I asked Greer if he had anything else, and he told me no but that he’d contact me if anything came up. “I’ll get state police on the vehicle with the tracking device,” I said to him. “Ralph and I will go to the greenhouse.”

Then, I summed up the call to Ralph and directed him where to drive, but he scoffed with disbelief.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Greer again. Really? He just happened to know that? To come up with that? Why haven’t we heard it through dispatch?”

“You still don’t trust him?”

“No. I do not.”

“What do you propose?”

It took him a moment to reply. “If he is involved with all this, I don’t want to tip him off. We head to the greenhouse like you said, assess the situation, and call in backup as needed. But this time, I don’t want another team on-site until I can eyeball things.”

I called back the agent who’d been stationed outside Sabian’s place. “Well?”

“We’re at the door,” the guy said, “but Sabian’s not answering.”

“Break it down.”

“We’re not authorized to—”

“You are now. Do it!”

I listened in as he identified himself as an FBI agent, then gave a verbal request for Sabian to open the door. After a short hesitation, I heard the splintering crash of the door being kicked in.

Anxiously, I waited while they searched the house. Finally, the agent told me, “The place is empty. There’s no one here, and . . .”

“And what?” Fear overtook me. The worst kinds of fears a father might have.

“The car’s gone from the garage. He got away.”

“And the girl?”

“There’s no sign of her.”

73

I didn’t know what to do.

We could turn the car around and head back to look for Sabian’s vehicle, but from here that was much farther than the greenhouse. Besides, I didn’t even know where to begin searching for it.

But then what about Tessa?

I texted her to call me, then contacted her school to see if she was in class. They told me they’d check with her teachers. Finally, I texted Christie to see if Tessa had been in touch with her.

++++

The Matchmaker parked behind the first greenhouse and then walked through the deepening snow to speak with Fayed Raabi’ah Bashir in the office.

++++

The principal from Tessa’s high school called me back.

It turned out that she’d been kicked out of class this morning and hadn’t been seen since. As her stepdad, I was shocked that the faculty hadn’t informed me or Christie earlier that she was gone, but we could deal with that later. Hassling with the school administration was the least of my concerns at the moment.

Christie texted that she hadn’t heard from Tessa today.

What is it? What’s going on? she wrote.