her face lit up. “Yes. She did change. She’s wearing a white T-shirt. Are you going to help look for her?”
“Yes.” Kylie didn’t hesitate in answering.
Diane pushed her way next to her mother in the front door. Although an older version of Dani, Diane also held strong features very similar to her mother’s. Diane focused on Kylie but then glanced furtively from her mother to her uncle.
“I’ll help look, too. With all of us we’ll have her back in no time.” Diane rubbed her mother’s shoulder, looking worried.
“No.” Perry spoke so firmly all the women looked at him. “None of you are leaving this house. Is that understood?”
Diane looked ready to argue, but Megan put her arm around her daughter and backed her into the house. “Bring her home, Perry, alive and well so I can kill her.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
Megan looked so distraught, torn between outrage and pain that created hard lines around her pretty eyes. For a moment, Kylie was ripped back thirteen years and saw her own mother, worried sick while waiting to hear word from the police that her oldest daughter was alive and safe. That message never arrived.
“Here’s what I need from you,” Kylie said, and both Megan and Diane gave her their full attention. “I want you to go through her computer. Find any chats with this boy she was supposedly going to meet.”
“But,” Diane began, immediately chewing her lower lip.
“Do as she says,” Perry ordered.
“I know you don’t want to violate her privacy.” Kylie would snap at Perry later for being so gruff with both of them when they were obviously worried sick. “But it could save her life. Call us immediately if you find anything indicating she planned to meet him tonight. Or if you find her agreeing to go anywhere. Do it now. There isn’t any time to waste.”
Perry turned from the door, taking her by the arm. Kylie hurried down the path with him, not bothering to say goodbye to either of them but hearing the door close behind them.
An hour later, Kylie and Perry had combed the neighborhood and been on the phone with Diane and Megan more than a handful of times. Kylie got stubborn with Perry, aware that he worried about the rest of the women in his life when Dani was missing but insisting they would cover more ground and learn more faster if the two of them split up. Reminding him he wanted to know if she carried her cell phone so they could communicate didn’t seem to help much, but when Kylie pointed out she’d taken on many killers in the past, all alone, Perry’s gaze darkened over, his expression bordering on violent.
“Fine,” he growled.
“Diane is calling Dani’s friends now,” Kylie reminded him. “I say we head to all hangout spots where she might have gone to regroup and be alone. We check out every one of them that is open at this hour.”
“Bowling alley is still open,” Perry said. “We can go there together.”
Kylie nodded. She needed to get to her car, but they would figure out how to do that if the investigation continued into the night. She stared into the darkness, scanning her attention across the large, empty parking lot. It was the fifth or sixth one they’d cruised around and then through. Dani wasn’t anywhere.
Worse yet, Diane couldn’t find anything on any of the computers at the house that helped them. “She’s password-protected her cell phone,” Diane told Kylie in her most recent call.
“Try thinking of her password. Anything you can think of,” Kylie suggested.
“Try ‘Peter,’ ” Dorine said in the background, doing what the fourteen-year-old did best, eavesdropping.
“No luck.” Diane was obviously trying every password she could think of while they talked on the phone.
“Wait a minute,” Kylie said, sitting next to Perry in his Jeep while they drove across town to the bowling alley. “The screen name she was talking to when she told me about Peter… it was spelled funny.”
“I’ve got it!” Diane laughed in her ear. “It was Petrie, not Peter. Way to go, Dorine, for being queen eavesdropper.”
Kylie didn’t smile as she listened to the two girls laugh. She wondered what Megan was doing, and felt her pain as her stomach twisted when they pulled into the bowling-alley parking lot. The building had a sign on it that lit up a lot of the parking lot, and streetlights lining the lot added to the visibility. She remembered coming here when she was supposed to meet Peter, and Perry interrupting the meeting. What she wouldn’t do for that to happen again tonight.
“Kylie?” Diane’s soft-spoken, serious tone didn’t sound good.
Kylie’s heart moved to her throat and beat furiously as anxiety created a sheen of perspiration over her body. “Yes?” she asked.
“She went to meet him.”
“Crap,” Kylie hissed, meeting Perry’s dark gaze when he stared at her after parking his car. “Please tell me they discuss where and what time.”
“The bowling alley,” Diane said, and then paused, her breathing coming hard through the phone. Dorine obviously felt the need to keep her mother apprised of the conversation, as she yelled in the background. “And ten minutes ago,” Diane said, her excitement level dropping drastically. “At eleven. You need to get to the bowling alley now.”
“We’re here,” Kylie informed her.
“What’s going on?” Perry demanded.
“Dani agreed to meet her boyfriend, Petrie, here at the parking lot ten minutes ago,” Kylie told him without ceremony.
“Goddamn it,” Perry howled, slamming his fist into the dash hard enough to make the car shake. He jumped out, slamming the door, without another word.
“I’ll call you back,” Kylie told Diane.
“He won’t hurt you,” Diane whispered.
“I know that,” Kylie assured her, forcing her tone to remain calm. “We’re going to go find Dani. You go take care of your mother and sisters and be calm for them. Okay?”
“Okay, Kylie,” Diane said, and said goodbye reluctantly before hanging up.
Perry had stormed off in one direction and Kylie opted to take the other, wishing she was more properly equipped but patting her purse and feeling the small handgun inside. She stared into the darkness, her heart pounding so hard it was damn near deafening.
There weren’t many cars in the lot at this hour, most of the stores closed except the bowling alley and the donut shop on the other side of the lot in the adjacent strip mall. She could see into the shop through its glass windows, and a few people sat at tables inside while one employee stood behind the counter. The best she could tell, everyone inside eating pastries were men. She didn’t see any women or teenage girls. Nonetheless, she sprinted across the lot to the wide sidewalk and then strolled down it, past the donut shop, and confirmed Dani wasn’t inside.
Petrie hadn’t picked her up and taken her for a bite to eat so she could unload the woes of her home life on him. But then the sickening feeling inside Kylie’s gut told her Petrie wasn’t who Dani believed him to be.
“Please let me be wrong,” Kylie muttered under her breath, combing her hair away from her face with her fingers while staring across the parking lot.
She didn’t see Perry. Her cell phone rang, though, and she jumped, then damn near attacked it as she dragged it out of her purse and stared at the unknown number.
“Hello,” she said, answering on the fourth ring and praying whoever it was wouldn’t hang up, and would be someone she wanted to talk to right now.
“Kylie?” a small voice said, sounding broken and terrified.
For a moment Kylie couldn’t breathe. “Dani?” she asked, praying she was right.
“Yes.”
“God, tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m not all right.”
Kylie was hightailing it back to Perry’s Jeep before thinking about it. Perry must have spotted her, because he appeared out of the shadows at the far end of the bowling alley, and she gestured to him frantically as she raced around the truck to the passenger side.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Where are you?” She forced herself to remain calm, take deep, soothing
