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“Why do you have a gun?” Oscar asked.
Lancelot had been reaching for it when Oscar raced into the parking lot. His shirt had gotten stuck on the grip, revealing it. Untucking his shirt, he covered the weapon once more. The last thing he needed was for some hotel guest or employee to spot him and call the cops.
“Sylvia is in danger.”
“No shit! I just told you that. But if you’re not the danger, then who is?”
“Alicia Rutherford,” Hugo replied.
Oscar frowned. “Her English teacher? Bullshit. Sylvia loves her. She and Mrs. Rutherford are tight. That woman wouldn’t hurt my sister.”
“She’s not who you think she is,” Hugo added.
Lancelot cleared his throat. Hugo was talking too much, giving Oscar too much information.
Oscar’s fists clenched once more. “Then why don’t you tell me who the hell she really is?”
“We don’t have time,” Lancelot countered. “What we need is a plan. We questioned the resort staff we could find. We might get more answers if we wait for the night staff to come back, but we can’t wait that long. We need to start searching for her now.”
“Mrs. Rutherford kidnapped my sister?” Oscar asked.
“Yes,” Hugo said.
Lancelot wasn’t so sure. He reached into the back seat of Sylvia’s car and pulled out the atlas he’d found there earlier. If he weren’t on the verge of losing it completely, he would have been amused by the fact she still carried a printed book of maps in her car, considering her phone had GPS.
He flipped to the map of Florida and tried to think reasonably.
Given how important Alicia was to Sylvia, it was more than likely Alicia had somehow convinced Sylvia to leave with her. That meant he couldn’t rule out any of the modes of transportation that would be off-limits if this were a true kidnapping.
They had at least a six-hour head start. There were several major airports within a two-hour drive, so air travel was a real possibility. Still, Lancelot dismissed it. Alicia wouldn’t leave an easy trail, and Sylvia wouldn’t have any sort of false ID, so she would have been forced to buy a ticket and travel under her own name.
Unless Alicia had planned for that, and had false identification waiting for her. Possible, but still unlikely as far as Lancelot was concerned. Airports had too many cameras.
He stared at the map. That meant they were traveling by car, or, given the fact that they were a stone’s throw from the beach, by boat.
“Where would you go?” Lancelot asked, staring down at the map. He didn’t know enough to make even an educated guess. But there was someone here who might. “How familiar are you with this state?” Lancelot asked Oscar.
Oscar was frowning at him. “You really are looking for her.”
“Of course,” Hugo said.
Oscar’s eye twitched. “It’s you two in the sketch, isn’t it?”
Hugo ran a hand through his hair. He looked rumpled and weary and completely resigned to taking yet another punch from her brother. “Oui.”
Oscar rubbed his forehead. “Fuck. I knew her SOS came from Florida. Then I looked and saw your car was here, and assumed she was with you, so I didn’t look at anything else.” He walked back to his truck and pulled out a state-of-the-art laptop.
Returning to Sylvia’s car, he placed it on the trunk and flipped the lid open. Glancing at Hugo, whose lip was still bleeding and swelling up nicely, he muttered a low, “Sorry.”
Hugo nodded at the halfhearted apology. With Sylvia’s life in danger, something like a fat lip was minimal.
“There’s no GPS on the watch because the SOS system uses cell phone tech, not satellite.” He tapped a few buttons, his fingers seeming much slower on the keyboard than a tech genius’ would be.
“But cell phones use towers. Her text message pinged through this tower.” He pointed at his screen, then grabbed the map book. He scanned it, then flipped a few pages so they weren’t looking at the whole state, but a more detailed map of one particular section. “Here.” Oscar stabbed at the spot on the page. “This is where she was when she sent her SOS.”
Lancelot could have kissed the man.
“Whose car?” Lancelot asked.
