Sister, Missing by Sophie McKenzie

have to make finding Madison the priority right now. Showing Shelby . . . it’s not the right thing to do.’
    ‘Here we go again.’ Jam’s eyes hardened. ‘You always know what the right thing to do is, don’t you, Lauren?’
    ‘That’s not fair. Please , Jam.’
    Jam hesitated, his hand on the door handle.
    At that moment, Shelby appeared. She stared suspiciously at me. ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Have you found anything?’
    Jam was still holding Shelby’s letter in his hand. She hadn’t noticed. All her focus was on me.
    ‘Just a bunch of papers.’ I indicated the pile I’d taken from the bedside drawer earlier. The magazines were still strewn across the bed. The open metal box, now empty, lay on
top.
    Shelby groaned. ‘There’s nothing valuable in this place,’ she said. ‘Maybe Sonia Holtwood was wrong.’
    Jam looked over at me. I could see the struggle in his eyes.
    I offered a silent prayer. Please, Jam .
    With a sigh, Jam slid Shelby’s letter into his jeans pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Maybe Sonia Holtwood was wrong.’
    ‘Which means we have to find another way of getting Madison back.’ I stood up. ‘We’re going to have to track her down ourselves.’
    Shelby and Jam stared at me.
    ‘How?’ Shelby said.
    ‘Where would we start?’ Jam added.
    ‘Well, we know she’s been taken by Sonia Holtwood whose real name is Marcia Burns. And we know the guy who is helping her is Frank, who she worked with two years ago when they took
me and Madison on the boat.’
    ‘How does that help?’ Shelby asked. ‘Knowing who they are doesn’t mean we know where they are.’
    ‘But it means we can describe them,’ I said. ‘When it comes to Sonia, we can easily find pictures if we look online. Maybe there’ll be a photo of Frank from the trial
too.’
    Jam nodded. ‘OK, but who do we ask? Madison just vanished from the beach . . . you said no-one you spoke to had seen her – or seen anyone with her.’
    This was true. I frowned, thinking back to the moments just before Madison had gone missing. I’d been watching her all the way to the ice cream kiosk. I hadn’t taken my eyes off her,
until . . .
    ‘There was a boy.’ My pulse quickened as the memory – and what it meant – fell into place. ‘A boy on the beach. He came up to me just, like, seconds before Madison
disappeared,’ I said.
    ‘So what?’ Shelby said.
    ‘He deliberately distracted me,’ I said, thinking it through and realising it was true. ‘He came right up to me and asked me if I knew some girl called Cassie.’
    ‘Who’s Cassie?’ Shelby asked.
    ‘No-one. That’s the point. I’m sure he was just trying to get my attention, so I wouldn’t notice if someone approached Madison.’
    ‘But why would a random boy on the beach do that?’ Shelby frowned.
    I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘OK.’ Jam rubbed at his forehead. ‘OK, well, we need to track this boy down and find out.’
    ‘How will we track him down?’ Shelby asked. ‘Just because he was on the beach on Monday . . . he could be anywhere now.’
    ‘He was wearing a Boondog Shack T-shirt, so maybe he works there. I saw him later, outside the Boondog,’ I said, remembering. ‘He was chatting to a group of people. He looked
like the sort of person who’d be popular. Someone might remember him there.’
    Jam looked at me sideways. Was he wondering why I’d paid this guy quite so much attention? I blushed, remembering how good-looking the boy had been.
    ‘What’s the Boondog Shack?’ Jam asked.
    ‘It’s a surfer-style café,’ I explained. ‘Near the beach. Teenagers hang out there.’
    Shelby nodded. ‘I went down there every day last week.’
    Really? ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.
    She shrugged. ‘What else was I gonna do? Stay home with Mom? You and Madison were off doing stuff together all the time. I didn’t have much choice.’
    ‘You know, Shelby, if there’s a college that does a degree course in