“What’s the SOS, Atlas?”
Before I respond to him I throw the mask back in place. I wasn’t about to show my cards to anyone, not even Gavin, until I figured out what really happened. He didn’t know about her and I didn’t think now was the time to tell him everything.
“We have a high priority job. Missing persons case and it hasn’t been long enough for the police to step in, so they hired us.”
“Okay, what do we know?”
“Target’s name is Maizyn Lewis, 26 year old female. The last known location was Lucky’s Sports Bar some time between 11pm and 2am. There was a tracker placed on her phone, but it is currently disabled.”
It’s possible, with a little bit of work, I could ping the last location butit’ll take time.”
He studied me for a few seconds before responding, “start trying to locate the last ping on the cell phone, I’ll start on the cameras and see if we can find something.”
I nod my head at him as I turn towards my screens and begin typing. It didn’t take long for Gavin to hack into the CCTV cameras near Lucky’s.
“Can you give me a description so I know what I’m looking for?”
“Shit, yeah my bad, long wavy brown hair. Last known wearing blue jeans and black shirt. She should’ve been driving a black Altima.”
It takes a few more minutes before he spins his laptop to face me. “Is this her?”
I turn to see the recording of her getting out of her car and storming into the bar.
“What’s the time stamp?” It takes everything in me to keep my emotions in check. I force my voice to stay monotone but it comes out sounding so detached, I barely recognize it.
“11:48pm.”
I scribbled that down on the notepad next to me. “Okay, watch and see if you can find what time she left the bar.”
“Gotcha.” Even though his response was quiet, it was measured, clearlydepicting how focused he is on the task at hand.
I lose track of time trying to ping the cell phone location, when Gavin finally speaks up. “Uh. She leaves at 1:16 AM, but you might want to see this.”
I glance at his screen and see her stumble her way towards her car. She is so drunk, she can barely stand up straight. She is definitely too drunk to drive.
Fuck.
Panic arises in my chest as I remember that voicemail, but I shove it back down. Now is not the time to lose my shit.
“Call Kyle and have him put an APB on her car. I should have the last known cell phone location in a few minutes.”
As soon as the screen pings the coordinates, I send them to Gavin, and we rush out the door. I’m not familiar with the location so we map it as we climb into my car.
The GPS led us to the side of the road, ten minutes from the bar, but we didn’t find her or her car. There was nothing here. It was deserted. Even though we don’t see anything, this is still the last known location of her phone. We pull over and start looking around until I spot it, her phone shattered to pieces in the middle of the road. I step closer to the phone, but I already know it’s useless. The phone won’t give us anything in this condition. I pick it up, putting it in my pocket anyway.
So much for a tracker.
Feeling defeated, we climb back into the car and start heading back towards the office when Gavin’s phone pings. He glances at me, looks back at the phone, before his eyes lock on me again.
“Spit it out already. What’s the text about?”
“It’s from Kyle. They found the car. It’s about twenty-five minutes from here. How she got that far, that drunk, I have no idea, but do you want to check it out now?”
“Yeah, the faster the better, which way?”
He points behind us, so I pull an illegal U-turn and continue in that direction. The further we drove, the more anxious I got. The sound of metal crushing replayed in my head as I imagined what I was going to see when we arrived.
My heart beat sped up as her car came into view. It was definitely in a ditch, but didn’t look as bad as I thought it would, considering what I heard. I jump out of the vehicle and rush to her car as soon as I put mine in park.
