“Hopefully not.” Bel extended a placating hand. “The police aren’t normally called until a person has been missing for twenty-four hours, so we have a head start. We’re just trying to utilize it to our advantage. I don’t want to alarm the Tritons, but if someone was following Ariella, you might have caught them on camera.”
“Um… okay, here are the photos.” Ondine handed her the unlocked cell.
“Did you know anyone else at the party?” Bel asked as she swiped through the few pictures snapped beside the bonfire.
“A few people,” the girl answered.
“Can you contact them?” Bel texted the photos to herself before returning the phone to its owner. “We’re setting up an anonymous tip line. We won’t collect anyone’s names, so your friends won’t have to incriminate themselves, but someone there saw Ariella after you three were separated. If we can track her movements, we might be able to predict where she went.”
“I’ll get a group text going.” Ondine was all fingers as she set herself to the task. “I don’t know everyone who was there, but I’ll put the grapevine to work.”
“Thank you.” Bel patted the teen’s shoulder before rejoining Griffin and the Tritons.
“How could she do this to us? To her mother?” Mr. Triton hissed. “She knows we don’t approve of this behavior…” He paused his rant when he registered Bel’s presence. “And this is why. We love her and don’t want her to get hurt. How could she be so foolish?”
“Do you have any family members she might be with?” Griffin asked, ignoring the man’s outburst. What could he say? Teens almost always tested the boundaries, and their rebellion usually turned out okay… until it didn’t.
“Not close by,” Mrs. Triton said, her grogginess from that morning seemingly lifted. “Most of our immediate family is gone, but we have some distant relatives in other states.”
Bel and Griffin exchanged a sideways glance. Just because a relative lived out of state didn’t mean that Ariella hadn’t hopped on a bus with a cash-purchased ticket.
“Can you give us their contact information?” the sheriff asked. “We’d like to call them to confirm.”
“I mean, sure.” Mrs. Triton shrugged. “We don’t speak to them, though, so I’m not sure why they’d be talking to Ariella.”
“We don’t want to leave any possibility unexplored,” Griffin said.
“Speaking of possibilities, I’m going to head to the bus station.” Bel grabbed her boss’ arm as she whispered in his ear. “Easiest way to disappear if you’re trying to leave everything traceable behind.”
“Keep me posted.”
An hour later,Bel returned defeated. “They let me peek at their security footage,” she spoke in a hushed tone so the Tritons wouldn’t overhear. “No one matching Ariella’s description set foot inside the bus station last night or today.”
“And we got in touch with the extended family,” Griffin said. “No one’s heard from her.”
“I’m worried,” Bel cursed. “It’s approaching midnight, which means Ariella has been gone for twenty-four hours now. I have a sick feeling that we’re dealing with a kidnapping.”
“As much as it terrifies me to say it, me too,” Griffin said. “How else does a teenage girl disappear from the woods so completely?”
“Unless we’re looking at an elaborate escape, she doesn’t,” Bel said. “If people really want to disappear, and they have the patience to plan it, they can seemingly vanish into thin air, but this screams kidnapping to me. If you’re going to run away, why stop at a party first and waste time? Why put yourself in a situation with witnesses and friends who might obstruct your departure? If I were planning to flee my family, I’d save cash until I had enough to sustain me for a while. I would’ve then found false identification and purchased a car with cash from a private seller. No dealerships. No security footage, which is the downside of taking a bus. A cheap vehicle from someone’s backyard, and I would’ve hidden it within walking distance from my house. I would’ve waited for a completely normal day, and when my parents fell asleep, I’d leave everything behind, walk to that car, and drive away without talking to anyone. By the time my parents realized I was missing, I would be states away with no indication of which direction I’d driven in. I wouldn’t havegone to a party with my best friend and boyfriend, gotten drunk, and risked being apprehended by the cops just to run away while under the influence.”
“Not everyone is as smart as you,” Griffin said.
“Someone who knows to leave everything behind knows not to leave witnesses.”
“Unless that was the point. Maybe she wanted to be seen, and she was the one who tipped off the police.”
“So she could slip away in the chaos,” Bel finished for him. “It certainly makes for a confusing disappearance. We’re chasing our tails, and she could be halfway across the country by now. It’s possible, but I don’t like it—too many variables. There’s an outcome where Erik never got separated from her, or he saw her run and decided to chase after her. There was no guarantee of a clean getaway.
“Okay, so our working theory is she was taken. Was she the target or merely an opportunity?”
“I don’t know.” Bel shrugged. “We’ll have to dig into the Tritons more to answer that.”
“What bugs me is our officers were there,” Griffin said. “That’s the last time her friends saw her, so how did Ariella go missing right under our noses?”
“Maybe it was a crime of opportunity,” Bel said. “Our squad cars were there to stop kids from indulging in illegal substances, not hunt for a predator.”
“Our deputies created the perfect storm for someone who knew what kind of chaos to wait for.”
