She hit enter.
Most of what came up was noise—blog speculation, broken links, half-written forum posts. Andi filtered it down, narrowing dates, jurisdictions, keywords that felt familiar now in a way they hadn’t before.
Then she saw it.
A small local paper. No glossy headline. No photo carousel. Just a plain column of text buried halfway down the page.
She clicked.
The story was six months old.
A woman had gone missing. There was only a brief mention. No press conference. No interviews.
The woman had been found a month later—alive, shaken, refusing to speak publicly. The article didn’t even say where she’d been found. Just that authorities had “closed the matter.”
Two inches of coverage.
That was it.
Andi’s pulse quickened as she scrolled.
Then she saw the photo.
Her breath caught.
The victim stared back from the grainy image, unsmiling, her features partially shadowed by poor lighting and cheap ink. But the resemblance was unmistakable. Same narrow face. Same hairline. Same eyes that seemed to be watching rather than posing.
It was Fake Pam.
Andi was sure of it.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
Andi snappedthe laptop shut and jumped to her feet. She crossed the short distance to the door, barely remembering to grab the computer.
She pounded on Duke’s door.
Once. Twice. Harder the third time.
The door flew open.
Duke stood there in a T-shirt and jeans, concern already etched into his face. “Andi? What’s wrong?”
“I think I found her. I think I finally figured it out.”
That was all it took.
He stepped aside. “Come in.”
She rushed past him, setting the laptop on the small desk as her hands shook just enough to irritate her. Duke closed the door behind her, the click sounding louder than it should have.
“Okay,” he said, calm but focused. “Slow down. What did you find?”
Andi flipped the laptop open, fingers flying now as adrenaline sharpened her thoughts instead of scattering them. “Six months ago in Northern California. A woman went missing. No media attention. No real investigation—at least not publicly.”
She pulled up the article.
