Avery’s father had abandoned the family eight months before, and her friends said she was angry and had been to see the counselor about the divorce.”
“Were she and Melanie friends?”
She nodded. “Since fifth grade.”
Like Ruth and Peyton, except they’d disappeared without a trace.
“No ransom calls. No phone calls from the girls.” Sheriff Blair rubbed her hand over her forehead. “No leads.”
Chaz spread the notes from the Camden case on the desk. “Sounds similar to our missing girls.”
“Except for the bus crash,” Sheriff Blair pointed out. “Avery and Melanie disappeared at different times.”
Chaz chewed the inside of his cheek. “True. One theory is that the kidnapper was obsessed with one of them. But when the crash occurred, he had to take both.”
Sheriff Blair narrowed her eyes. “But he left that other girl, Peyton’s sister.”
“Yes, Tawny-Lynn Boulder,” Chaz said, his chest clenching. “That’s true, but she had a broken leg and was unconscious.”
“So how did he make two girls go with him? Were there signs of a struggle?”
Chaz grimaced. “It was hard to sort out what happened.” He slid a photo of the crash site and tapped it. “There were skid marks from the bus and another vehicle, although the sheriff and crime team never tracked down the vehicle.”
“What about blood from a fight? If the girls struggled with the abductor, there might have been evidence.”
“The scene was a mess,” Chaz said. “Blood and glass were on the rocks, but the fire destroyed most evidence. And it rained that day so the rain washed away the rest.”
“I suppose if the kidnapper had a gun he could have forced the girls to go with him. But if Tawny-Lynn was injured, how did her sister and yours escape the bus unharmed?”
Chaz’s chest tightened. “They could have been hurt, which would have made it harder for them to fight back,” he said. “No one knows.”
“What about the girl who survived? It says in the file that she might have witnessed the abduction.”
Chaz nodded. “She sustained a head injury, had amnesia and can’t remember details of that day.”
Still, someone wanted her dead. Which confirmed in his mind that she had seen foul play.
Chaz removed three other photos and showed them to her. “These three young women have also gone missing during the past five years from various counties in Texas.”
“You think they’re connected?”
“I’m not sure, but maybe. The M.O. is the same. The victims are around the same age. All went missing in the spring, and vanished without a trace.”
“Spring?” Sheriff Blair scowled. “The time of year might be significant.”
Chaz nodded. What worried him most was that they had no leads. “If the same perpetrator kidnapped all these girls, that means another girl might go missing any day now.”
* * *
T AWNY -L YNN FROZE , her nerves sizzling with tension.
Barry Dothan had seemed harmless when she’d known him years ago. He was almost childlike in his speech patterns, and walked and behaved like an oversize kid. He’d gained weight and had a pudgy look about him now, his jowls were sagging, his dirty blond hair wiry and choppy as if he’d cut it himself.
But he was hiding and taking pictures of her. And the police had found pictures of Peyton and Ruth as well as other teenagers on the bulletin board in his room.
She shivered.
Was he going to add hers to that wall?
She slowly moved toward the woods, determined to talk to him. But panic flashed in his eyes when he saw her, and he started to run.
“Wait,” Tawny-Lynn called.
He planted one hand on a tree, his eyes darting in all directions. She glanced around for a car, then noticed a bicycle tucked against a copse of trees.
“Barry?”
“I...didn’t do anything wrong.”
Tawny-Lynn forced her expression to remain calm. “I just want to talk to you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he mumbled again. “I just like to take