Free Dark Hollow Road (Taryn's Camera Book 3) by Rebecca Patrick-Howard Page A

home safe. There is currently a $15,000 reward for anyone offering information leading to Cheyenne’s whereabouts.

Chapter 8
     

     
    B y the time she’d read through all the articles and even checked out Cheyenne’s Facebook and Instagram sites, Taryn felt drained. She’d started making a list of questions as she went along, and now her notes were two pages long. There were more than twenty articles she’d recovered in all, although most of them just repeated the same information. It all came down to this: Cheyenne had attended a party, left with a male friend, and then disappeared. Nobody had seen or heard from her since she left the party. And the fire at the other location apparently wasn’t connected to her disappearance. Supposedly.
    “Hey,” Matt stood in the bedroom door, a glass of Coke in his hand. “How’s it going?”
    Setting her laptop on the bed, Taryn stretched her legs out and reached for the drink. “It’s going. I found a bunch of articles and stuff about the missing girl.”
    “Yeah? What’d you find?”
    Matt perched at the foot of the bed and began stroking Taryn’s foot, something that made her purr like a kitten. She was a sucker for getting her feet rubbed.
    “A lot of things. But basically she was at this party, left with a dude, and then disappeared.”
    Matt cocked his head to one side and studied Taryn. “So what’s the mystery? Sounds like the guy Travis did something to her.”
    “Yeah, you’d think,” Taryn agreed. “Only the police don’t seem to think he’s a suspect. He claims she never left with him at all, that he barely knew her and left before she did.”
    “That should be easy enough to prove, shouldn’t it?”
    “You’d think so.”
    “Still, to me, it sounds like the guy did something,” Matt pointed out. “I mean, if witnesses saw him...”
    “Oh, and another thing. There was a house that burned down. Same night, and arson at that. But the police don’t think it’s connected.”
    Matt laughed, his face lighting up in delight. “Are you kidding me? Well that’s a big coincidence then.”
    “Maybe,” Taryn answered. “It’s all so confusing really. Too easy to think of this guy as the one who did it.”
    “So give me a rundown on the list of our suspects,” Matt prodded. “I know you; you have some ideas.”
    “Okay,” Taryn agreed, rubbing her hands together. She tried not to think about the fact that this was a real person they were talking about, a real missing girl. She would think about that later, and it would sadden and depress her, but for the moment she needed to be analytical about it. “First we have the guy she went home with.”
    “Alright, we have a guy. The last one to supposedly see her. Assuming he was the mystery ride.”
    “Right!” Taryn exclaimed. “She texted her parents and said she had a ride home and would be there early. We are assuming it’s the guy witnesses claim to have seen her left with.”
    “Okay, what about a random stranger?”
    “I thought about that, too,” Taryn confessed. “Maybe she did get a ride from the other guy, he made a move on her and she didn’t like it so she asked to be let out of the car. She gets picked up, gets killed, and now he’s denying taking her home because he feels responsible for her death.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “The parents. I hate to say it, but people area freaks and you just never know. Although I’ve met Thelma and she seems okay.”
    Matt leaned back against the bedpost and closed his eyes. “And that’s not even counting all the people we don’t know about. For instance, what if the guy was lying and there were more people at his house. Did he live alone?”
    “No, with his parents.”
    “Can’t rule them out either. Brother? Sister?”
    Taryn sighed, rubbing at her temples. “And then the people at the party. What if she made someone mad and they came out and found her? They may never find this poor girl.”
    “So are you discounting her being