Samantha Sanderson Without a Trace

by Robin Caroll

Grinning, Sam shook her head. “Okay, okay. But since you wouldn’t look for me, I have to stalk Tam’s social media pages. It’s all your fault I’m becoming a creeper.”

  “Like you aren’t creepy enough already.” Mac laughed, causing BabyKitty to open her eyes and stare at her. The cat’s tail twitched in disapproval of her nap being disturbed.

  “Don’t tell your mom I’m a creeper, or she’ll never let you sleep over again.” Sam opened her Facebook page and typed Tam’s name in the search box.

  “I think she secretly hopes your dad being a cop will make me, I don’t know, want to be a lawyer.”

  Sam broke her focus from Tam’s profile picture to look at her bestie. “She’s still riding that bus? Wanting you to be a lawyer?”

  “Sadly, yes.” Makayla shook her head. “I don’t know why, either. I’ve never been combative, argumentative, or wanted to debate.”

  “Well, I don’t know about not being argumentative,” Sam teased.

  Makayla narrowed her eyes and made duck lips.

  Sam laughed. “Have you told your mom that you don’t want to be a lawyer?”

  “Not exactly.” Makayla stopped smiling and shook her head.

  “What does that mean? You either have or you haven’t.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Makayla twisted in the desk’s chair and tucked her feet under her. “I’ve hinted that it takes so much time and money to become a lawyer, and most of them starting out these days just don’t make the income they once did.”

  “What does she say to that?”

  “She just says that such things are worth it in the long run.”

  Sam leaned the back of her head against the pillow. “Why don’t you just flat out tell her you don’t want to become a lawyer?”

  “Because then she’ll ask me what I do want to be, and I just don’t know.” Makayla shifted, tucking her feet under the other side of the chair.

  “We’re not even thirteen. We don’t have to know what we want to be when we grow up,” Sam said.

  “You do. You’ve always known.”

  So true. “But that’s because I grew up hearing Mom’s stories and seeing her articles. She let me sit in her lap as she wrote when I was a toddler. Of course I want to be a journalist. I was raised with an excitement for trying to uncover the truth, for exposing what needed to be. It’s a part of who I am.”

  “You’re lucky. You’re so sure of yourself and what you want to do.” Makayla used that wistful voice she sometimes used when she talked about a break in a computer code creation or something along that path that went way over Sam’s head. “It’s helpful to know so you can make a plan. You have one, right?”

  “I do, but I’m a freak, you know that.” Sam stuck out her tongue. “And you love me anyway.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re lucky I do, or you’d be in big trouble.” Makayla’s smile returned.

  “Okay, time to become super creeper.” Sam popped her knuckles again.

  “Stop doing that. It’s gross.”

  “You’re just jealous you can’t crack your knuckles.” Sam laughed as she clicked on the link for Tam’s friends, then started scrolling for anybody whose name started with a J.

  “I wouldn’t want to. Haven’t you heard it’ll make your knuckles bigger and give you arthritis when you’re older?”

  Sam stopped scrolling through Tam’s Facebook friends. “You’re kidding, right? That’s an old myth.”

  Makayla shook her head. “My mother says that’s why my grandmother has such horrible arthritis.”

  “Well, my dad used to stay on mine and Mom’s case about cracking our knuckles, so Mom finally had enough and interviewed a leading rheumatologist. He assured her that cracking or popping our knuckles would not cause arthritis, nor would it make our knuckles bigger.”

  “I’m so telling my mother.”

  “But, he did tell Mom that in over fifty percent of those who cracked their knuckles, when they were older they had issues with their hands swelling.”

  “Hmm. And yet, you still pop yours?”

  Sam grinned. “Yeah, yeah. I know.” She turned back to the computer.

  “The only friends I’m seeing of Tam’s whose names start with a J are: Jared Hopkins, who’s on newspaper with us, Jefferson Cole, Nikki’s little brother, a James Seymour, a Jane Rogers, and . . .” Sam bounced on the bed. “One Jason Turner.”

  BabyKitty jumped off the bed and ran from the room. Chewy gave chase down the hall.

  “Who’s Jason Turner?” Makayla asked, turning from her computer.

  “I don’t know, but let’s see what I can find out.” Sam clicked on Jason’s name and brought up his Facebook page, then clicked on the About button. She read aloud, “Attends Joe T. Robinson High School. Loves computers, anime, and golf.”

  “High school? What grade is he in?”

  Sam scrolled. “Hang on. Oh, he’s a junior. Eleventh.” She looked at Makayla. “I wouldn’t have picked Tam as a person to have a lot of high school friends, would you?”

  Makayla shook her head while Sam creeped a little more.

  “He’s in EAST.” Sam wrinkled her nose. “I don’t remember meeting him with the high school team at conference last year.”

  “Oh, you know everybody in EAST now, even the high school program?” Makayla teased.

  Sam shrugged. “I just met a lot of the teams last year at conference.” As one of the administrators, she helped keep Mrs. Shine’s notes about the conference organized, and that included the correspondence with the high school and other facilitators. Thinking about Mrs. Shine’s notes reminded Sam of what she’d found out in EAST today. “Hey, guess what?”

  Makayla spun the desk chair around so she could prop her feet on the side of Sam’s bed. “What?”

  “Since you weren’t willing to help me investigate—”

  “You mean go into the student database without permission and get expelled.”

  “Whatever.” Sam grinned. “Anyway, I pulled up Tam’s EAST project in the computer today.”

  Makayla frowned. “Are you supposed to do that?”

  “Mrs. Shine has asked me to look at stuff for her before, so it’s fine.”

  Makayla raised one eyebrow.

  “She has.” Sam tossed a throw pillow at Makayla’s head. “Anyway, all the files in his project are blank. Everything. Not even his project reports are in there, and I know Mrs. Shine has graded us on at least two this semester.”

  “Mrs. Shine wouldn’t have allowed him an extension or something?”

  Sam shook her head. “Not like this, not with conference coming up next month. We’re up for a Founder’s Award. No way would she let it slide.” The Founder’s Award was the highest award in EAST. It went to the school that best demonstrated the overall purpose and mission of EAST and it was quite the honor to even be named a finalist in the running. This was the first year the school was a finalist.

  “Then what do you think is going on?”

  “Well, I checked Mrs. Shine’s files of the class’s projects and I just found his project overview notes about making some workshops on Internet and child safety mandatory.” She crossed her legs under the laptop on her bed.

  Makayla wiped cat hair from her jeans. “Isn’t that a co-winky-dink that Tam’s project is about children’s safety and now he’s missing?”

  “I know.” Sam glanced back to Jason Turner’s Facebook page. “You know, I’ve been thinking Tam was taken or something, even though Dad says the sheriff’s office must be pretty sure he wasn’t abducted if they haven’t issued an AMBER Alert or anything.”

  Makayla moved from the chair to lay across the foot of Sam’s bed and prop up on a pillow to stare at Sam. “Yeah, go on.”

  “But what if that didn’t happen? What if Tam went somewhere?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sam set the MacBook on the bed and stood up. She thought better when she paced. “The note said: All set for in the morning and was signed by J.T
., right?”

  Makayla sat up and nodded. “That’s what you said.”

  “What if this Jason Turner is the J.T. in the note and he and Tam planned to go somewhere. Jason has his driver’s license, I’m sure, and probably has a car. What if the note meant whatever they planned to do was all set?” Sam stopped pacing and dropped to sit beside Makayla.

  “Then you’re saying Tam might be a runaway like the police said?”

  Sam shook her head. “I don’t think he ran away because he was mad at his dad. I think he made plans to do something.”

  “But I thought you said Tam wouldn’t skip school.”

  “Well . . .” Sam chewed her bottom lip. Therein was the problem. Tam wasn’t the type to skip school. What if he—she snapped her fingers. “He was supposed to meet Darby French before school, beside the building.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t make plans to meet Darby if he knew he was going somewhere, right?” Makayla asked. “So that has to mean he didn’t plan to skip school.”

  “Maybe.” It just didn’t make sense. There was too much she didn’t know and what she did know seemed to conflict with itself. Not a very good combo. Sam sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “And Jason Turner might not be the J.T. from the letter.” Makayla shrugged. “That note might not even have anything to do with any of this. That could’ve been from months ago and Tam just forgot to throw it away. And Jason’s in high school, a junior—really past the passing notes stage, wouldn’t you say?”

  Everything Makayla said was true, but it didn’t make Sam feel any better. She fell back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I wish I knew what the police knew. Like if they found anything on his cell phone, his laptop, or in his room. Or anything else in his locker. Or what he was meeting Darby French for.”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t bugged your dad to listen to the scanner or something.”

  Sam had thought about that, then dismissed the idea. “It usually doesn’t have stuff about an investigation. Really only new calls, traffic stops, and stuff like that.”

  “But if they took Darby French to the station like Marcus suggested, maybe it’ll be on the scanner?”

  “No.” But that gave her an idea. “I’m going to call Marcus and see if he’s talked with Darby. I suggested he check in on her.”

  “Sam Sanderson! You put that boy up to spying for you.” Makayla wagged her finger at Sam.

  “Not exactly. He was worried about Darby, and I merely suggested he call her after school to see what happened.” That wasn’t asking him to spy for her.

  “And yet you’re calling him and going to ask him what Darby said.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.” Sam knew what her best friend meant, but she was running out of information and leads. She grabbed her cell and the list with all the Senator Speak phone numbers, then dialed Marcus’s cell number.

  “Hi, Sam,” he answered. “Have you heard anything about Tam?”

  “No. Have you?” She held her breath as she waited for his response.

  “I talked to Darby.”

  She grinned, despite the ugly look Makayla threw her. “What did she say?”

  “Well, she did have to go to the sheriff’s office with her mom to talk to Deputy Jameson, the one who spoke at our assembly.”

  “Yeah, I know who he is.” She wished he would just get to what she wanted to know.

  “She said that when they’d had their regular tutoring session on Tuesday during activity period, he’d asked her to meet him before school.”

  “Why?” she blurted out. “I mean, did she tell you why he wanted to meet her?”

  “That’s the strange thing about it all. She says he called her the night before and asked if she could meet him before school, on the side of the building, because he had something he wanted to give her and he needed her to have it before school.”

  Sam’s pulse spiked. “Well, what was it?” She nodded at Makayla, who despite her disapproving look, stared at Sam with great interest.

  “Darby doesn’t know and since she was late, she never got it.”

  That didn’t sound like Tam at all. A secret meeting to give Darby French some unknown but important thing and then, what? He disappeared without a trace. “Did you find out why she didn’t tell anyone that she’d planned to meet Tam?” Maybe there was a clue there.

  “Yeah. Her big brother goes to the high school and drives her to school every morning.” The high school is right next door to the middle school, so the two campuses share football and baseball fields. “Their parents’ rule is that no one else ride in the car with them, but the brother’s apparently been giving his girlfriend a ride to school. Wednesday, when they went to pick up the girlfriend, she’d overslept, so was running really late. Darby couldn’t really do anything but wait, because her brother threatened to tell on her for something she did at home that would get her grounded.”

  Sam shook her head, once again grateful she was an only child. She’d seen firsthand how Makayla’s little sister, while cute, could cause problems for Makayla. Now, problems with an older sibling. Yep, Sam was happy being an only child.

  Marcus continued. “So, she didn’t say anything because she would have had to explain why she was so late, which would get her brother in trouble and that would make him tell on her.”

  “That’s crazy.” Yeah, Sam could see going to great measures to not get in trouble, but when a friend was missing? That seemed to be more important than having your brother mad at you and getting grounded.

  “Anyway, she and her brother both got in pretty hot water, from what she said, but the police let her go without doing anything else for now.”

  So Darby was a complete dead end. “She really has no idea what he wanted to give her?” Makayla’s stare stayed glued on her.

  “She says she doesn’t,” insisted Marcus.

  “It’s very unlike Tam to break routine. He’s just not one for spontaneity. At least, not that I’ve noticed.”

  “That’s what Darby said. That it was very unlike him. That’s why she was so upset to be late.”

  But not upset enough to come forward when she heard he was missing. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know. That’s what Darby keeps saying.”

  Sam had had just about enough about Miss No-Help Darby. “Well, I’m glad at least the police have something new to go on. Tam broke his own routine, and for someone to do that there’s usually a significant reason.”

  Makayla tilted her head. Sam shook her head.

  “Darby said they kept asking her who J.T. was. She doesn’t know a J.T. so didn’t have an answer for them. What’s up with that?” Marcus said.

  “I guess that’s an angle the police are working.” Sam knew better than to share information she’d gotten that she wasn’t supposed to have access to. Yep, she’d learned that the hard way. “Did she say they asked her anything else?” Maybe there was another lead in this dead end some other way.

  “Well,” Marcus hesitated for a long moment before continuing. “She said they asked her if she knew anything about the teen message board teenmeetLR or anything about anyone who goes by the screen name of tutorcool or mathhater.”

  “Why would they ask that?” What did a message board have to do with Tam?

  “She said the cop who interviewed her wouldn’t say.” Marcus paused. “But, Sam, why would they ask Darby if it didn’t relate to Tam?”

  “I don’t know. What board again?”

  “TeenmeetLR. I’ve never heard of it, have you?”

  Sam’s dad tapped on the door, then pushed it open. “Dinner’s ready, girls.”

  She nodded as he backed out. “Marcus, I have to go. Thanks for filling me in.”

  “I hope they have something to go on to find Tam,” Marcus said.

  “Me, too. Talk to you later, Marcus.” Sam hung up and stared at her best friend. She was more confused than ever about Tam, what he’d been up to, and where he’d bee
n.

  She was more worried about him now too.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hey, Dad, do you know anything about a local message board called teenmeetLR?” Sam asked as she shook red pepper flakes onto her pizza. Dad was, after all, one of the Little Rock detectives who rotated service on the Internet safety task force.

  He’d just taken a sip of water and nearly spewed it all over the kitchen table. He swallowed and coughed before he answered. “Where did you hear about that message board?”

  Ahh . . . she’d hit on something. A message board that Dad apparently knew about and, by the red creeping up the side of his face, one he didn’t like.

  “From a friend of a friend.” Which was true. Darby was a friend of Tam’s and Marcus’s, and they were her friends. That didn’t stop Makayla from throwing her a sharp look.

  “You need to stay out of there.” Dad’s face turned into his bulldog look—eyebrows drawn down, lips puckered tight. His cheeks even seemed to sink in and turn red. “Both of you—don’t ever go there, and tell all your friends to stay out too.”

  His reaction sent every alarm bell off in Sam’s head. Loudly.

  “I’m serious, Sam. This is non-negotiable.”

  “We’ll stay out, Mr. Sanderson,” Makayla said, her eyes wide. “We’ll tell everyone to stay away too.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Sam managed to eek out, even though she was still stunned by his reaction. TeenmeetLR must be bad, very bad.

  “Honey?” Even Mom sounded concerned about his reaction.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that the task force has been monitoring that particular message board for several weeks now and what they’ve found is not good.”

  “What do you mean, Dad?” Because there had to be a connection between the board and Tam, or the sheriff’s deputy wouldn’t have asked Darby about it. “Bad how?”

  Dad slowly set his pizza on his plate. “They’ve linked at least two child predators to that specific location. One has already been arrested by an undercover team, but the other one, they haven’t been able to catch yet.”

  Sam’s heart slipped to her toes. The pizza seemed to churn in her stomach.

  “You haven’t been in there, have you, Sam?” Dad asked.