Page 20 of Forgotten Path

“Don’t be. I already told you I’m up. Is something wrong?”

“No. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I read Joel’s scientific journals.”

“And theJournal of Harmful Algaedidn’t send you off to dreamland?” she cracked.

“Shockingly, no.”

“Did you figure out what Joel’s doing?”

“Not yet. But I think I figured out where he’s doing it.”

She tucked the phone between her shoulder and her ear and rose to her feet, wiping her sweaty hands on her tank top as she stood. “You did? That’s progress. Where?”

She paced into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of ice water.

“Someplace called Oyster Point.”

She searched her memory. “Never heard of it.”

“According to the Internet, it’s a little coastal town in Gulf County over on the panhandle.”

“The Forgotten Coast? What the devil would he be doing way up there? That’s gotta be, what, a ten-hour drive.”

“It’s a little over eleven hours door to door, according to Joel’s GPS.”

She blinked and nearly choked on an ice cube. “Wait, what? You’re in the Jeep?”

“Yep. I found the spare keys last night. There was a punch card for a juice place in Oyster Point in Joel’s car. It looks like he goes there pretty frequently. So—”

“So you decided to take off on a fool’s errand? You’re going to drive 700-odd miles to ask if anyone at this juice stand knows Joel Ashland?” She scoffed.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Well, a guy named Bell invented this thing called the telephone. You’re using it now.”

He gave an easy laugh. “You have a point, but it seemed important that I go in person. I can’t explain it other than it’s a strong feeling. An intuition.”

Felicia went quiet for a long moment, remembering that her gut feeling had led her to call Bodhi.

“Okay, I get that,” she finally said in a grudging voice. “But you shouldn’t just run off by yourself. Let me go into the station and start an official investigation into Joel’s disappearance. I can probably get myself assigned to lead it. We’ll head up to Oyster Point together this afternoon once I have a team in place.”

“Too late. I’ve been on the road for ninety minutes already. I’m almost out of the Keys.”

“I don’t like you running off on your own. It’s not safe,” she groused.

“Look,” he said completely reasonably. “It’s probably a wild goose chase. Using police resources to run down a long-shot lead like this is a sure way to get your investigation shut down before it even starts.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“True,” she conceded.

“And I need you to do something there. Can you pull highway camera footage on the route from Oyster Point to Sugarloaf Key for the weekend?”

“The entire route for the entire weekend? Not a chance. If you’re worried about wasting law enforcement resources, that would be a huge expense. Why?”

He hesitated.

“Bodhi?”