NOT EDITED

Bo climbed out of the cruiser practically the second Rick had put it into park and headed up toward the school. Not necessarily in a hurry, but definitely on a mission. Bridget followed, and after a moment, so did Rick, jogging lightly to catch up to the woman. “How long have you known Bo?”

“Oh, gosh, uh… quite a while. If he hadn’t been a boy genius, we would’ve been in the same grade in school. Though I guess he wouldn’t have moved to California at the right time to be friends if he hadn’t been, well, Bo,” she said with a soft laugh. “I’ve known him about a decade now. He was friends with one of my classmates, who introduced us. I joined the LAPD after college and was finally able to actually work with him. He’s damn good at what he does.”

“Oh, I have no doubts about that,” Rick said as he pulled open the office door, gesturing for Bridget to walk inside. “I only worked a case or two with him, but he was great. I can only imagine he’s progressed with time.”

He looked down both ends of the hall before catching sight of Bo and Jeff at the other office exit, where the receptionist had seen Bonnie leaving from. Bo had already donned a pair of gloves. Squatted down in the doorway, his fingers slowly dragged up and down either side of the doorframe. “How does he work best?” Rick asked. “Is he better off if Jeff and I aren’t here at all? If we’re in the building but not, y’know, right on top of him? What does he prefer?”

Bridget offered a shrug. “He’s… versatile. The people at the station have kind of forced him to be, not usually in good ways. But he can work in just about any condition. And as long as you guys aren’t assholes to him, I won’t have to tackle you down.” She looked back at him over her shoulder, a little smile on her face. “I’m not allowed to tackle my superiors at my station, but I think I could totally get away with it here.”

Rick laughed, patting her on the back. “I think we’ll be okay, no tackling necessary. But I appreciate that, and I’m sure he does too.”

“Oh, God, no. If you told him I was defending him, he’d beg me not to. So, y’know, lips zipped or I’ll kick your ass.”

He snorted. “Deal.”

In the doorway, Bo continued his search of the doorframe, once with his eyes open and once with them closed, hoping his fingers would pick up on an abnormality his eyes had missed. Unfortunately, neither tactic revealed anything. He sat back on his heels, a frown set deeply on his face. “When you spoke to the receptionist, did she mention seeing anyone else near this doorway?”

“No. She watched Bonnie head toward the parking lot and then received another phone call,” Jeff said.

“The mother?”

“No, Tina called as Bonnie was walking through the door. The second call was around the time Bonnie hit the grassy patch there right before the parking lot.”

Bo rose to his feet. “Which parking lot?”

Jeff pointed to his left. “The one in the back here. The one out front is for teachers and parents. This one is for students.”

Bo headed for the grassy patch in question, his steps slow and his eyes glued to the ground. “Do they have designated parking spots?”

“The seniors do. They’re usually decorated around homecoming and then stay that way for the rest of the school year.”

“So… Miss Young’s should have her name on it?” Bo asked.

“It should.”

“If not, I’ve got a rough idea of where it is,” Rick said from behind him. “It’s next to Pete’s.”

“Excellent.” Bo squatted down in the grass, clearing his throat. “How’s Peter doing, Mister Downs?”

“Rick’s fine. And… some minutes of the day are easier than others,” Rick said.

Bo nodded. “I can imagine so. And your daughter?”

“Jen? She’s, uh… I don’t know. They were both staying home today regardless of if Jamal got the building shut down for the day or not.”

“Mister Pitman asked me to tell you that if you or the children need any counseling, to let him know, and he’ll have it taken care of.”

“What’s he want in return for that?”

Bo lifted his head, turning to look up at Rick. “For you to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Rick whispered with a small shake of his head. “Old man always was a softie.”

“Of course. How else would I have been employed as a boy genius, hmm?”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “Of course you heard me.”

He flashed a smile. “Always do.” He turned back toward the grass. It was that yellowish-brown color of winter, and a thin layer of snow covered the base of the grass blades. “Do you know when it snowed yesterday?”

“Uh… I don’t know. Afternoon sometime?” Rick suggested.

“Three-thirty. More like… Three-thirty… seven,” Jeff said.

Rick raised a brow at his partner. “Since when did you start memorizing the exact time of snow fall?”

Jeff cleared his throat, using the bill of his ball cap to scratch his head. “Mary might’ve, y’know, sent me an, uh, important text when it started snowing.”

“She sexted you.”

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

Bridget snorted. “Damn, you Ellepath boys have way more game than the LA officers.”

“Damn, girl, reel it in. I’m a taken man,” Jeff said, a hand on his chest. “Mostly. On and off. I’m free a lot.”

“You do not want Jeff,” Rick assured, a hand on Briget’s shoulder.

“Rude.”

Bo cleared his throat. “Would your recollection of the sexting happen to tell you when the snow stopped?” he asked.

Jeff glanced up before pulling his phone from his pocket. After scrolling through his texts for a moment, he nodded. “Around four. Maybe five after.”

“So not too long before Bonnie left the school.”

“Right.”

“There are two sets of prints here. One set is smaller than the other. The larger set is slightly dusted with snow, and the smaller set is not, which means the person with the smaller feet came outside after the snow had stopped, and the person with the larger set came out soon after the snow started. I’ll measure them to be certain, but the smaller set appears to be a seven and a half—”

“Bonnie is a seven and a half,” Rick interrupted. Jeff raised an eyebrow in his direction. Rick offered a shrug. “Jen is too. They loan each other shoes for gym sometimes.”

“He’s not going to say those prints belong to Bonnie because it’s technically an assumption, but he did hear you,” Bridget said.

Bo nodded his thanks. “The larger prints are approximately a size twelve or thirteen. Again, I’ll measure for confirmation.”

“Are you able to estimate a height based on that?” Jeff asked.

“Not… necessarily. Shoe size generally increases with height, but it isn’t a precise calculation by any means, and there are always outliers on either end of the spectrum following any attempt at calculation. But, I will be able to take a casting of both sets, give you an exact size, and more than likely be able to get you a brand name based on the treads of each set.” Bo rose to his feet, turning to look at Bridget. “The suitcase in the trunk of Rick’s car has my casting supplies, if you could… please grab it for me?”

“Absolutely. You go ahead and check out the parking space, and I’ll have your stuff set up right here when you’re done.”

Bo offered a smile. “Thank you.” As Bridget headed back into the school, Bo continued toward the student parking lot, the Ellepath deputies in tow. Bonnie’s parking spot was painted red with her name in white at the bottom. Bo recognized the dark-haired man with the red hoodie as the main ‘corpse’ from the movie Warm Bodies.

“She and Pete loved that movie,” Rick said, his voice quiet.

“They’ll get to love it again,” Jeff said.

Bo hoped that was true, but he was still doing his best not to make too many promises. There were never any guarantees, especially with kidnappers and potential killers. When you were kidnapping teenage girls, you weren’t exactly in your right mind, and people not in their right mind were… unpredictable.

“What d’ya see, lab geek?” Jeff asked.

“There’s no blood on the ground here. The footprints don’t show a scuffle. Both sets continue over here. The smaller set go to one point, and the larger prints go to two, only a couple feet apart.”

“Like he went into the backseat and then the front,” Rick said.

“If I were to make an assumption on the matter… The footprints are approximately as far apart as the doors would be, yes.”

“The bastard was waiting for her in the backseat.”

“That is… an unfortunate possibility,” Bo agreed. He followed the tire tracks from Bonnie’s parking space out of the parking lot and around the school to three sets of doors. He looked back at Rick and Jeff, one eyebrow raised. “What do these lead to?”

“Uh… those two lead into the commons, and that one leads into the kitchen,” Rick said.

“And what would the commons be in this… situation?”

“The hallway that the senior lockers is in.”

“Mm.” Bo’s eyes shifted back to the ground. “The overhang here kept the snow off the sidewalk, but up to that point, the tire tracks and footsteps indicate one set of footsteps and a set of… drag marks headed toward the commons.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rick whispered.

“The drag marks, uh, look pretty small, right?” Jeff asked.

Bo nodded. “Correct. It’s indicative of two feet dragging rather than a whole body or buttocks. So if we assume — I’m sorry. Uh, in your theory that the small set would be Bonnie’s footprints, the drag marks would indicate she was unconscious or unable to fight back when the kidnapper pulled up here and took her out of the car. More than likely, their hands or arms were under her armpits as they dragged her toward the building here, and the heels of her shoes are likely what would have been making contact with the ground.”

“Why wait for her to come out of the school and then take her back inside?” Jeff asked. “What’s the point?”

“I… wish I had an answer to that,” Bo said. “It looks like Miss Young’s car eventually turned around and headed out the exit there. After that, it would be hard to track on the tire tracks alone. We only luck out here because Jamal shut down the school before any students arrived.”

“Good thing we didn’t wait any longer to call, huh?” Jeff asked.

Bo nodded. “A very good thing.” He pulled open one of the doors to the ‘commons’ and walked inside. Rick and Jeff followed, and Bridget caught up shortly after.

“I’ve got all your stuff set out by those prints, B.”

“Thank you.”

“Mmhmm.”

Bo gestured to the stairs. “That leads to…?”

“The gymnasium,” Rick said.

“And the little grate thing next to it. What’s that?”

“Wheelchair elevator. It leads up to the gym. And the little half door goes into the band room.”

“Hmm.” Bo dragged his gaze along the ceiling and down the walls at both end of the hall. “No cameras?”

“It’s a small town,” Rick said quietly. “There are cameras in the main hall. The one that leads past the office and to the lunch room.”

“So the hallway past that doorway at the end of the hall?”

“Yeah.”

“What about in the gym?”

“Just one, but yeah.”

“Well… if we assume the kidnapper knows that, this little crawlspace door into the band room makes the most sense. Is it usually unlocked?” Bo asked.

“I think it always is. A lot of the seniors go in that way to avoid the traffic from the other kids in the halls,” Rick said.

“Hmm.” Bo pulled his fingerprinting powder out of his satchel and squatted down in front of the small door. It was incredibly unlikely he’d find any prints that didn’t belong to a student or faculty member. The likelihood that someone within one of those categories was the kidnapped was slightly higher, but it still wasn’t a guarantee. Regardless, he had every intention of documenting all prints on the front, sides, and back side of the door. Just in case. A ‘just in case’ collection of information had solved a case more than a time or two.

“Were you able to speak with anyone before Jamal shut the school down?” Bo asked as he dusted the door.

“The receptionist, an English teacher, and the superintendent were here. The receptionist was the only one with any helpful information about Bonnie,” Jeff said.

“She’s the one who watched Bonnie leave yesterday?” Bo asked.

“Yeah, and answered the phone.”

“Did she tell you anything about the phone call?”

“She said no one was on the other end. Either a butt dial or a weird prank call.”

“Or your kidnapper needed to make sure she wasn’t watching Bonnie,” Bridget said.

“That was sort of my thought,” Rick admitted. “But it seemed a little too… pre-planned for a place like this.”

“As in… because the town is small?” Bo asked.

“Yeah.” Rick raised a brow. “Is there… another reason?”

“He just wants to make sure you’re on the same page. Confusion breeds conflict, and that brain is a conflict magnet,” Bridget said.

Bo whispered his thanks, and she gave his shoulder a tight, reassuring squeeze. “It can be hard to imagine a criminal walking amongst us, especially in a small town. It’s that tight-knit, everyone-knows-everyone thing, I believe, that causes a sort of disconnect in our minds. But knowing someone doesn’t stop them from committing a crime, much as we wish it did. Small town or not, people are still people, and people are capable of truly horrendous things.”

“People in this town are going to lose their everloving minds when they discover that,” Rick said.

“For what it’s worth, it doesn’t mean the kidnapper is from here. It doesn’t mean they live here, currently or otherwise. Itoesn’t exactly change the crime or anything, but it being comitted by some traveling shitbag instead of someone you’ve lived across the street from for years is, you know, an improvement,” Bridget said.

“Do you deal with that a lot?” Jeff asked. “Traveling, uh… shitbags?”

“Not as frequently as local shitbags, but we’ve definitely had a few.”

Though Bo was able to tune out most of the small talk and idle chitchat as he fingerprinted the small door, Rick’s general lack of contribution to sat chitchat stuck out like a sore thumb. Bridget and Jeff didn’t seem to notice, at least not out loud, but Bo couldn’thelp but glance up at the man in between every print he stuck on his printing card.

“How’re you doing, Rick?” Bo asked, his voice quiet.

Rick squatted down beside him, arms crossed over his thighs. “Not great,” he whispered.

Bo nodded. “I was… picking up on that.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t like to make sweeping promises, but I… We’re going to do everything we possible can to find this person. To find Bonnie.” He pulled off his glove before reaching out to give Rick’s shoulder a tentative squeeze. “This isn’t California, and that means a lot of things, good and bad. But one of the good ones is that you don’t have a million cases piling up on your desk, demanding you split your attention between all of them because if you don’t, they go cold and the detectives get pulled off them. It means that finding Bonnie and this asshole is our only job, and we’re sure as hell going to do it.”

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NOT EDITED

Bonnie’s head felt like it was being torn in two. The concrete room spun a little around her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, which seemed to make it worse. Though she could no longer see the spinning, she could feel it, like she was in one of those amusement park rides that spun fast enough to keep the riders pinned to the walls when the floor dropped beneath them.

She leaned her head forward, forehead clunking dully against something cold. A metal pole, maybe. She kept her gaze on the floor for now, giving her brain fewer things to imagine spinning in that horrifically nauseating way. The pole or beam or pipe — whatever it was — was smooth and cooling and nice.

Bonnie closed her eyes again. This time, that nauseating feeling didn’t rise in her throat and squeeze her head.

Everything felt sort of… hazy. There at the edge of her mind but just beyond her grasp. Like if she reached out as far as she possibly could and wiggled her fingers, the very tips of them would just break through the haze.

She remembered… the high school. A sharp pinprick in the side of her neck. She tried to move her hand toward the phantom pain, but it didn’t get far. Something rattled and tugged painfully at her wrists. She opened her eyes. Handcuffed. Handcuffed to the metal pole her head still leaned against. Beneath each cuff, her wrists were wrapped in a thin layer of bloodied gauze.

She remembered ropes biting into her wrists as she tried to untie the knot or slip free. The school basement.

Bonnie lifted her head and scanned the room. It looked like a basement. Concrete floor. Unpainted brick walls. Tw+-o very small windows right beneath the ceiling. A drain in the middle of the floor. A water heater in the corner.

This one wasn’t the school basement. Or… certainly not a part of the school basement she had ever seen. She’d been moved.

A masked man. She remembered him. Remembered her phone ringing several times before he ripped it from her pocket and threw it across the room. Remembered fading out. Waking back up in the school basement.

Bonnie swallowed, wincing. Her throat hurt almost as much as it had when his hands had still been wrapped around it.

“You’re awake.”

Bonnie’s head whipped around toward the voice. The man stood at the top of the basement stairs. He had changed clothes, but he still wore the same mask he’d had on in the school basement.

He came down the stairs, one hand on the railing. Unlike at the school, he wasn’t wearing gloves. He squatted down in front of her, hands clasped between his knees. “The gag, it’s a handkerchief. I’m going to untie it. Go ahead and scream. No one will hear you but me. I can’t promise what I will do in response, but you go ahead and do what you need to.”

Bonnie fought the urge to headbutt him as he reached behind her head to untie the gag. It wouldn’t gain her anything. It would piss him off. Maybe earn her another head bashing or choking. But it wouldn’t gain her anything. If he killed her, there was no chance of escaping, and alive but brain-damaged greatly reduced her chances too.

So she swallowed the urge and kept her eyes shut until he pulled the gag from her mouth. He tossed the fabric to the floor and sat back on his heels. “Bonnie—”

“I don’t know who you are,” she interrupted, her voice shaking. “I-I haven’t seen your face. I don’t recognize you. You can let me go a-and I’ll go home, and I won’t tell anyone about this. No one has to know. I promise.”

“Oh, Bonnie. They’re already looking for you, dear. The deputies have already been to your mother’s house.”

“H-how long have I been gone?”

“Not horribly long. It’s a little after ten now.”

“Ten… at night? O-on Wednesday?”

“Mmhmm.”

Under twelve hours.

“I still won’t tell anyone. I’ll say I just… went on a long walk. That I needed a break from life for a couple hours.”

“I’m not letting you go, Bonnie. You weren’t some random choice. You weren’t taken because of random chance or random opportunity. I’ve been planning this for a long time,” he said as he rose to his feet.

Bonnie watched him as he walked across the room. “Why me?” she asked, unable to force her voice to be any louder than a whisper.

“I told you we had a lesson to teach Mister Downs. I wasn’t lying about that.”

“Why?”

His back to her, he lifted one shoulder. “He’ll understand the why. That’s all that matters.”

***

A little after eleven-thirty, Jeff pulled the cruiser into Rick’s driveway and shifted into park. When Rick didn’t undo his seatbelt or open the door, Jeff cleared his throat. “All right, Ricky, here we are.”

Rick lifted his head to look out the window. “I want you to meet me at the school in the morning. I’m thinking around seven.”

“So you don’t think she’s on her way to Florida, then.”

“I think… we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket, is all. If we wait until she could be in Florida, and then we wait for his parole officer to do a search of his house…” Rick let out a breath. “If we wait on that and she isn’t there, we’ve wasted so many valuable hours. Important hours. I can’t do that, even if this is Iowa. Even if it’s Ellepath. I just can’t.”

After a moment, Jeff nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow morning, seven o’clock. I’ll meet you at the school.”

Rick turned toward his partner and offered a tired smile. “Thanks, Jeff.”

“If this case were the other way around, if I believed she were in danger and everyone else in the whole fucking world believed she was a runaway, you wouldn’t sleep until you explored that angle with me, until you were absolutely certain she ran away on her own volition. If I can’t do even half of that for you, then I’m not worthy of being your partner.”

“Still, thank you. If she weren’t dating Peter, I’m not sure I’d worry she was in danger. I don’t know that I’d give it a second thought. I’m not… blind to the fact that her relationship to my kids is clouding to my judgment. And I know you know that. So the fact that you’re working with me on it even knowing that? I appreciate it. Deeply.”

“I know, man.” Jeff reached out and gave Rick’s shoulder a tight squeeze. “Go inside, shower, get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rick patted Jeff’s hand before finally undoing his seatbelt. He headed up to the house as Jeff backed out of the drive and back onto the road. Rick unlocked the door and walked inside. He closed and locked the door, leaning his forehead against the door. He heard quiet footsteps behind him. Before he had the chance to lift his head or turn around, his wife’s arms wrapped around him. Rick let out a breath, shoulders relaxing as he lifted a hand to cover both of hers.

“I was starting to worry you weren’t ever coming back,” Heidi said.

“I always come back.”

“That’s the hope.” Heidi pressed a kiss to his bicep before shifting to rest her cheek between his shoulders. “Did you find out anything?”

“No. I mean… nothing that finds Bonnie and brings her home tonight.”

“Do you wanna talk about what you did find?”

“Bonnie’s dad was released on parole three weeks ago. Has a job in Florida. Tina wasn’t alerted about his impending release, or that he even had a parole hearing, so I think… that Bonnie found and read the letter, and then she hid it. Or threw it away. I just don’t know if she hid it or tossed it to protect her mom or because she was planning on going to see him, see if the stories about him were true. Or maybe just to tell him to stay away. But I don’t know.”

“Did you search her room?”

“No, I talked to Tina about it, but I didn’t ask about searching her room. It felt… I don’t know. Invasive. She’s dating Peter.”

“You can’t see her that way while you’re investigating. She has to just be another missing girl. Anything more than that will mess with your head far too much, and we’ll lose you again.”

“I know,” Rick whispered. “You’re right. I’ll… I’ll talk to Tina about searching Bonnie’s room tomorrow. Where would you hide a parole release letter if you were a teenage girl?”

“If I trusted my mom? Folded inside my diary. And if you find one, you should read the most recent entries too, no matter how it feels. Okay?”

Rick nodded. She was right. He knew she was. But it unfortunately didn’t make the idea of reading his son’s girlfriend’s diary any more appealing. “Jeff and I are going to the school tomorrow before it opens to the students. I want to talk to the staff, see if anyone noticed anything strange about her. She was leaving the school when Tina called reception. I want to make sure they physically saw her leaving.”

“That’s a good idea, baby. You know what you’re doing.”

Rick chuckled. “You’re like a mindreader. That’s been eating away at me all evening. What if she really is in danger and I’ve been out of practice with real cases for so long that I can’t save her?”

“You know all the laws, all the rules, all the procedures. Unlike everyone else, you have actual practice with real cases. If Bonnie’s in danger, you’ll save her. You’ll find her. I have no doubt about any of that, Rick.”

“We left California because I got too involved in cases with people I didn’t even know. If she’s really in danger, how the hell am I going to survive working this one?”

“Every single night, when you come home, we’ll re-ground you. We’ll bring you back to earth each time, make sure your mind is back home too, not just your body.”

“Thank you, Heidi.”

“Of course, baby.” She pulled back, pressing a kiss to his upper back. “Let’s go take a shower, make sure your mind is here, and then get some sleep. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.”

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