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“The next time you go to Walmart to buy a Wranglers tee to impress my dad.”
“Double rude! How dare you?”
Theo couldn’t help his smile, but the easiness of the moment couldn’t last. “I don’t know what to do now, Auggie. The Cottonmouth Club is a dead end; even if there is a connection to the missing kids, we can’t go back there, not after the possibility that we’ve been made.”
Auggie nodded. “I really don’t think he recognized Shaniyah’s name. I know that doesn’t mean anything—there’s a dozen other ways Shaniyah could have gotten involved with someone at the club, someone besides Gid, and he wouldn’t have known about it. But I agree: if we had a chance at the Cottonmouth Club last night, I blew it.”
“You didn’t blow it. You did what we went there to do, and you got some information.”
“Yeah, some random names that aren’t connected to Shaniyah in any way.” When Theo glanced at him, Auggie shrugged. “I had free time today. I did some googling.”
“God, you’re amazing.”
Auggie’s shoulders relaxed, and his face opened. It wasn’t youth, although Auggie was still young. It was…vitality. It was the way dogwood buds opened even though the winds could still be freezing, white curls of life and hope the world was ready to shred.
It was also kind of fun, Theo had to admit, now that he knew how to do it. Fun and, well, hot.
“Tell me,” Theo said.
“The woman, Ingra, she was up for possession a couple of times, and she did a year in prison for assault with a deadly weapon—a knife. There’s a stub of an article about it from a Joplin newspaper that folded a few years ago, but they’re still on the Wayback Machine.” To Theo’s unasked question, he said, “Internet Archive. Anyway, that was ten or fifteen years ago, but she doesn’t look like she’s softened.”
“Kind of the opposite. You got all that from her first name?”
“It’s not a common name. If I were guessing, based on the area and those details, I’d say the Ozark Volunteers.”
Theo shrugged. “Sounds about right. Could be something else—a motorcycle club, maybe.”
“Eric is too common a name, especially if you’re a handsome white guy with a square chin, so I didn’t get anywhere, and nothing with Jace either. But here’s the thing: when I tried different combinations with Shaniyah’s name, nothing came up.”
“All right. So, we keep the Cottonmouth Club in our back pocket. Maybe there’s a connection, maybe not—if there is, we’re not going to find it right now.” Theo scratched his beard. “I guess we could go talk to Shaniyah’s aunt and uncle. It’s strange to me, the way they came in hot about Shaniyah not coming to school yesterday, and then they immediately clammed up.”
“The word is suspicious.”
“Maybe. You see a lot of strange things with parents and guardians. But you’re right, they might be hiding something.”
“Maybe they know something about the club, some kind of a connection we don’t know about.”
Theo nodded.
“The only problem,” Auggie said, “is I already tried talking to them once, remember? And the aunt ripped my head off.”
“I’m Shaniyah’s teacher—”
“And I was pretending to be a social worker from the school.”
“Right. I meant to talk to you about that.”
In a rush, Auggie said, “That’s not really the point. The point is, being from the school didn’t help. If anything, it shut them down even faster.”
“So, what?”
Auggie lifted his head, and a moment later, Theo heard the voices moving down the hall toward them. “Don’t be mad—” Auggie said.
“Interesting choice of words while I’m still thinking about that social worker thing.”
“—but I got us some backup.”
Colt stuck his head through the door. “Um, hi? Dr. Stratford? Mr. Lopez?”
