33

You aren’t lost until someone is trying to find you. And no one was looking for Emily Bell.

Beto and Riddle went inside the Binghams’ house and discovered dirty dishes, empty alcohol bottles, and the upstairs drawers ransacked.

Jared, having a complete meltdown, waited outside.

The three boys then ran home, half out of their minds, and called Jared’s parents, who called the police.

What followed was a police investigation.

The officers assumed that it would be difficult to determine what had been taken, but then Riddle sat down and started to draw precise pictures of everything that had been downstairs.

Beto and Jared looked over his shoulder as the pencil began to outline the kitchen. “You’re like some kind of computer. How can you do that?” Beto was shocked. Riddle only continued to work on his detailed depiction of each room.

Suddenly it didn’t matter as much that the Binghams couldn’t be reached.

Debbie and Tim Bell both left work and came right home after receiving Jared’s call. Debbie was worried that Riddle would be traumatized, but he appeared to be handling it better than anyone. He at least had a job to do. Everyone else could only huddle together and speculate.

It took an hour for the forensics expert to come and dust for fingerprints. But mostly what the guy thought he was getting were prints from the three boys.

It was assumed that Emily was at work at the Orange Tree, and Debbie, not wanting to add to the chaos, didn’t alert her to any problem. And Sam had summer-school class, so they would both hear about the break-in at the end of the day.

During the course of the morning, Sam left Emily two messages on her cell phone and sent four texts and hadn’t heard back.

That was strange, but he was feeling strange, so it didn’t register that anything was really wrong with her.

Everything that was wrong was with him.

But when he got out of his morning class and she didn’t answer her phone and still hadn’t returned his text messages, a new feeling took hold.

Panic.

Sam phoned the Orange Tree and got a recorded greeting.

So he got into his car and headed straight over to the shop.

Robb Ellis was standing on the sidewalk in front of Ferdinand’s. He looked lost.

Sam pulled into a parking space and could see right away that the Orange Tree was closed. His gaze shifted to Robb, who didn’t look happy. He made his way over to Sam’s car. He leaned down and spoke through the open window.

“What’s up?”

Sam was wondering the same thing. “I’m looking for Emily.”

Robb nodded. “I’m looking for my car.”

“Where’s Destiny?”

“I’m not sure. She’s not at work. I know that much.”

They both were silent for what seemed like too long. Robb found himself thinking that if they were girls, a lot more information would have been exchanged.

Finally Sam asked, “Destiny doesn’t answer her cell phone?”

Robb just shrugged. “She doesn’t have one.”

Sam nodded as if that were normal.

For seventeen years of his life, that was the case, but now that he’d been mainstreamed, rehabilitated, and brought into another world, the idea of not having a phone that you carried at all times seemed strange.

Sam finally offered up: “Emily isn’t answering her phone. I haven’t heard from her all morning, actually.”

Now Robb nodded like that was normal, when he felt certain that it wasn’t. He and Emily weren’t even very friendly anymore, and she returned his calls right away. That’s the kind of person she was.

Robb leaned back on his heels and decided to just come out with it. “We both had the day off from the restaurant. I slept in late, and when I woke up, Destiny and my car were gone.”

Sam let this sink in.

He knew that Destiny was living in the motel. He’d dropped her there the night before.

A horrible feeling now gnawed hard in his gut.

He hadn’t thought about Robb Ellis staying at the motel with Destiny, not that it mattered and not that it surprised him.

Did Robb know anything about what happened yesterday?

He didn’t seem to. His sense of defeat looked completely unrelated to Sam, who finally said:

“Did she leave a note or anything?”

Robb sighed. “No. But all her clothes and her personal crap are in the motel. I sat around waiting for her for an hour. And then I walked over here, because I thought maybe she’d gone to the restaurant or something. But they haven’t seen her.”

Sam felt his heart race. He had to ask. “Do you think they’re together?”

Robb gave it some thought. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

Sam’s mind went over the facts.

Two girls were missing.

Two girls who knew each other but didn’t have much of a connection.

Unless you counted him as the connection.

And that was a sickening thought.

Destiny was messed up. Was it possible she’d done something to Emily? Would she try to hurt her?

Sam motioned to the passenger door. “Get in.”

Clarence Border’s name was in the news in Northern California, and his photo and a description were circulated to all agencies of law enforcement.

But Dennis Hauck, who was in charge of the First Alert program, fell down a flight of stairs on the afternoon that Clarence went missing from the Merced Medical Center bathroom.

Dennis was the California liaison to the other Pacific Northwest states. It was his job to make sure that interested parties were notified immediately when something like this happened.

Dennis fractured his ankle and spent two days away from his desk. Tammy Tolin was placed in charge while Dennis was out, and she flagged Clarence Border on her computer.

But when Dennis returned, his desktop files didn’t sync properly with what Tammy had used. Dennis had received an alert to upgrade his browser, but he had failed to do so.

And all of that meant he didn’t see Tammy’s notice. She assumed that he’d sent out electronic alerts to the Bell family in Oregon and that he’d also spoken to their local police department.

But that wasn’t the case.

Dennis Hauck dropped the ball on four cases when his ankle failed him.

Only one of them mattered.