I bumped into a guy with two kids in tow, each of them with ice skates slung over their shoulders. Tourists on their way to Rockefeller, looking for some holiday magic.

The guy actually apologized—definitely not a New York native. I kept walking as a light flurry fell.

Mint had wanted to meet at a pizza place near his Uncle Hal’s apartment. I’d obliged. The more I’d thought about the blonde in the restaurant, the more uneasy I’d become. So here I was, engaging in cloak and dagger bullshit with a teenage horndog.

I pushed into the restaurant and headed toward a table at the back. Looking around, I didn’t see the kid. I leaned against the end of the bar and pulled my phone out to text the little shit.

“Link?” A guy stood from a nearby table.

“Mint?”

“Yeah.” He waved for me to sit across from him.

Hell’s bells. The kid was my height with an even bigger build. What the fuck did he do in his spare time? Lift? It didn’t matter, I would make sure he didn’t come any nearer to Camille than required for biology class. Calling him a kid didn’t seem right anymore.

I sat across from him. “What’s with the meeting?”

He pulled a sheaf of papers from a leather messenger bag sitting next to him. A waitress appeared and took our order. She was cute, a little older, but definitely within my fuckable range.

“I’ve been in touch with Veronica. She wanted to be here, but her mom’s health isn’t so great, and she had to fly home to visit for the holidays.”

“She’ll be missed.” I took a sip from the beer the waitress had deposited in front of me.

Mint opened a folder and slapped it onto the table. “Here’s what I have. Before Veronica left, she did some digging and couldn’t find a Dr. Williams with any expedition to the Amazon.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t go. All that tells me is you two need to brush up on your research skills.”

“That’s fair, I guess.” He shrugged. “I was still suspicious, mainly because of the taxonomy capitalization error. So I tried to get information from the airline about whether Camille boarded her flight to Brazil, but they refused to help me because I wasn’t a relative.”

“So you got nothing?” I took another swig of beer and wondered why I’d even come here. The blonde couldn’t have been Camille, and I hadn’t even told the kid about it.

“No, I didn’t get anything. But Veronica called the airline and pretended to be Camille. She knows all Camille’s personal info, so it was easy. She was able to confirm that, though a seat had been purchased for Camille, she never actually flew out of JFK.” He spun a piece of paper around on the table so I could see it. It was a letter from the airline confirming what he’d just told me.

“Okay, if you had all this information, why not go to the police?”

He retrieved the sheet of paper and tucked it into his folder. “We only called with the impersonation routine yesterday, and we weren’t exactly sure what we’d say. Veronica checked to see if Camille could have gotten on another flight with that airline, but they didn’t have any further information. She called the other airlines that had flights to Brazil, but none of them were able to give her anything. At that point, all we had to go on was a capitalized letter in a text and a missed flight.”

“And you have something new now?” I leaned forward, my beer forgotten.

“Yes.” He pulled a copy of a letter from his stack. It was dated the previous day and had a “hand-delivered” stamp on it. “How well do you know Sebastian Lindstrom?”

I grabbed the paper and skimmed it. It was a brief letter from Sebastian to Trenton Prep, wherein Sebastian offered to fully fund an upgraded greenhouse.

“I saw Mr. Lindstrom just a few weeks before Ms. Briarlane left for Christmas break. He came by the school to supposedly enquire about scholarships, but he seemed to spend a lot of his time in Ms. Briarlane’s classroom. Alone with her.”

“She never told me that.” Why hadn’t she told me?

“Exactly. I think he’s the prime suspect in her disappearance. His sudden interest in Trenton, especially the greenhouse bit. There’s something off about him. I’ve read up on his business, his personality. He’s a hard man.”

“Don’t I fucking know it. I work for the guy.”

“There was something about him. The way he looked at her that day at Trenton.” He shrugged. “Like he was, I don’t know, scheming.”

I gave Mint a hard stare. “How do you know? Were you watching?”

Mint dropped his eyes, finally looking more like a kid. “After I bumped into him, yeah, I hung around in the hallway.”

I drilled into him with my gaze. “How long have you been watching my girl?”

He sputtered. “It’s not like that. Not what you think.”

“No? It sure as fuck seems like it. You’ve been searching for a reason to see Ms. Briarlane again ever since she left.”

“That’s not true.” He snatched his papers back and stuffed them into his folder. “I’m just worried about her.”

“Tell me, kid. Do you jerk it to her once or twice a day?”

“Don’t talk about her like that!” His sudden outburst quieted the restaurant around us.

I glanced around and held up my hands toward him. “Calm down.”

“I am calm.” He slid his folder back into his bag. “I misjudged you, though.”

“No, you didn’t.” I hailed the waitress and ordered two more beers. “So, let’s say your suspicions are true, and Sebastian Lindstrom kidnapped Camille. What are we going to do about it? Police?”

“Not until we know for sure.” He shook his head.

“How do we do that?”

He gestured to his bag. “I have a list of all the properties Lindstrom owns. The most likely candidate where he’d keep her is a house in the Catskills. Secluded, lots of acreage. I think we should ride up there and have a look around. What do you think? Does all this sound insane to you?”

“Not as insane as you might think. I’m ready to head up there right now.” The beer arrived, and I pushed one across the table to him. “But first, let me tell you about something I saw a couple nights ago.”