A week before their high school graduation, Ellie's boyfriend walked her to her door and kissed her goodnight, just like any other night. But there was nothing ordinary about what followed. Austin disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again...
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"Ellie," Linda called out as she caught up to me. Her dark curls bounced around her round face. We were far from the dinner buffet as I had run clear across the hotel, past the elevators and was near the open staircase that led down to the lobby when she grabbed a hold of my arm. "Damn, girlfriend," she groaned as she bent over to catch her breath. "Did you pick up running on your spare time?"
My chest heaved with ragged breaths. It was quite obvious that sprinting in heels was not my forte.
"What's wrong?" she asked when I didn't respond.
The problem was that I didn't really know how to answer. There was so much that was wrong all of a sudden. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. But Linda wasn't known for her patience.
"What the hell happened?" She demanded, in her normal rushed way. "One second we were talking about the bar and going to get some dinner, and the next you took off like a bat out of hell. Are you gonna be sick?"
Her eyes narrowed, and she dropped my arm like she thought better of it. If I was going to be sick, it probably wasn't the smartest idea to hold on to me.
"No..."
But then if I was gonna be sick, I probably would've run to the bathroom instead of the staircase overlooking the lobby. Normal people didn't want an audience for that kind of thing.
But it wasn't the time to point that out.
Linda straightened up and put her hands on her rounded hips. "Then what are you doing?"
I sighed because I had absolutely no idea what to say or how to explain it. Or even if I wanted to explain it.
"I saw someone..."
Her perfectly arched eyebrow shot up and there was clear amusement to her tone when she asked, "can you elaborate on that? There are a lot of people here."
I stopped scanning the mostly empty lobby and met her crinkled brown eyes. "This guy..."
She started to laugh. "I never pictured you as a girl that would run after a guy, but okay. What about him?"
Normally I would've taken her comment as a compliment, but I was too overwhelmed to focus on anything other than trying to find Austin. Or William. Whatever...
I pushed the hair that had fallen out of the clip I used to hold it back behind my ears and met Linda's curious brown eyes.
"His name tag said William."
"Okay," she drawled. "I assume since you're sprinting all over this hotel that it's important to you to find this, William?"
"Yes," I agreed.
"Okay." She took a deep breath and straitened to her full height, which was still a couple of inches shorter than me, especially since I wore heels. "What does he look like?"
