Everything frozen in time.
The kitchen is worse.
I open the fridge, and the smell hits me immediately. Spoiled milk, rotting produce, leftovers growing mold in take-out containers. I check the dates on everything, the milk expired five days ago. The yogurt, six days. A half-eaten burrito in a to-go container has a receipt stapled to the bag: Sunday, 9:47 PM.
The night of her last shift.
She came home. She ate. And then...
What?
I close the fridge and lean against the counter, trying to breathe through the panic clawing up my throat. The dead plants. The spoiled food. The unmade bed. It all points to the same thing: Laurie hasn't been here in at least a week. She didn't quit her job. She didn't ghost me. She didn't decide Vegas wasn't for her and run home.
Something happened to her.
I slide down to sit on the kitchen floor, knees pulled to my chest, and let myself fall apart for exactly sixty seconds. That's all I can afford. Sixty seconds of gasping sobs and terror and the overwhelming wrongness of being in this apartment without her.
We've never been apart for more than a few days. Never. Even when she moved here ahead of me, we texted constantly.Morning coffee photos. Outfit checks. Random memes.Goodnight, love you.
Seven days of silence, of my twin being gone, and I felt it. Iknewsomething was wrong, but I let my boss convince me I was overreacting. I let the police tell me to wait. I wasted so much time.
My phone buzzes.
I scramble to check it, hope flaring so bright it hurts. But it's not Laurie. It's Madison.
Hey, wanted to make sure you're okay. Also realized I wasn't clear earlier. We were PLANNING to go to Vine and Crimson but changed our minds last minute. Ended up at the club inside the Korolyov instead. Laurie left before we changed our minds. Don't know if that helps. Sorry I didn't remember sooner.
I read it three times.
Vine and Crimson. They wereplanningto go there. Laurie knew about it. What if she changed her mind about going? What if she decided to meet them there after all but they'd not told her about the change in plans? What if she went looking for them?
My breath whooshes out of me.
I push myself up off the floor and wipe my face. No more crying. No more falling apart. Laurie needs me to be smart and strong.
I take photos of everything. The dead plants, the spoiled food, the receipt from Sunday night. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all evidence. Then I walk through the apartment one more time, looking for anything else that might help.
In Laurie's bedroom, I find her laptop on the desk. Dead battery. I plug it in and wait for it to boot up, rifling through her drawers while the screen loads. Clothes. Jewelry. A journalI don't read because even now, even terrified, I respect her privacy.
The laptop comes to life. Password protected.
I try our birthday. Wrong.
I try her middle name. Wrong.
I try the name of our childhood dog. The screen unlocks.
Her browser history shows the last thing she looked at before she disappeared. I scan through it quickly, social media, a blog she follows, a few shopping sites. Then I see it: a Google search from Sunday night at 10:23 PM.
Vine and Crimson, Las Vegas, reviews
She was researching the bar. Thinking about going. Maybe trying to decide if it was worth it, or if she should just stay home like she'd told Madison.
I keep scrolling. More searches earlier in the week show she was getting used to the area. Nothing unusual. Normal searches for someone new to the city.
I screenshot everything and email it to myself. Then I close the laptop and look around the room one more time. There has to be something else. Some clue about what happened, where she went, who took her…
My phone buzzes again. Unknown number.
