“Whoa, Harper, isn’t that the kid you know?” Marcy interrupted her and pointed to the computer screen.

“Lots of people I know check out books,” Harper said without looking up from the Judy Blume book. “It’s not all that surprising.”

“No, no, I got bored with that so I was just checking out the Capri Daily Herald’s Web site to leave angry, anonymous comments on the op-ed piece. But I found this instead.” Marcy turned the screen so it faced Harper more.

Harper looked up to see the headline “Local Boy Missing.” Below it was a picture of Luke Benfield that Harper recognized as his senior picture from her yearbook. He’d tried to slick back his red curls, but they still stuck out at the sides.

“He’s missing?” Harper asked and scooted her chair closer to Marcy’s.

In smaller letters the subhead read “Fourth Boy Missing in Two Months.” The article went on to give a few basic facts about Luke—that he was an honor-roll student and Stanford-bound in the fall.

The rest of the story told what little they knew about what had happened. Luke had gone to the picnic on Monday, then went home for supper. He seemed normal, and he left after he ate, telling his parents he was meeting a friend, and he’d never returned.

His parents were at a loss as to where he might be. The police had just started their investigation, but they didn’t seem to know any more than they did about the other missing boys. Since Luke was eighteen, the police would have ordinarily waited longer to start searching, but with the recent rash of disappearances, the cops were taking this latest one seriously.

The reporter drew parallels between Luke’s disappearance and those of the other three boys. They were all teenagers. They had all left to meet some friends. None of them ever came home.

The article went on to mention two teenage girls who had gone missing from nearby coastal towns. All the boys were from Capri, but the girls were from two different towns more than a half hour away.

“Do you think they’re going to question us?” Marcy asked.

“Why? We didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Because we saw him that day.” Marcy pointed to the computer screen, as if to elaborate. “He went missing the night of the picnic.”

Harper thought it over. “I don’t know. Maybe they will, but the paper said the police just started the investigation. They’ll probably talk to Alex, but I don’t know if they’re going to talk to every person who went to the picnic.”

“That’s freaky, right?” Marcy asked. “We just saw him, and now he’s dead.”

“He’s not dead. He’s missing,” Harper corrected her. “He might still be alive.”

“I doubt it. They’re saying it’s a serial killer.”