“I need to use the restroom, and then we’ll talk to the parents.” Bel squeezed her boss’ arm. “Because if it wasn’t a crime of opportunity, they can hopefully point us toward a suspect.” She excused herself, drifting down the hall to the first-floor half-bath, but when she emerged, the sound of utter despair stopped her from returning to the living room. Thehaunted groans begged her to follow their agony, and she obeyed, her feet carrying her across the carpet until she hovered just outside the office door. She watched transfixed by the burly man shrinking in on himself, by the way such power crumbled in its grief, and for a flash of a second, Mr. Triton ceased to exist, a handsome salt-and-pepper-haired gentleman grieving in his place. This had been Reese the night the cursed Eamon had scarred her, the nights her aggressors had landed her in the hospital. This was the ugly side of parenthood. This was the pain Eamon desperately wished to avoid.
Without warning, Mr. Triton’s fist pounded the desk, his voice echoing off the walls until his curses crashed against her, and Bel flinched, her own voice escaping without her permission.
“Detective?” Mr. Triton whirled around.
“I’m sorry.” She pretended not to notice the mountain of a man wiping the tears from his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s my job to keep her safe. I’m her father. I’m supposed to protect her.” The man sagged in on himself. “It’s why we raised her with rules. I know what’s out there. There are bad people in this world, and I’m just trying to keep her safe. She’s my baby girl.”
“I know.” Bel bit back her own tears as she rested a comforting hand on his forearm. “And by all accounts, you did, but Ariella is an adult now. You can’t control everything your grown children do.”
“But she’s not an adult,” he argued. “Not really. She’s still just a child, and it’s my job to protect her. But I didn’t even know she’d left the house. I thought she was in bed.”
“I realize nothing I say will make you feel better,” Bel said, wondering how many of these placating comforts were offered to her father. “But I promise to do everything I can to find her. Wehad a head start as well. Normally, we wouldn’t answer a missing person’s until twenty-four hours, so we’ve entered the search twelve hours early. That’s a good thing.”
Mr. Triton nodded, clearly not believing her.
“Which means I have to ask. Is there anyone you can think of who would hurt your daughter? Do you owe money, or have you noticed anyone hanging around that shouldn’t be?”
“No, I don’t owe anyone money.” Mr. Triton slumped against his desk, the wood groaning under his weight. “And we live in a fairly secluded area. I haven’t seen anyone unusual, but Ariella goes to the community college. I can’t speak to what happens when she’s in class.”
“I’ll check with the school,” Bel said. “But as far as you know, no one in your life is looking for revenge? No one has any reason to take your daughter.”
“No, of course not. Ariella is a good girl, Detective. She gets good grades, loves her family, and spends most of her time with us or her friend, Ondine. They’ve been close for years, so it’s like having a second daughter. I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt my baby girl.” The man’s sobs deepened, and Bel fought the urge to rub the pain from her chest.
“Detective Emerson?” Ondine’s voice interrupted. “Can I show you something?”
“Go.” Mr. Triton nodded his approval. “It’s late, and my wife needs to rest. I should get her to bed.”
“We’ll come get you if we learn anything.” Bel gripped the man’s wrist before following the teen to the living room.
“I had an idea.” Ondine pointed to the family computer sitting in the corner. It was a dinosaur of a machine, but then again, the Tritons didn’t strike Bel as the tech-obsessed types. “I created a private social media group and invited everyone I remembered seeing at the party, asking that they invite their friends as well. I lied about helping the police and said the groupwas to help find my friend, and I enabled the anonymous poster option. People have already started posting photos from last night, and you can use my login to search them. I haven’t found Ariella yet, but maybe someone caught her.”
“May I?” Bel gestured to the chair, and Ondine nodded her permission. “We might not need pictures of her.” She scrolled to the first uploaded photo and enlarged the image of a couple kissing before the bonfire. “Right now, I’m more interested in who’s in the background.”
But as the seemingly endless flood of teenage revelry filled the hours to sting her eyes, only one certainty stood out from the crowd. Hundreds of eyes peered through dozens of screens, the party-goers’ smiles frozen eternally in a single moment, yet despite all their cameras witnessed, no one saw anything.
ONE WEEK LATER
“So if anyone has information pertaining to Ariella Triton, we ask that you call the tip line,” Griffin said as the press conference wound to a close. “We?—”
“Please, we just want our daughter back,” Mrs. Triton interrupted, her puffy eyes and clenched fists pleading with the cameras. “We don’t care who you are. We won’t press charges, but you have to let Ariella go. You have to let her come home. Please… let my baby girl come home.”
Bel left the conference room, terrified that Mrs. Triton’s begging would flay her open for all Bajka’s reporters to witness in HD. They would film her split apart at the seams, and when she was truly destroyed, they would close in for the kill.“It’s been a week; why haven’t you found the girl yet? Why, Bel?You’re the detective. You’re the one everyone thinks is so smart. Why haven’t you found her? Why haven’t you tried harder? You know she’s dead now, right? A nineteen-year-old is dead because you couldn’t find her.”
“Where are you going?” Olivia called after her, but Bel had already fled the station. She was already in her SUV, already driving, already at the lake. She pulled out her phone and accessed the party photos, their images in chronological order thanks to a patient tech, and she scrolled until the bonfire filled her screen. Using the surrounding trees and scorched earth, she settled her feet where she guessed the teen who’d snapped the photo had stood, and then she scanned the sun-drenched surroundings. Somewhere in these woods, someone had been the last person to see Ariella Triton. Someone had witnessed her final moments, yet for a week, the police had chased every lead only to return empty-handed. Ariella had been very real, yet she’d vanished as if she were merely a figment of her family’s imagination, as if she’d passed through the veil and stepped out of existence. How did a girl disappear from such a crowded place without a single person present to witness her fate?
“Emerson?” Griffin’s voice sounded behind her, and she flinched. How long had he been standing there? How long had she been standing here? “Running yourself into the ground won’t bring her back.”
“But there’s something we missed. Something I missed, and there’s a girl all alone out there because of it.”
“Eamon couldn’t find her here,” Griffin said. “What makes you think you can?”
“Because I know.” She met his gaze, the eyes that always made her feel loved and protected. “Because I’m the only one who knows. It’s almost worse when they keep you alive. Death is nothingness, but captivity is endless. If Ariella is alive, I’m theonly one who understands what every second of this past week has felt like, and I can’t walk away.”
“I’m not asking you to, but you can’t kill yourself looking for something that isn’t there,” Griffin said. “Not a single picture from that party gave us a lead. Not one teen from that night came forward with information. Her friends haven’t seen her. Her family hasn’t seen her. Her college campus hasn’t seen her. Nothing on her phone or laptop hinted at what happened. Her parents’ electronics were clean. Ondine and Erik’s were clean. We didn’t find any hidden notes, misplaced money, or unexplained credit card charges. We can’t create evidence out of nothing.”
“But how are we supposed to tell her parents that? How are we supposed to look them in the eyes and tell them we aren’t bringing their daughter home?”
