Innocent Prey. Maggie Shayne

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      By 2:00 p.m. Mason and Myrtle and I were walking the sidewalk Stevie Mattheson had walked just before she’d vanished, which, I’d learned, had happened the day before yesterday. Apparently her devoted daddy had waited a day and a half before going to his pal the chief to not report her missing. Guy was a jerk.

      I know, snap judgment. That’s how I roll. Tough times turn people’s masks into windows. Believe what they show you. Yeah, it’s one of mine.

      “Nice leash, by the way,” Mason said.

      Hot pink, with black skulls and crossbones all over it. “And coincidentally it even matches the new goggles you bought her.”

      “Except I went with peace signs instead of the Jolly Roger.”

      “Yeah, I noticed,” I said.

      “Hope she doesn’t get confused about her own identity.”

      “What’s to be confused about? She’s a pacifist pirate.”

      He laughed. That was what I was going for, eliciting that laugh. I could tell more from Mason’s laugh than from anything he said or any vibe he emitted. He was too much a cop, played things too close to the vest, to let me read him the way I did other people. But I could still read him. It was just tougher. And his laugh was the easiest way I’d found so far.

      This one rang forced and tight.

      “You’re worried about this.”

      He nodded. “Something’s off about the whole thing.”

      “Spidey sense tingling?”

      “I wish to hell you’d been a fly on the wall at lunch so you could tell me if you sensed it, too.”

      “Is there some reason you’re doubting your eerily accurate cop instincts, Mason?”

      He looked at me, then at the sidewalk. “Yeah. A couple of them.” He didn’t elaborate, so I didn’t push it, figuring it was either something deep and emotional or something about us, and those topics were things we’d sort of agreed to avoid without really ever saying so out loud. He was no more into gooey emotional gunk than I was, thank goodness.

      It was beautiful outside. Warm in that springlike way that would seem chilly a month from now, but sunny and fresh. I’d always loved that about spring, that freshly washed newborn feeling it had to it. But I loved seeing it even more. The trees were taking on a pale green cast as their buds started to become leaves. Birds were flitting around singing like extras in a Disney flick. Tulips and daffodils everywhere you looked. And the apple blossoms were busting out all over. Out in the Point they were barely peeking out of their buds.

      Myrtle hurried from one spot to the next, sniffing everything thoroughly, excited by a new place and not even keeping her side pressed to my leg. She really was getting more confident. I loved that.

      “So she walked from this bench to that corner,” Mason said. “Bitching all the way, according to her coach.”

      “Her blindness coach. The person her father hired to teach her how to be blind.”

      “Yeah.” He chose to ignore the sarcasm in my tone.

      “But the coach is sighted, right?”

      “Uh-huh.” He said it like he knew what was coming next. Hell, he probably did.

      “And that makes sense because no one knows what it’s like to be blind better than a sighted person does, right?”

      “Of course not.”

      “So explain it to me, then, ’cause I’m not getting it.”

      He stopped. We’d walked about five steps. (Myrtle, twenty.) “I didn’t СКАЧАТЬ