All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 208

208

Agent Gil, on the second floor of the Miami Division building, took her through what they had.

“Ashlee Miller. She’s twenty-two. Taken two hours ago from the corner of Crystal Avenue. Van mounted the sidewalk.”

“Goddamn,” Saint said, wiping sweat from her lip.

“How’s he choosing them?” Agent Gil said.

“Sinners.”

“That narrows it down then.”

Saint sighed at the frustration, and the ticking clock, the time and the lives slipping by so maddeningly.

For an hour they sat in the airless office. Agent Gil working the phone, Saint pulling together the file, and the memories.

“Tell me everything you know about Summer Reynolds,” she said to Patch one Sunday afternoon.

Patch reeled off information like he kept it right there at the forefront.

“She was sixteen when she went missing. Had a boyfriend her father didn’t approve of.”

“I have the background. Give me something else.”

“She played piano.. She wasn’t popular, wasn’t alone. Good at math and

maybe thought of becoming a teacher.”

Saint sighed.

“And she was a Girl Scout.”

Saint frowned. “Like with the cookies.”

“A Gold Award Scout. From Daisies through Cadettes. She could map a route through Big Bend alone. Pitch a tent and snare dinner. The girl could

survive.”

Saint looked at the other files. “Ashlee Miller. Did she ever go camping?”

Agent Gil worked the phone, got the field agent at the house. “Her girlfriend said they spent last weekend at the Ocala National Forest.”

Saint felt the air cool. “Eli Aaron once told me he liked to camp. Maybe he saw her. Maybe he came back for her.”

Agent Gil moved quick, put out calls, knew the plates had likely been changed again, but had every patrol car in the area move along the campsites of the Keys.

It took less than an hour for the call to come.

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