“The Steels have never been big skiers, believe it or not. I don’t know about Bryce. But obviously the black ski mask didn’t lead to anything.”

I gripped the chair again in the devil’s clench. Tried the deep breathing again. I had to maintain… Had to move forward…

“That’s good, Talon,” Dr. Carmichael said, standing. “Breathe in, breathe out. Excuse me for a moment. I want to get you some water.”

“No!”

Dr. Carmichael stilled, her face unreadable.

“I… No.”

“All right. A soda?”

I nodded. “That would be great. Soda. Please.”

“Regular or diet?”

“Regular.”

She came back with a cola. I opened it and took a deep drink, letting the cold liquid soothe my throat.

“Ready to talk again?”

I nodded.

“So what happened next?”

“A couple of days went by, and we didn’t hear anything about Luke. My dad would call every day for an update, but the police didn’t have any leads, and nothing had been found other than the black ski mask. Joe and I both took this kind of hard, because his best friend was Luke’s cousin, and I had always kind of protected Luke, even though we weren’t great friends. So one day, Joe, Ryan, and I decided to go into town and talk to the police. We rode our bikes. It’s a couple hours. But we made it and walked right in there. I think it was a Saturday.”

“Why didn’t you ask your father to take you?”

“We did. He said no, that we had work to do around the ranch, and that he had been calling every night and there wasn’t any new news.”

“Did you think the police were holding something back? Is that why you went?”

I shook my head. “We we

re kids, Doc. Someone we knew was missing. Someone who meant something to us. We were impatient. We just wanted to know what was going on.”

She nodded. “I understand. So what happened when you got to the police station?”

“Joe walked right in there and demanded to see the chief of police.” I chuckled, remembering. “He thought he was such a big shot. But it was Saturday, so the police chief wasn’t even in. Just a couple of uniformed officers. Of course they told us no, that we couldn’t talk to anyone without our parents, and to please leave. Joe started to make a stink about it, and we were ushered out.”

“And then?”

“We got an ice-cream cone and rode our bikes home. Dad was steaming mad that we had gone off and didn’t know where we were. There were no cell phones in those days.”

“I would guess he was quite upset,” Dr. Carmichael said. “After all, a kid had just gone missing. He was probably afraid the same thing might happen to his children.”

Wow. I’d never thought of that. Dad had been pretty over the top that day. Normally he didn’t care if we ran off and had some fun, especially on the weekends. I didn’t voice this, though.

“So you couldn’t get help from the police. What next?”

“The next week we went back to school. It seemed strange without Luke there.”

“But you and Luke weren’t really good friends, right?”

“No.”

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