The Missing Girls (Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thriller Book 12) by Elle Gray

Author:Elle Gray [Gray, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thriller
Publisher: Elle Gray
Published: 2022-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

Spellman Running Park; Annenberg, ND

I stand with my team off to the side as we watch the line of volunteers checking in at the sign-in booth. Paulson set it up exactly as I’d asked.

“It’s quite the turnout,” Lucas remarks.

“That’s the one thing I’ve always admired about smaller communities,” Astra replies. “They always seem to turn out for each other.”

“And I like that they’re all here knowing there’s a killer among them,” Mo says. “It’s almost like they’re giving him double middle fingers and telling him they won’t let him take their community from them. That he won’t force them to cower in fear.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that before, but I like that, Mo. I like that a lot,” I say.

With more than a hundred people here, I can’t argue with that. She’s right. These people are planting their flag and will not be cowed by the monster who lives in their midst. It’s heartening to see. Besides the volunteers who’ve shown up to search, a couple of pop-up tents have been set up by business owners in the community to provide refreshments for the searchers. The smell of barbecue coming from a smoker in one of those tents is as thick as the buzz of conversation in the air. In another tent, a woman is setting out tubs of cold water and soda, and even Rachel, Brooke’s boss at the House of Sugar, is setting out pastries in a tent she’s set up beside the other two.

Standing about twenty yards to our right is a cluster of teenage boys, all of them in the black and scarlet letterman’s jackets from McCumber High. There is a fleur-de-lis patch on the sleeves and, below that, numbers that I assume correspond to their jersey numbers. On the back is a patch depicting the school’s mascot—a man with a mustached face wearing a large-brimmed hat with a long feather in it who is gripping a blade in his teeth. It’s reminiscent of the old Tampa Bay Buccaneers logo.

Standing alongside the football team are a group of girls in letterman jackets of their own—I assume the school’s softball team, which Brooke was a part of—all of them looking grim and worried. A third group of girls stands with them as well, their lettermen’s jackets with a patch on the back near the bottom that says “McCumber Cheer.” As I look around the crowd, I notice there are a lot of kids mixed in. It’s a very diverse crowd of students. I even see a fair number of blue and yellow jackets from Frazier High School mixed in as well.

“Looks like Brooke was popular with a very wide cross section of both McCumber and Frazier’s student bodies,” I observe. “I see the jocks as well as the academics—”

“There’s even a crowd of burnouts and skaters over on the far side,” Astra notes with a subtle gesture. “Nice to see the burners show up.”

“I’m sure Rick would feel right at home with that group,” Mo quips, drawing a quiet laugh from us.

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