Page 29 of Simon Says

“She didn’t have anything with her but the clothes she was wearing,” he said. “Everything else was left behind. I kept all of it, but this is what I have with me.” He put Sorcha’s driver’s license in Rosie’s hand.

“Wow,” Rosie said, looking at the ID. “If she looks this good on a driver’s license, she must’ve been drop dead cute.”

Simon smiled. “She was. I also have this. I didn’t know her long enough to know for sure that this was her handwriting. Just a guess. Maybe she wrote it. I don’t know.”

Simon handed over a small piece of paper, high cloth content vellum, tattered around the edges, the ink faded away to nothing in places. It was a short poem.

Whispers that haunt like a mystery

Romancing the treasures of history.

Pan’s flute calls from mist or abyss

And lingers like the taste of a lover’s kiss.

Rosie read it quickly. “Pretty. What does it mean?”

Simon shook his head. “I never got the chance to ask. The passion of a scholar’s curiosity I think. The point is that it meant something to her or she wouldn’t have kept it.” Rosie was hoping the poem didn’t lead them to an ex-lover of Sorcha’s, but of course she didn’t say so. “Will these work?”

“Think so. Here goes.”

“Wait!” Simon almost shouted.

“What?” Rosie asked. Simon looked perplexed. And uncertain. “What?” she repeated.

“I just… I don’t know.” He looked away.

Rosie’s tone softened. “You’re scared about what we might find.”

He nodded slightly. “Perhaps.”

“Understandable. You want to get a hotel room? Take a night to get prepared?”

Simon’s spine straightened almost immediately and his expression turned resolute. “Of course not. That would be…”

“Human?”

“I was about to say ‘silly’.”

“Your call. We won’t think less of you either way.”

“I’ve waited a long time. I’m ready.” He looked down at his watch. It was seven.

“I have an idea,” Rosie said, glancing at Deliverance, who’d been shockingly silent during the entire exchange with Simon. “Why don’t you take our table and grab some dinner while we go have a preliminary look?”

“A scouting mission?”

“Sure,” she nodded agreeably. “We’ll come back here and report even if we don’t find anything. Within an hour. How’s that?”

His stomach rumbled as if on cue. “Well, I don’t see why not. No longer than an hour though.”

“Good plan. See you soon.”

Holding the license and the poem in her hand, Rosie closed her eyes. Her mother had taught her some of the tricks of psychic tracking. Rosie had taken those techniques and added the talents her special pedigree had bestowed. The result was that she was Black Swan’s best tracker. She would never have said that to Simon because she didn’t see herself spending her days as a bloodhound.

Rosie and Deliverance walked inside the eatery and found the hallway to the restrooms. There was no point in causing an unnecessary ruckus by disappearing from a sidewalk.

“You good?” she asked her grandpop.