“So, you’re the conflict of interest police? I’m here, I’ll take over from here while Officer Jones talks to her mother-in-law.” Officer Stone seethed, looking over the shoulder of the mall guard. “I need your supervisor to come speak with me. If he doesn’t find me in the next ten minutes, I will come looking for him myself.”
The mall guard walked away, muttering to himself as Officer Stone walked back towards Shane and her mother-in-law. “Sorry about that Mrs. Jones.”
“Please, call me Sheila, Mrs. Jones is my mother-in-law.” Sheila said, waving her hand in front of her face.
“No problem, Sheila. Can you tell us exactly what happened?”
Sheila sighed as she looked between Shane and her partner, then nodded. “I had taken Tina and her best friend shopping because the two girls have their Jr. proms in two weeks.”
“Shit, that is in two weeks?” Shane asked, looking at her watch like it had all the answers.
Sheila chuckled as she nodded at Shane’s question. “Yes. Both girls were getting into hysterics thinking they would never find everything they needed. We’d been dress hunting for the last two months, but they couldn’t find the dress they wanted. I thought we’d try a couple of other places we hadn’t looked at here in the mall. They managed to finally find their dresses at the last dress shop we visited. Now that we had their dresses, all that was left was finding the accessories and their shoes. We’d made appointments for their hair and nails as soon as we found the dresses. We’d been on the way to the store for their accessories when I had bumped into another woman.”
“Bumped into a woman?” Shane asked confused.
“Yeah, silly me, I had been looking down at my phone when I had gotten a text from Eddie asking me if I wanted him to fix tacos for dinner, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and wound up running into this woman. While I was helping her pick up her packages, Tina and Dakota were standing nearby talking about the kind of shoes they wanted to get for their dresses. Dakota was picking at Tina about how between you, her brother, his team, her father, his team, Wolf and his team and you pulling in Alpha Squad, that her date would be afraid to show up at the house.”
Shane glared at her partner when she heard him chuckle. “What? She’s right, between all of you, that poor boy will probably piss his pants.” Officer Stone said.
“Whatever! What happened then.” Shane asked, ignoring her partner.
“I turned around after helping the woman with her things, apologized for not paying attention to where I was going. Tina nor Dakota were standing behind me. I looked all over the food court here, in several other stores, then went to mall security for assistance. Of course, the mall security guard I wound up with makes Paul Blart seem like Captain America, because he didn’t want to help me. Kept making excuses about teenagers and so forth. I know my daughter, and I know Dakota, they did not run off. Their phones aren’t even picking up and you of all people know how they are about their phone.”
“Mom’s right. Tina is a typical teenager about her phone. She has that thing in her hand 24/7. If it’s off, then someone doesn’t want us tracking them.” Shane said looking over at her partner.
“What do you want to do?” Officer Stone asked, looking out into the crowd.
“Mom, I’m calling Alpha Squad for assistance. I’d rather overreact than wait too long and it be too late. You need to call dad to let him know what’s going on. Have him bring his team in to help search.”
“You do realize this place will be swarming with every available Navy SEAL if I call Eddie, right?” Sheila asked, nervously reminding her daughter-in-law.
“It’s ok, mom, I’d rather they be here helping us in the search than we miss something because we assumed it was already searched. Dad can also help if there’s a ransom demand call as well.” Shane said, calmly and firmly.
“Okay, don’t go too far, please?” Sheila asked, looking defeated.
“Never! I’m right here. I promise.” Shane promised as she sat two tables away to make her own phone call.
“Riverton County Sheriff’s Department. This is Detective Pratt. How may I help you?” Laura ‘Red’ Pratt said, answering her desk phone.
“Hey Red, it’s Shane, do you have a moment?”
“Hey little sis, sure what’s up? Everything ok?” Pratt asked, sitting forward, elbows on her desk.
“How soon can you and the team get to the mall?” Shane asked, sighing heavily.
“Outlet, Westend, Northside or Military?” Pratt asked, waiving at Taz, signaling her to get the rest of the team.
“Northside. Sheila was here with Tina and her best friend Dakota shopping for their prom dresses and accessories.” Shane went on to explain what she knew about the incident from Sheila’s statements.
“Did she try their phone?” Pratt asked, jotting down notes.
“Yeah, both phones went straight to voicemail. Tina never turns her phone off. Sheila even went to several of the stores the girls had been talking about while they were walking, had them paged and even checked the food court several times between each search, they haven’t been found.” Shane said, looking around at each person walking around.
“Mall security?”
“Stupid as all get out. They tried to tell mom it was just teenage rebellion wanting to get away from the parent scenario.” Shane said, replaying the comments over in her head.
“Shit! Have you alerted the guys yet?” Pratt asked standing up as the team and their Captain surrounded her desk.
