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had told him. He wasn’t supposed to go for another run until he received authorization, but he wasn’t planning to wait. As soon as they were done here, he was mounting his own personal search party for Taylor March. The sooner Taylor was found, the sooner he could get back to his Lost One.
    “Something else,” Jack said. “When I was there I saw a uniform on her bed. It had a patch.”
    Zeke looked up, all business. “Describe it.”
    “I only saw the shirt. Khaki. Cotton. Short-sleeved. Crisply tailored.”
    “What did the patch say?”
    “It had one, no two lines of text. I couldn’t read the words, but it had this picture on it of a bird. A seagull, I think.”
    “A seagull. You’re sure? In flight?” Zeke asked. “Did it look like that cliché V-shaped image of a bird you see on tourist junk around here? You know Sunday painters and their seascapes with seagulls flying against a sunset?”
    “No. The bird wasn’t flying. It was just standing there. The gull body, two legs.”
    “Like you’d see if it was wading along the shoreline.”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re sure it was a gull, not some other water bird? A plover, sandpiper, grebe?”
    “It was a bird. Grey-suited Nazis were abducting my Lost One from right under my watch.”
    “Okay.”
    “You think I had time–”
    “Okay.”
    “–to reach for an Audubon field guide?”
    “Okay, Jack.” Zeke put up a hand to forestall any more of Jack’s exhausted tirade. “I hear you. It was a bird. I can work with that.”
    Jack saw him open up a new screen on his tablet.
    “What shape was the patch? Square? Rectangular? Circular?”
    “Rectangular,” Jack said. “Vertical, not horizontal.”
    “Sides straight or bowed outward?”
    “Bowed.”
    “Background color?”
    “White.”
    “You said two lines of text. Above or below the bird, or both?” Zeke asked.
    “Above and below. One line of text above and one under the bird.”
    “Good. We’re getting somewhere.”
    As Jack watched, the patch came into being on the tablet. Zeke’s fingers flew over the device, deft and sure.
    “Printed or embroidered?’
    Jack thought about it. They’d ventured into the more hazy parts of his memory.
    “Printed. No, embroidered,” he answered.
    “Color? Or colors?”
    “Just one. Blue.” Jack searched the dining room for something in a comparable hue. “Like that.” He pointed at a cutesy tschotske of a lighthouse sitting on the fireplace mantel in the dining room.
    “Periwinkle,” Zeke said.
    “Whatever,” Jack said. “That’s all I remember.”
    “Any way you can narrow down a geographical range for me?”
    “Western hemisphere.”
    “Gee, that’s specific.”
    “It’s all you’re going to get.”
    “The patch could be from anywhere with a coastline,” Zeke said. “Anything. Local fish and wildlife, some rinky-dink police department, marine organization. For all we know the patch might belong to a private contracting service with the word seagull in its name.”
    “She didn’t strike me as the HVAC repairwoman type, Zeke.”
    Zeke toggled back to his original screen with the Lost One’s sketch. “Yeah. I’ll grant you that. This her?”
    Another swipe of the artist’s finger and the drawing on Jack’s laptop refreshed itself.
    Jack let out a heavy breath. That face. The tortured girl whose eyes he knew. The one he would not abandon if it were his last act as a finder.
    “That’s her,” he said. “Or close enough.”
    Getting up from the table, he tossed down several bills to cover the meal and tip.
    “Thanks.”
    It was time to get back and do his job.
    Five minutes later, Zeke completed some refinements on the sketch and forwarded it via email. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
    “We’re done here,” he reported.
    “How’d it go?”
    “We got a good sketch. Best he’s ever given me. Plus, he remembered a solid detail that should help us find her.”
    “I’m sensing a ‘but.’ ”
    “He’s wound