Chapter 82: Panic.
Mrs. Kenner arrived first, her hands shaking as she pushed through the main doors of Brookside High. She clutched her purse against her chest and her eyes darted around the empty hallway like she expected Liam to walk out of a classroom at any moment. The receptionist directed her to Principal Morris’s office where she found him pacing behind his desk.
"Where is my son?" she asked before he could even address her.
"Mrs. Kenner, please sit down," Morris said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. "We’re going to figure this out."
"Don’t tell me to sit down," she snapped, but she sat anyway. "You called me and said Liam hasn’t been in school for three weeks. Three weeks! How does a student just disappear for three weeks without anyone noticing?"
Morris rubbed his temple where his headache was getting worse. "We’re investigating exactly how this happened. Can you walk me through the last time you saw Liam?"
"That Thursday morning," Mrs. Kenner said, her voice cracking. "He came home from the boarding house to ask permission for the trip. Said it was some cultural program with the Minister of Youth and Culture. He seemed nervous but I thought it was just because he’d never done anything like that before."
"How long was he at your house?"
"Maybe twenty minutes. He packed a bigger bag than I expected for a week long trip but when I asked, he said they might extend it if the program went well. Then he left and I called the school to confirm."
Morris leaned forward. "Tell me about that phone call."
"A lady answered, said she was from the administration office. She confirmed that Liam was approved for the cultural program and that parents had been notified by email. I never got an email but I figured it went to spam."
"Did she give you her name?"
Mrs. Kenner shook her head. "She just said she was with the office. She sounded professional, knew details about the trip. I trusted her."
Before Morris could respond, the door opened and Mrs. Torres stormed in. She was a small woman but her anger filled the entire room.
"Where are they?" she demanded, not bothering with introductions. "You call me and tell me my daughter has been missing for three weeks and you’re just sitting here having meetings?"
"Mrs. Torres," Morris stood up. "Please, we’re trying to get to the bottom of this."
"The bottom of what? Three kids vanish from your school and nobody notices? What kind of operation are you running here?"
Sofia appeared in the doorway holding a stack of files. "The digital records are ready," she said to Morris, then nodded at the parents. "Mrs. Kenner, Mrs. Torres, I’m Sofia Martins, the attendance officer."
"You’re the one who should have caught this," Mrs. Torres said, turning her anger toward Sofia.
"You’re right," Sofia said bluntly. "I should have caught it sooner. But they were smart about covering their tracks."
She spread papers across Morris’s desk. "They hacked into our student portal system. Look at these login records. Someone accessed the admin account three weeks ago and sent confirmation emails about Liam’s fake excursion."
Mrs. Kenner stared at the papers. "You’re saying the woman I spoke to was one of the missing students?"
"Most likely," Sofia said.
Mrs. Torres grabbed one of the papers. "This is insane. You’re telling me teenagers outsmarted your entire administration?"
"Apparently so," Morris said grimly. "Mrs. Torres, can you tell us about the last time you saw Raquel?"
"She showed up at home that Thursday too, said she needed to stay at Mira Koker’s house for a sleepover that would last about a week. I said no because Raquel has a history of pushing boundaries. She got upset and stormed out."
"She left that day?"
"She left that evening. But then I found a note in her room saying she was going to Mira’s anyway and would be back in a week. I was angry so I decided to let her face the consequences when she got home."
Sofia looked up from the papers. "Both kids came home on the same Thursday to get permission or inform you about trips. That’s not a coincidence."
"What about Mira?" Mrs. Kenner asked. "Where are her parents?"
Morris and Sofia exchanged glances. "Mira’s father is Captain Koker," Morris said. "He’s extremely wealthy and travels frequently on business. We spoke to his household staff but they said he’s been unreachable for weeks."
"Unreachable?" Mrs. Torres said. "What does that mean?"
"It means he’s somewhere conducting business and doesn’t want to be disturbed," Sofia said. "According to his assistant, this is normal for him. He can go months without direct contact."
Mrs. Kenner leaned forward. "So nobody’s looking for Mira from her family?"
"Her housekeeper said Mira came home that Thursday with two friends, stayed for the night, then left early the next morning . She thought it was another one of Mira’s impulsive trips with her father’s permission. Apparently Mira has access to her father’s credit accounts for emergencies."
Morris felt his stomach sink. "Which means they could be anywhere. If Mira has unlimited financial resources, they could have flown to another country by now."
"This keeps getting worse," Mrs. Kenner said, starting to cry. "My son is somewhere in the world with unlimited money and no supervision?"
The door opened again and a student peeked in nervously. "Principal Morris? I heard you were asking about Mira Koker and her friends?"
"Come in," Morris said immediately. "What’s your name?"
"Jessica Chen. I’m in Mira’s English class."
"What do you know about Mira and the others?"
Jessica fidgeted with her backpack straps. "The day before they left, I heard Mira talking to someone on the phone in the library. She was being really quiet but I was sitting nearby."
"What did she say?"
"I don’t know if it was a friend or someone else, but she was asking if she could spend the night at the person’s place with two of her friends. She sounded kinda desperate."
Mrs. Torres grabbed Jessica’s arm. "Did she mention Raquel or Liam?"
"I think they were the two friends she was also asking permission for."
"Anything else?" Sofia asked.
"Nothing really, just that she kept checking her phone like she was waiting for important messages."
Morris dismissed Jessica and turned back to the parents.
"So my daughter is nowhere to be found?" Mrs. Torres said. "And we don’t even know what these people she’s with are capable of?"
"We don’t know exactly what’s happening," Morris admitted. "But it’s clear they planned this carefully."
Mrs. Kenner stood up abruptly. "That’s it. I’m calling the police."
"Wait," Morris said, but she was already dialing.
"No more waiting," she said. "My son has been missing for three weeks and you’re telling me he might be involved with dangerous people. I’m not sitting here having meetings while he could be in trouble."
Mrs. Torres nodded. "She’s right. Call the police and I want to hire a private investigator too."
Sofia looked at Morris. "Sir, I think they’re right. This is beyond what we can handle."
Morris felt the weight of the situation crushing down on him. Three students gone, unlimited financial resources, and mentions of strange people. This wasn’t just kids skipping school anymore.
"Fine," he said, reaching for his phone. "I’ll call the police."
As he dialed, Sofia pulled up another screen on her computer. "Sir, there’s something else."
"What now?"
"Someone’s been monitoring our computer system remotely. All those login records we pulled? Someone’s been watching us access them."
The room went silent. Mrs. Kenner stopped pacing and Mrs. Torres looked up from her own phone call.
"What does that mean?" Mrs. Kenner asked.
Sofia’s face was pale. "It means either the missing students are still watching the school’s network, or someone else is keeping track of our investigation."
Mrs. Torres ended her call. "The private investigator can meet us tomorrow morning. But I want to know everything you’ve found out, and I want to know why three teenagers suddenly left your school."
Morris looked around the room at the frightened parents and his overwhelmed attendance officer. "I wish I had those answers," he said. "But I promise you, we’re going to find them."
As the police sirens wailed in the distance, Morris couldn’t shake the feeling that they were already too late. The kids had a three week head start, unlimited money, and apparently very good reasons for staying hidden. Finding them was going to be harder than anyone in that room realized.
"One more thing," Sofia said quietly. "I checked the cameras at the main gate from that Thursday. All three students left together in the middle of the night."
"Could you see beyond the gates?" Morris asked.
"No. But they obviously had help. They can’t have gone far alone at night."
Mrs. Kenner sank back into her chair. "So someone was helping them."
"Or someone was taking them," Mrs. Torres said, voicing what everyone was thinking but nobody wanted to say.