked. No one’s seen her.”

“How the hell can she just leave and no one notice?” Michael yanked his phone from his pocket and dialed Sheriff Spencer.

“Well…both rooms down here were watching TV. Usually folks don’t pay much attention to what other people are doing around here.”

Bullshit. The townspeople had watched every step he and Jamie had made since getting to town. Someone had to have seen her.

“Spencer,” the sheriff answered his call.

“Sheriff, this is Michael Brody. Jamie is missing.” No point in mincing words.

“What?”

“We’re at Chuck’s place. I left to get dinner, I came back, and she’s gone. Chuck said she got a phone call a while back from a man. Fuck! I think he’s got her.” Michael’s brain screamed as he voiced the thought. He’d been holding off, not giving credence to the theory, but now he’d said it out loud, and he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Our tattoo man? Are you sure? Maybe she walked to the store. She’s got to be somewhere. Did his phone show who called?”

“Guess how old the phone system is.” Michael jogged out the front door and down the street to the little grocery, holding the phone to his ear. “I’m going to check the store, but I’m telling you, she wouldn’t leave.”

“I’m still at the Buell house. Somebody did a number on this kid. A f*cking execution. One bullet to the back of the head. I’ve got a sobbing mama who wants to know why her son was killed, and I can’t tell her I think he said the wrong thing to a stranger. I’ve got a female deputy on hug-the-mother duty, and she’s starting to wear down from this woman’s hysterics. State is still taking evidence from the garage, but it looks like a clean scene to me.”

“Christ.” Michael didn’t want to think about a teenager collapsed on his garage floor and his frantic mother. He had Jamie on the brain, and there wasn’t room for anything else. He threw open the door to the market and searched the few aisles for Jamie’s black head.

Nothing.

“Help you?” asked a clerk as she leaned against the counter. She held a nail-polish brush in one hand, ready for action with her other hand in painting position on the counter. Her eyebrows had shot up as Michael abruptly entered the store. He didn’t recognize the young woman from the day before.

“Seen a woman with long black hair come in during the last twenty minutes or so?”

The woman shook her head. “No one’s been in for over an hour.” Her hand still held the brush in midair. “You buying anything?”

“No.”

“Okay.” She focused on her nails and applied the brush.

Michael left. “She’s not in there,” he said into his phone. He looked up and down the street, pacing the sidewalk. He jogged across the road to get a better look to the south. The sun had just started to set on the late-summer night, and the dimming light made him strain his eyes to see into the gray shadows.

Where was she?

Spencer was speaking to someone in the background.

“Spencer.”

“Yeah.” The sheriff’s distracted voice rang clear through the line.

“She’s not at the store. I don’t see her anywhere on the street.”

“Did you call her cell?”

Fuck! Why hadn’t he done that? Michael jogged back toward Chuck’s. “I will.”

“Okay,” said Spencer. “I’ll send someone your way as soon as I have a free pair of hands.”

Michael didn’t want to pull help away from the teenager’s murder. A few country deputies couldn’t help him. “Just spread the word, tell Hove to have his guys keep an eye out.”

“Done.”

Michael hit End and immediately called Jamie’s cell. The phone rang five times and dumped into voice mail. He hung up, disappointed that her voice mail was computerized instead of her own voice. He took Chuck’s porch steps three at a time, flew through the door, and across the lobby. He raced up to the second floor. His door was still open from earlier. Stepping through the doorway, he nearly knocked over Chuck for the second time that day.

“I could hear a phone in here ringing a minute ago,” Chuck said.

Jamie’s phone?

Michael hit Send on his phone again. A delicate melody sounded from the nightstand. He yanked open the drawer and stared at a familiar iPhone.

She’d left her phone. Right next to her wallet.

Michael ended his call and dialed Mason Callahan.