18. SKYE

Kuna, Idaho

Now

My dad spent so long in the FroYo first asking, then demanding the security camera footage, that they nearly missed Officer Willis—despite almost getting the police called on to the FroYo.

The kid working at the counter reminded me of a boy I'd had to partner with in science one year. Rail-thin, expressionless, and uptight to the point of total unreasonableness. He just kept repeating, in monotone, that he would have to speak to a manager—who wasn't in right now—about the security footage. At one point, when my dad finally thundered, "We're going to meet with the police right now, goddammit, can you please just help us out?" the kid calmly plucked his cell phone from his apron pocket and threatened to call 9-1-1.

At that point my mom dragged my dad out of the FroYo, promising that Officer Willis would help.

"What if it's only twenty-four hours of footage, Mari?" my dad kept repeating, looking at the clock on the dash and then dragging his hands through his thinning brown hair. "That gives us less than two hours."

My mom stared straight ahead but drove ten over the speed limit back to the house, where Officer Willis was standing in the driveway. Across the street, I could see Mr. and Mrs. Schmalz sitting on their porch, trying not to appear too interested in what was going on.

My dad was out of the car before my mom put it in park. "David, be calm," she whispered, hurrying to unbuckle her seatbelt.

I watched the officer's eyes while my dad frantically explained about the footage they'd seen from the Daily Grind. And the FroYo next door. And the fact that the kid behind the counter had threatened to call the police. The officer didn't look skeptical, exactly. Definitely wary though. I imagined he heard a lot of things on any given day.

When my dad was finished, Officer Willis turned to my mom, who was tearing up again.

She repeated what she'd told the dispatcher earlier, about how I didn't come home like I was supposed to yesterday even though we had plans. Even though I always came home. How I was a good girl and not involved with anything dangerous. I was supposed to be leaving for college today. She swiped at the tears. "I know you're trying to figure out whether this is worth the resources to investigate. I know she's eighteen. I know. But she did not disappear. Not on purpose. Someone or something kept her from coming home. I know that in my gut." My mom looked at the clock on the microwave. "Please, can you get the footage from the yogurt place?" Her voice broke. "I think it might show what happened."

The officer nodded, and I watched his eyes soften. "Yes, ma'am. We don't usually devote a lot of resources when a non-minor goes missing. Not unless there's some strong evidence of foul play. Still, it sounds like there's reason to believe we should check out that security footage to find out how concerned we need to be as a place to get started, at the very least."

My dad's face crumpled in relief, and my mom bit her cheek and nodded while the tears continued to drip down her cheeks. Then my parents followed the police cruiser back to the FroYo, where my dad was instructed in no uncertain terms to wait outside while the officer talked to the employee.

While he waited, my dad watched the clock. It was 3:39. When he cracked the window, I climbed into the front seat with him and pressed myself against it, finding to my surprise that I could easily move through the small space. Impressed with myself, I hurried over to the door of the FroYo and eyed the hairline space between the door and the doorframe. I moved through it just as easily.

The FroYo employee was on the phone with his manager. He didn't look nearly as smug as he had earlier while talking to my parents. While the officer watched, he said, "Okay, yeah, I got it. Sorry, yeah. Sorry. I know how to do it. It's all okay. Yeah I know. Okay, bye."

Then, calling over his shoulder to the officer, the kid rushed to the back of the shop. "Um, I'm getting it now, okay?"

The officer waited patiently for the kid to return with a thumb drive. He was out of breath. "Okay, you said you wanted to look at around 4:00, right? I've got since 3:42 yesterday onward."

The kid's triumphant expression crumbled when the officer looked less than impressed. "If you ever get a request like this again, which I really hope you don't, I want you to back up the footage before I show up. If we'd gotten here twenty minutes later, these poor people would've been out of luck. And that would have been your fault."

"But my manager doesn't—"

The cop took the thumb drive and walked back out to the parking lot, where my parents were waiting. I followed on his heels.

* * *

"Is he going to let us watch it?" My mom fretted while she drove from the strip mall back to the house for the third time that day. She looked utterly exhausted.

Before my dad could answer, she shook her head. "I don't want to step on his toes, but we have a right to know, don't we? If you hadn't seen the camera, it would be too late. We'll know if there's something weird going on better than he will, right?"

I could see the relief on both their faces when the officer asked for a laptop as soon as he got out of his car.

This time, there was no needle-in-a-haystack search.

Clear as day, at 4:07 p.m., they watched me wave at the driver in the car—it wasn't possible to tell the vehicle color, since the security footage was in black-and-white—and get inside of my own free will.

I felt disgusted with myself. I had voluntarily gotten into a stranger's car. Because he didn't feel like a stranger.

My mom turned pale while she watched me talk to the dark figure inside the vehicle. "No, baby," she said as I took a step closer and he flung open the door.

The cop paused the footage, and my parents panicked. "Keep going," my dad growled.

"Do you recognize that man?" the cop asked firmly, pointing at the man's shadowy face in the poor-quality camera footage. "And do you recognize this car?"

My mom shook her head frantically. "No. I mean, I don't think so. I can't tell. Why would she go with him, why was she talking to him at all?"

The officer made a note in his phone then asked, "Is it possible she was seeing someone you didn't know about?"

My dad made that growling sound again. "I don't think Skye had ever been on a real date." He looked at my mom. "Right, Mari? She was shy."

This statement stung, somehow, even though it was true. The officer nodded again slowly. "Can I see the other security footage?"

* * *

It was the officer who noticed the same Kia Sorento cruising through the parking lot every couple of hours that afternoon.

He zoomed in on the plate. 2C 3405. I felt a fizz of excitement that I wrestled under control as I watched the computer screen blink erratically.

There was no license plate visible in the FroYo video. The officer shook his head in frustration. "I'm ninety percent sure that's the same car. But since we can't see the color in either video, and we can barely see the driver in the Daily Grind footage, I can't say for certain."

I waited for the blow that would follow. The bad news. There was nothing he could do here.

Instead, he said, "I do think we have something, though. Your daughter doesn't sound like the type to disappear. And I'm pretty sure that is the same car. I'm going to need both of you to come with me into the station so we can get a written statement about any details that might be relevant. I'm going to update the status on Skye's case to a ‘missing person, possibly endangered.' We'll start by pulling her phone records and finding that car."

The relief on my parents' faces was tainted with a pallor of fear. And my excitement was tempered with a sense of dread.

I wanted them to find him.

I wanted them to find me.

But there would be no relief in revealing what had happened.