“She was found a month later. Alive. And that’s it. No follow-up. No interviews. One local paper gave it two inches of coverage, buried on page six.”
Duke leaned in, eyes narrowing as he read.
Then she scrolled down.
To the image.
Duke stilled.
“Tell me you see it,” Andi said.
He did. Andi could tell by the way Duke’s jaw tightened, by the way his focus sharpened to a point.
“She looks like Pam,” he murmured.
“Fake Pam. Or at least who she’s pretending to be.”
Her heart hammered as the implications cascaded through her mind—anger, fear, resolve tangling together. “What if this woman didn’t disappear? What if she wastaken—and no one cared enough to notice?”
Duke straightened slowly, his expression darkening.
“And what if,” Andi continued, her voice steady now, “she wants to teach other people a lesson? Let them know how it feels to be ignored? Maybe that’s why we were warned not to make these disappearances public?”
The room went quiet.
Heavy.
Duke met her gaze, something grim and resolute settling into his eyes. “I think you’re onto something.”
Duke stared at the image on Andi’s screen longer than he needed to.
Not because he didn’t understand it, but because he did.
Six months. One story buried so deeply it might as well not have existed. A woman taken, then returned to the world quietly, as if her disappearance had been an inconvenience rather than a crime.
And Andi had found her.
“Good work.” His words felt inadequate, but Andi seemed to understand what he meant anyway.
They didn’t waste time.
Within minutes, Duke had sent the message to the group. A simple directive.
Conference room. Now.
No explanations. No qualifiers.
The team gathered quickly.
Duke stood near the window, back to the glass, eyes moving automatically as he spoke. “Andi found something.”
He nodded to her, and Andi took over, laying out the timeline. The missing woman. The lack of coverage. The eventual recovery. The photo.
When she finished, the room felt tighter.
Mariella looked sick. “She looks just like Fake Pam.”
“SheisFake Pam,” Duke said. “Or close enough that it’s intentional.”
