He spotted his prey and took a bite of goodness, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Hungry?” he asked Ava.

She shook her head. “I like donuts, but I don’t know what they put in those. I’m not twenty anymore. My body gives me hell for two days if I load up on preservatives or unpronounceable ingredients.”

He nodded as he chewed. He understood that. Wine gave him headaches, so he didn’t drink it. That was an easy fix, since he didn’t care for wine anyway, but avoiding donuts must have sucked.

Special Agent McLane was an attractive woman. He hadn’t noticed it before and suspected she downplayed her looks. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her makeup was minimal, but she had a freshness to her skin that spoke of good health and clean living. Her eyes were an intense dark blue that sparkled with intelligence. The longer he looked at her, the more surprised he was that her looks hadn’t immediately jumped out at him. He was still taken in by the smooth voice. Maybe it had distracted him at their first meeting.

“What’s your first name, Agent McLane?”

Blue eyes blinked. “Ava. I’m sorry. You’re Mason, right?”

Mason nodded. Ava. A movie-star name. “And we’re going to be housemates for a few days.”

“Hopefully not for that long.”

“Amen to that.”

“What are your thoughts on this?”

It was a wide-open question. Mason took another bite of donut and thought carefully before answering. “I don’t know. Her parents are good people. I’m leaning toward a stranger abduction—”

“Stranger abductions are very rare.”

He took another bite of donut and slowly chewed. If she was going to interrupt him, then she could wait. “I know. But I don’t think you’ll find the answer in the immediate family. Now, people outside the family are a different matter. Maybe a client or coworker of Lucas Fairbanks’s, or a past boyfriend of Lilian’s.”

The pocket of her navy blazer vibrated, and he popped the last of the donut in his mouth as she pulled out her phone and glanced at her screen. Annoyance flashed across her face, and she dropped the phone back in her pocket.

“Need to make a call?” he prodded. She hadn’t been happy to see the name of whoever had contacted her. His gut told him it was personal, but he didn’t want to keep her if it was her job.

“No. It’s not work.”

Score one for his gut.

He kept his mouth closed, giving her a chance to explain. People usually liked to talk about themselves if you gave them the chance.

Special Agent McLane didn’t fall for his usual interviewing trick. She smiled politely at him, took a drink from her bottled water, and went back to their topic. “You don’t think the girl ran away? How well did you know her?”

“I didn’t know her well at all. I’m going by what Robin says. That woman, I do know. If she’s convinced Henley’s not a runner, then I’ll take her word for it.”

“But kids hide things from their parents all the time. I doubt Robin or Lilian knew everything Henley looked at online.”

“That’s why the FBI took the computers, right? I assume that’s the first thing they’ll be looking at. I don’t know why you’re asking me about it.” He gave her a pointed look. “You’re FBI, why don’t you look into what they found?”

The reaction on her face was a miniscule flicker. If he hadn’t been watching closely for her answer to his barb, he wouldn’t have seen it.

Frustration.

She was on the outside of the case. Just like him.

“I understand you’re filling in for the victim specialist. I’m gonna guess that means you don’t have any active role in the investigation.”

The flicker again. “Not really. My primary role is to be what the family needs. Shoulder to cry on, chauffeur, hand holder, media interference.”

Her hands were about as tied as his.

“Dishwasher?”

“Maybe.”

“So you shouldn’t be in here, either.”

She gave a half smile, and he was charmed. She had a subtle, dry humor that he suspected he could banter with for hours.

“I can’t stay away completely, either,” Mason acknowledged. “I’ll push the envelope as far as they’ll let me, but I understand my role.”

“Sanford? You need to take a look at this,” stated one of the agents who’d recently entered the command center. Ava and Mason exchanged a glance and moved toward the gathering group of agents.

Mason looked over the shoulders of a few agents and saw the black-and-white view from a camera on a school bus. Children moved away from the camera as they filed onto the bus, bulky coats and backpacks hiding their identities. As they turned to sit in the rows of bus seats, glimpses of faces revealed their sex.

“What do you have?” Special Agent Sanford pushed through the group to the men directly in front of the screen.

“We just finished interviewing the last child from Henley’s bus stop,” said the older agent. “There’s a consensus that she wasn’t on the bus.”

Sanford nodded. “I’ve been making a lot of my decisions with the assumption that your interviews would back up what we heard from the two kids first thing this morning.”

“There were five altogether,” the agent continued. “Each kid stated that Henley wasn’t at the stop and didn’t get on the bus, but we also wanted to see for ourselves. The school district emailed this video a few minutes ago.”