Fear the Dark Read Online Free

left standing open, personal items and other valuables left in the car. Key in the ignition but engine off. And the kids gone.”
    â€œYou didn’t find a fucking
clue
? Not a footprint or anything to tell you what happened to the kids?” Stuart all but shouted.
    â€œI didn’t find anything that told me what happened,” Jonah replied, honestly. “Maybe friends came by and picked them up, for whatever reason. Maybe they set out walking—for whatever reason—and stuck to the pavement so they didn’t leave prints.” He finished with that lie without a blink. “Look, when it comes to missing people, it’s still early yet. We have to start calling their friends—we’ll need your info and probably your help for that—and see if any of them have information worth sharing.”
    Or are willing to talk.
    â€œAnd then?” Stuart demanded.
    â€œLet’s cross that bridge when we get there. The most likely explanation is that one of their friends knows where they are, and that they’re somewhere waiting out the rain. So we start calling their friends.”
    â€œAnd then?” Stuart demanded again.
    Jonah had never responded well to bullies, but his job had taught him to at least be calm. “Stuart, as I said, we’ll take this a step at a time, following the procedures for missing persons. While this storm is pounding us and most of the other kids are either at home or with friends, we have an excellent opportunity to make phone calls. I assume you’re all willing to help?”
    â€œOf course.” It was snapped almost in unison by everyone but Monica, who merely sobbed again.
    â€œOkay, you all know the conference room is next door. There are several phones as well as legal pads and pens. Coffee too. I called before I got here and had two of the high school yearbooks left in there. Stuart is a senior and Amy a junior, so you can divide up the list like that if you want; even if you don’t know names, look for faces you’ve seen with your kids more than others. However you choose is fine with me. Just please write down who you call and what they said. Jean’s getting a list from the school with phone numbers, home and cell.”
    And it was a good thing Jean and Jack Rollins, the school principal, were . . . very good friends. He’d been willing to leave his coffee and his snug, dry house and slosh out to the high school for numbers he’d fax back to the police station.
    There were, Jonah had thought many times, benefits to living insuch a small town that virtually everyone knew everyone else. The downside, of course, was that nearly everyone knew everyone else’s business. So if they didn’t already, the whole town would soon know of an elopement that apparently didn’t go as planned.
    Jonah personally got the parents settled in the conference room and then returned to his office. All his instincts told him he wouldn’t get much use from whatever the parents found—except to spread the news faster—but they needed to be busy, procedure needed to be followed, and he needed them out of his hair while he tried to think.
    Sarah tapped on his door and came in. She didn’t look the least bit wet, so either they had beaten the storm back, or water just slicked off her like a duck. It was something he had thought before.
    She held a thumb drive in her hand. “You need to look at this.”
    â€œAh, shit,” he groaned. “Don’t tell me this whole thing is even stranger than I think it is.”
    Without another word, she went around his desk to the credenza behind it, plugged the thumb drive into his computer, and called up the pictures on the drive.
    â€œTake a look for yourself. I got every shot before the rain started.”
    Jonah swiveled his chair around and stared at the large screen of his computer. He stared for a long time, his gaze moving from photograph to