“I get that. I really do.” Sayer couldn’t quite understand why she was reacting so strongly to the idea of her nana going away for a few days.
“You can’t ask me to stay here and live out my last days bored to tears.” Nana reached across the table and took Sayer’s hand.
Sayer stared down at their intertwined fingers while the two women sat together in silence. At seventy-four, Nana was still sharp-eyed, but her skin looked paper-thin, her wrists spindly. When Sayer’s parents died in a car accident, Nana had swooped in like a force of nature, drawing Sayer and her sister in with a fierce love. The loss of her parents left a scar on her heart, but Sayer grew up knowing that she was loved and safe thanks to this woman. She realized that Nana was like a backstop, always there whenever Sayer needed her. It was time for her to stop expecting Nana to always be the caregiver.
“When do you leave?” Sayer finally asked.
“Tomorrow,” Nana said with gentle finality. “I’m actually going to ride with Adi to the airport. We’re both off on big adventures. Maybe Adi can choose a college and I can save the world.” Her eyes glowed with excitement. “Sorry to spring this on you just as a big case is ramping up. Want to talk about it?”
Sayer blinked at the change of subject, but realized that Nana was done discussing her trip. “Dead teenage girl, D.C. cop shot and killed when he interrupted the killer.” Sayer kept it vague.
“Oh, no.” Nana put a hand to her chest with genuine horror. “Well, you’ll catch whoever did it.”
Sayer drained the beer and thought about getting a second when her phone rang. When she saw Ezra’s name on the screen, her heart skipped a beat. She knew it was something big for him to call at this hour.
“What’ve you got?” she barked into the phone.
“I’ve got a possible ID on Jane Doe and it’s a doozy. It’s from social media so it’s not confirmed, but well, just take a look. I’m sending you a link now.”
Sayer pulled out her laptop and flipped it open. The link to a social media site opened to a photo of a teenage girl in safety goggles and a lab coat. Her rosy cheeks arched above a genuine smile, eyes scrunched into crescents of joy. The girl held up a test tube in one hand. Beneath the photo, the caption said, “Won another STEM fair. Atlanta here I come!”
“This girl looks exactly like our Jane Doe,” Sayer said softly.
“The social media algorithm agrees. I plugged her photo into a bunch of sites and she was an immediate hit.”
“Rowena Chang,” Sayer read her name out loud.
“I’ve dug into her background a little bit. Rowena is seventeen and attends the science magnet high school in D.C. No record. From her social media account, it looks like she’s quite the scientist. Won local and regional STEM fairs in the chemistry division.”
“Let’s get in touch with her family. How long has she been missing? Where did she go missing from?” Sayer was already standing up, ready to head back to Quantico.
“Hang on, there’s more,” Ezra said.
Sayer stopped at the tremor in his voice.
“Click on the second link I sent.”
Another photo loaded on her screen featuring a group of teens standing in front of a large silver bus. They were all smiling, overnight bags slung over their shoulders. On the side of the bus, a banner said, STEM is the future! in bright bubble letters. Sayer found Rowena Chang leaning against the bus at the back of the group.
Sayer’s heart lurched when she saw the date and time. “This was posted barely twelve hours ago.”
“Yeah, this is where it gets … complicated. I’ve followed the links to other kids tagged in the image. All of these kids got on a bus chartered by the D.C. public school district heading for some kind of science and technology competition down at Georgia Tech. From what I’ve been able to piece together, the parents all dropped their kids off at Wilkerson High and the bus left around four thirty yesterday afternoon. Apparently the plan was to drive through the night to Atlanta.”
Sayer stared at the photograph. She counted twenty-four kids, twelve girls and twelve boys. “Do we know for sure that Rowena actually got on the bus?”
“Yeah, I found a photo one of the kids posted of her literally on the bus.”
“So, the bus left at four thirty heading south. Between then and seven, someone managed to abduct and kill Rowena, dumping her back up in the city by nine thirty.”
Sayer paused, not even wanting to ask the question. “What about the other kids on the bus?”
“None of the kids from the bus have posted anything on social media since 5:00 P.M. yesterday.”
Sayer and Ezra sat in silence on the phone together. There was no way an entire busload of teenagers hadn’t posted anything on social media for that long.
“None of them have been on social media at all?” Sayer said, knowing perfectly well what that probably meant.
“Not since a bunch of them posted similar photos of the bus leaving. I looked it up and they should’ve arrived in Atlanta about an hour ago.”
“You call to see if they made it?” Sayer asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
“I called the competition organizers at Georgia Tech and the hotel where the contestants are all staying. The bus never arrived.”
“Jesus. Are you telling me that something happened to an entire busload of kids?” Sayer had never before experienced the sensation of the ground falling away from beneath her, but now the world felt like it was tilted on edge, dropping away. “No one’s reported them missing?” she asked softly.
“Not that I’m seeing. But they’re all high school seniors and they were supposed to arrive in the middle of the night. An hour or two late wouldn’t be that unusual and maybe their families weren’t expecting to hear from them until morning?”
“All right.” Sayer paused, trying to organize her thoughts. “We need to figure out exactly what’s going on here. I’ll be back at Quantico in forty minutes. I need you to call the school district, check in with the bus company, make sure the kids are actually missing. If we’re right, we need … shit, I’m not even sure what we need.”
“We need a bigger task force,” Ezra said.
“Yeah. If you confirm that the bus and all these kids are missing, I want you to trigger the Child Abduction protocol.” Sayer rocked back in her chair, overwhelmed by that thought. “I’ll call Director Anderson to authorize a massive task force. I need someone gathering information on all those kids. The bus driver. Any other adults with them. But first, find out if we really have twenty-three missing students.”
“Got it,” Ezra said with clipped efficiency. “See you when you get here.” He hung up.
Sayer let herself stare at the faces of the twenty-four children about to get on the bus. Their casual body language, the confident lift of their heads, their smiles reflecting the radiant optimism of teenagers looking ahead to their own bright futures.
Heart heavy, Sayer woke Adi up for a quick goodbye and gave Nana a hug before racing out to her motorcycle.
Body buzzing as she screeched away from the curb, the true magnitude of the case hit Sayer. If all of those children were truly missing, she was about to be in charge of the largest child kidnapping case ever handled by the FBI.