"And," Warren said, "you're thinking he has something to do with this?"

"I know it doesn't make sense, but Adam was weirdly curious about my mother."

"But if he thought you might be running some scam on Boughtflower, it would make sense to try to find out more about your criminal connections, right? And anyway that letter writing must've happened before this whole thing with Boughtflower and the will. I don't see a connection."

Lindsay was quiet for a moment. Strong as her hunch about the connection between her mother and Adam had seemed in her own mind, she had to admit that when it came out of her mouth, it sounded like a wild speculation. She tried out another theory. "Okay, then. What if there is no son? What if it was just someone posing as her son?"

"Maybe the Irish secretary? Or one of the Philpots?" Warren asked, seeming to read her mind. "But what interest would they have in getting in touch with your mother?"

Lindsay removed her gla.s.ses and rubbed her eyes. "You're right. It doesn't make sense. I'm losing it."

"Your instincts have been known to solve some pretty tricky problems before, finding connections other people miss," Warren said, with a sad smile.

"That may be, but overall, I'd say my instincts have a pretty lousy track record."

There was a moment of strained silence. Warren stared down at his notebook, but he didn't really seem to be reading what he'd written there. Lindsay wanted to reach out and take his hand. She wanted to ask him if he knew about Teresa and Jonah's planned engagement, and what he thought of it. She wanted to show him that Simmy had taught Kipper how to moonwalk. More than any of that, though, she wanted him to put his arms around her and tell her he still loved her. Instead, they sat mutely, and she thought back to the previous summer. They'd started their relationship under such terrible circ.u.mstances-the investigation of a murder, and now here they were, trying to track down two missing teenagers. Maybe their love had always been doomed.

Vickers walked back into the living room.

"Prendergast wants our help over at the Philpots'. He said the father is pretty out of control. Wants the National Guard to go after his daughter or something. He took a swing at one of the uniforms. Prendergast had to threaten to arrest him to get him to simmer down. Also," he said, turning to Lindsay. "You were right to pick up on something funny about what Adam told you. The Philpots cast some doubt over what he said about the Irish secretary, Ellen. They never heard of her, or anybody stealing money from the old man. Said the old man didn't even have a secretary."

"But Dunette can corroborate that," Lindsay countered. "She talked to an Irish woman on the phone who said she was his secretary. That's who made all the arrangements for her to work for Boughtflower."

"Besides that, the Philpots never knew about Jess having power of attorney," Warren said. "But we know for a fact that's true. Maybe they just knew less about his affairs than they thought."

Vickers shrugged. "Well, somebody's lying. That's all I'm saying."

The three of them walked into Lindsay's kitchen. Although the room had almost doubled in size as a result of the renovation, it still didn't feel big enough to comfortably hold Lindsay, Simmy, Dunette, Mike, Warren, Freeland Vickers, and Kipper, especially with Mike nervously pacing the floor, seemingly unable to remain still.

As soon as the trio entered the kitchen, Mike approached Warren and Vickers. "You're going to do something, right? Don't tell me that this is one of those 'we've gotta wait 24 hours before we can report them missing' things," he said.

"Absolutely not," Warren rea.s.sured him. "That's sometimes a guideline, but I don't know any police department that follows that as a rule, especially not when a minor might be in trouble. I've already called down to Robeson County. They're searching the area around Burnt Island Road and the area along the Lumber River that used to be called Burnt Island. Hotels in Raleigh are being contacted as we speak. We've alerted every county between Robeson and Raleigh, in case they're somewhere en route. We're putting together information to get an AMBER alert issued on Owen."

"What about for Jess?" Dunette asked. "She's the one who Adam said was in danger."

"We can't do an AMBER alert for her because she's 18, but we've put her description out," Warren said. "I know you're worried," he continued, addressing them all. "It's not just the New Albany and Mount Moriah forces working on this. We're in touch with county police, the FBI, and the SBI. We're not taking this lying down. But we have to remember that it may still be nothing. Teenage couples go temporarily out of touch all the time."

"Not Owen," Mike shot back.

"I know," Warren said. "Like I said, we're not taking this lying down. We'll be in touch. Just stay put and call me if you think of anything else."

As soon as the sound of the police vehicle died away, Mike grabbed his jacket.

"Where are you going?" Lindsay asked.

"To find my son."

"Didn't you hear what Warren said?" Dunette asked. "They're on it."

"If it was your daughter, would you just sit there and wait for them to get in touch?" Mike said.

Dunette cast her eyes down to the table.

"What are you going to do?" Lindsay asked. "Drive to Raleigh and look in every hotel?"

"No. I'm going to fly to Robeson County and find the Burnt Island."

"What?!" they all said in unison.

"I'm not just going to sit around here all night and wait for something to happen," Mike said. "From what I can tell, there are three possibilities. One, they're in Raleigh with a casting agent, and they've decided for some reason not to return calls and texts. Two, they're together somewhere having s.e.x or doing drugs or something else that prevents them from returning calls and texts. Or three, they've been kidnapped and taken to Robeson County to get whatever this valuable thing is that Jess is supposed to know about."

"Those aren't the only possibilities," Lindsay countered. "They could be anywhere. Anything could've happened. Besides, what if you end up just getting in the way of the police? I'm sure they don't want you getting involved. And even if someone did take them to try to find this alleged treasure, they could've done that to lead us into some kind of trap. We have no idea who we're dealing with."

"Which is exactly why I'm going," Mike said, his voice breaking with emotion. "My son could be down there, being held hostage by some psycho."

"I'm going with Mike," Simmy said, rising from her chair.

Now it was Mike's turn to say, "What?!"

"You heard me," she said. "Somebody's gotta do something. Look at what happened with Leander Swoopes. They knew how dangerous he was. Every policeman on the Outer Banks knew he was on the loose, and he still got away."

"You can't go," Dunette said. "You can barely walk from the house to the car without getting dizzy. How much use are you gonna be if something kicks off? What're you gonna do? Hit the bad guys with your cane?"

"Well, if anybody's coming, they'd better come. I'm leaving for the airport now," Mike said. "It's a two-seater plane, so there's only room for one."

"Maybe Dunette should go with you," Lindsay said. "She at least knows her way around Robeson County. You're not going to do much good for anybody if you just end up down there driving around in circles all night. Speaking of which, how are you going to drive around at all? You don't have a car down there."

"There'll be one waiting for me. I already called ahead and made the arrangements while you were talking to Warren and Vickers." He turned to Dunette and said impatiently, "Are you coming?"

"Uh-uh. I'm sorry, but I can't. I have to take a knockout pill just to get on a regular plane. No way am I getting in some little tin can with wings with somebody who just learned how to fly a few weeks ago. What about Kipper?" Dunette suggested. "Maybe he could track Owen's scent."

Kipper looked up expectantly at the sound of his name.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, he's not a bloodhound," Mike said, grabbing the sides of his head with his hands. He turned to Lindsay. "If anything happens, if there's any news, text me or get somebody to radio me from the airport. I probably won't have voice call reception."

Mike grabbed his jacket and headed out the door. There was a brief moment of silence as the three women sat there gaping at each other.

"What are you waiting for?" Simmy said to Lindsay.

"It's too crazy," Lindsay countered. "Besides, if I go with him, Warren will never forgive me. It'll be like I'm saying I don't trust him to do his job. He said to stay put. He already thinks that I chose Mike over him once."

"Screw that," Simmy said. "Since when do you sit around doing what you're told? Mike's your friend, and his son might be in trouble. Owen and Jess are just kids. You're one of the bravest people I ever met. Are you gonna let Swoopes take that away from you? Are you gonna spend the rest of your life hiding? Go." She made a shooing motion. "Go! We'll be fine."

Lindsay heard the sound of Mike's car ignition turning over. It hit her like the sound of a starting pistol. She dashed out the door, just in time to climb into the pa.s.senger's seat of his car as he backed down the driveway.

"What are you doing?" Mike said, not even glancing in her direction.

"What does it look like?" she said. "You know this could end really badly, right?"

"Why do you think I have to go?" Mike answered.

Chapter 22.

Lindsay had never before been in a small plane, and Mike's plane was smaller than anything she dreamed could safely take to the air. The entire fuselage was hardly bigger than the body of her Honda. She wasn't usually a nervous flyer, but she quickly realized that all of the things she normally liked about flying-the snacks, the seat-back TVs, the excitement of arriving at a new destination-were not going to form a part of this particular airborne experience. The cabin was cramped and the noise of the engine would've been earsplitting without the headphones she and Mike wore.

For his part, Mike hadn't spoken to Lindsay at all from the time he began his preflight checklist until he started his preparations for landing. He gripped the controls, grimly flipping switches. The only sound came from the voices of other pilots and ground staff that would occasionally burst in over the plane's radio. She was relieved, however, not to have to try and make small talk when it was all she could do not to scream in terror every time they hit a jolt of turbulent air.

They moved through dense banks of clouds that would suddenly open into blackness and then give way again to clouds. They seemed to be suspended between dimensions- rocketing through a place where distance and time moved at a different pace from the earth they'd left behind in Mount Moriah. Lindsay saw from the clock mounted to the control panel that only a little over an hour had pa.s.sed since they'd been standing in her kitchen with Dunette, Kipper, and Simmy. It seemed so much longer than that. And could it really have been only a few hours earlier that she and Owen had been sitting at her kitchen table working on his trigonometry homework?

She stole a sideways glance at Mike. His jaw was set at a severe angle; his eyes moved rhythmically between the windscreen and the instrument panel. She had the strange urge to reach out and hold his hand. The lack of communication, coming from the always overly-garrulous Mike, heightened her surreal feeling. The minutes ticked by, seeming to go both too fast and too slow. The only task she'd been given was to monitor Mike's and her cell phones for any calls or texts from Owen or the police. Every time she looked at them, she willed them to transmit news that the teenagers had been found safe and they could turn around and go back home. But the screens remained as empty as the dark sky surrounding them.

At last, a voice cut in through the silence. "Bladenboro arrival. Information Kilo. Wind two zero zero degrees, zero five knots. Visibility two kilometers. Scattered clouds 1000 feet. Fog 100 feet. Temperature 15, dewpoint 13. No significant change expected. End information Kilo."

"Is that the air traffic controller?" Lindsay asked.

Mike didn't reply to her but instead said, "Bladenboro approach. Piper Cherokee Echo Papa Echo Golf. Fifteen miles northwest, inbound. I have weather information Kilo."

When no one responded, Lindsay asked, "Is everything okay? Why isn't the air traffic controller saying anything?"

"There isn't one. That was a recording," Mike said. "That's the airport." He pointed into the dark gray mist in front of them. His voice, piped in through her headset, seemed strangely intimate. "There's n.o.body there this time of night and we're probably the only ones around, but I'm telling everybody on this frequency what we're up to just in case. We don't want to be approaching for landing at the same time as somebody else."

"Where is it? I don't see anything," Lindsay said, peering down through the darkness and patches of fog. She could feel the plane descending quickly; the tell-tale lightness in her stomach was much more palpable than it was on a commercial flight. As they dropped, however, she still couldn't make out anything that resembled an airport. She expected to see a lit-up strip of runway, a control tower, something. The area that Mike had pointed to had a few lights, but looked no different than the small cl.u.s.ters of houses they'd been pa.s.sing during the entire flight.

"If no one's there, how are we going to land? Who's going to turn on the lights?" She looked over at Mike, who was continuing to push forward on the controls. He made a series of quick movements, clicking the radio numerous times in rapid succession. Suddenly, two rows of lights blazed through the rolling mist. "Did you do that?"

"Yes. Little airports like this have a system that lets pilots control the lights by clicking the radio. Seven clicks turns on the lights. Now be quiet, please. I'm not very good at landings yet and the visibility here isn't ideal."

Lindsay gripped the sides of her seat and gritted her teeth. Her mind flashed back briefly to her cozy house, to the comforting warmth of her cheerful, yellow kitchen. She could be there right now, but instead she was strapped into a glorified model airplane on the hunt for a potentially-dangerous kidnapper with a man who "wasn't very good at landings yet." She shut her eyes. She didn't pray, exactly-she always hesitated to call in favors from G.o.d just because the going got rough. Instead, she did what she often did during her hardest days at the hospital-took a moment to recognize that G.o.d was there, had always been there, and would always be there. There was no need to ask for anything. She knew deep down that anything she needed had already been provided, and she held on tight to that belief.

The plane smacked down hard and popped back into the air. Lindsay's eyes flew open as they thudded down a second time, this time sticking to the ground. They shimmied from one side of the runway to the other until Mike at last muscled the plane under control. Lindsay's body had been thrown around like a ragdoll during the landing.

When they finally came to a stop near a hangar at the edge of the runway, Mike unbuckled himself and then leaned over to unbuckle her. "Sorry about that," he said. "Are you okay?"

Lindsay realized that she'd been holding her breath. When she blew it out, she felt almost dizzy from pent-up emotion. "Yeah, I'm okay," she said through clenched teeth. "Let's go."

"Grab that bag behind your seat," Mike ordered. "That's our survival pack, in case we ever crash land. We might need some of that stuff."

Lindsay grabbed the duffel bag, unzipped it, and quickly rifled through the contents. It contained two headlamps, a first aid kit, a distress flare, and foil packets of food and water. Lindsay's breath caught again. They were really going to do this. They were going into the woods, chasing after a kidnapper. Events now seemed to be unfolding much more quickly and uncontrollably than she'd planned. The fear she felt on the plane paled in comparison to what she was beginning to feel now. They hurried over to the airport's lone building-a tiny structure smaller than Lindsay's house. A red Chevy Malibu was parked in front of it.

"This must be the rental car," Lindsay said. "But if there's n.o.body here, where do we pick up the keys?" Mike opened the driver's side door and pointed to the ignition, where a set of keys dangled. "Weren't they afraid it'd get stolen?" Lindsay asked.

"By who?" Mike gestured to the wide expanse of nothingness that surrounded them. They climbed into the car and Mike typed "Burnt Island Road" into the car's GPS. "Twenty five minutes-fifteen, probably, if we ignore the speed limits. I guess we'll start there," he said, gunning the engine and zipping out onto the main road.

"Are you sure about this?" Lindsay asked. She gripped the door handle as Mike took the car around a sharp curve. "Warren said the Robeson County Sheriff is already out looking in that area, and along the river in the place that was the Burnt Island Swamp."

"Do you have a better idea?" Mike snapped.

"Well, I think we should at least let the authorities know we're out here."

"Since when are you such a rule follower? It's okay for you to go all vigilante when it's your own family's lives at stake, but with mine, you're suddenly a Girl Scout?"

"That's not fair," Lindsay replied. She'd never known Mike to be sharp with anyone. In fact, she'd never really seen any other side to him than the devoted, frenetic ball-of-energy persona that he usually presented to the world. She had years of experience watching people change drastically when put under pressure, though, and she was an expert in cutting such people a lot of slack. She took a deep breath and said calmly, "If I didn't care about you and Owen, I wouldn't be out here in the middle of the night with you. All I'm saying is that I don't want to be tromping around a swamp in the dark and end up getting shot by a cop who mistakes us for kidnappers."

Mike lapsed into a sullen silence and gripped the wheel more tightly.

Lindsay allowed a few tense minutes to pa.s.s. She looked anxiously out the window as the black shapes of trees whipped past. She hadn't spent much time in this part of the state, but she knew from reading about it that the land was only habitable because of extensive efforts over the centuries to drain the swamps and build up patches of dry land. Despite those efforts, much of the region was still at or below sea level, and densely forested. Countless ditches and small creeks cut through the landscape, all draining toward the slow-moving Lumber River-a body of water, she recalled with an ominous shiver, which had originally been known as Drowning Creek.

"I know you're afraid the police will try to stop you, but I think you know I'm right," she said at last. "We need to work together. The last thing Owen needs to hear when he's found is that his dad did something reckless trying to save him and got hurt or killed."

Before Mike could speak, the sound of his phone's cheerful rock-and-roll ringtone filled the car. The phone was sitting in the center console, and as he reached for it, he swerved off the road. They had been going so fast that he almost lost control of the car as he fumbled with the b.u.t.tons.

Lindsay grabbed the phone from his hand. "Pull over before you crash!" she commanded. The number that showed on the screen wasn't Owen's, but she thought she recognized it.

"I feel like I know that number," she said.

"Just answer it! What if it's Owen?" Mike said frantically.

Mike steered the car on to the gra.s.s verge as Lindsay answered the call on speakerphone.

"Dad!"

"Owen, is that you?" Mike said.

"Thank G.o.d," Lindsay whispered.

"Are you okay?" Mike asked.

"I'm okay, but Jess isn't ... a snake. Her ankle ... pretty out of it. I don't think ... further." Owen's voice was cutting in and out. His voice sounded thin and frightened-nothing like the laid-back, self-a.s.sured teenager they knew.

"Where are you?" Lindsay asked.

"Woods ... called the police ... looking for us ...the cross... need to hide ..."

"What does it look like where you are? Owen? Owen?" Mike said, but the line had already cut out. Mike grabbed the phone and immediately tried to call his son back.

"The cellular subscriber you are trying to reach is not available at this time," intoned a woman's silky voice. "Please try again later."

Mike cursed under his breath and frantically dialed and re-dialed the number. Lindsay, meanwhile, took out her phone and dialed Warren's number. He picked up on the first ring.

"Warren, Owen and Jess are in trouble. I think they're being chased by someone, and Jess has been bitten by a snake," she said. She quickly recapped Owen's call and explained where they were. By now, Mike had put his phone back down and they were again speeding along the deserted two-lane road.

"I know," Warren replied. "I just got off the phone with the Robeson County Sheriff. Owen tried to call 9-1-1, but the calls kept cutting out before they could get any information from him. The dispatcher was able to track the call based on the cell towers, though, and they think the calls came from somewhere a few miles north of the areas they're already searching. They're getting more people out looking now that we know for sure they're down there somewhere. I'm on my way down, too. Did Owen give you any more information about exactly where they were?" Warren asked.