What Was Left Behind

Chapter 1: The First Missing Piece

Maia Lockhart woke to the sound of the coffee maker bubbling in the corner of her small apartment kitchen. The sun barely cut through the thin curtains, leaving the room in an early morning haze. She lay in bed for a few more minutes, staring at the ceiling, unwilling to face the day.

Ten days. Ten days since Camilla had disappeared without a trace. The police had all but given up, treating it like any other runaway case, but that explanation didn't sit right with Maia. The same words circled her mind every day: She wouldn't just leave. Not without telling me.

With a sigh, Maia swung her legs over the side of the bed, her feet finding the cold floor. Her body felt heavy, weighed down by too many restless nights and too many thoughts she couldn't shake. She stretched, her muscles aching from hours spent hunched over her laptop in the dark, scouring news articles, police reports, and any scrap of information she could find.

Camilla's smiling face flickered in her mind again—the way she'd laughed, the easy way she'd lit up a room. Maia had never known anyone quite like her. She wasn't someone who just vanished.

The smell of coffee beckoned her from the kitchen, and Maia followed the scent, filling a cup and letting the heat warm her hands. As she sipped, her phone buzzed. A message from her mother.

"Have you heard anything? Please be careful, Maia."

She stared at the screen for a moment, contemplating a reply, then placed the phone face down on the counter. Her mother was always careful with her words, always worried but never quite willing to ask the real questions. She hadn't mentioned Camilla much since she disappeared, and when she did, it was always in passing, like something delicate she didn't want to break.

It wasn't new. Her family had always been like that, skirting around the ugly parts of life, never confronting them directly. It's how they had dealt with her father's death, after all. Maia still remembered the way her mother's voice had cracked when she told her about the heart attack, as if she wasn't entirely sure that was the truth herself. But nothing was ever mentioned again. Just like everything else in the Lockhart family, it was buried.

The knock at the door jolted Maia from her thoughts. She wasn't expecting anyone, and that made her uneasy. Pulling her robe tighter around her, she opened the door to find Karen, her next-door neighbor, standing there, her face full of concern.

"Morning, Maia," Karen said, her voice too soft, too sympathetic. "I was just wondering if you'd heard anything about Camilla."

Maia tensed. This was the fourth time Karen had come over in the past week. Everyone in Hillstone was whispering about Camilla, but Maia was growing tired of their prying. They didn't actually care—they just wanted something to talk about over their coffee and donuts.

"No," Maia said, keeping her tone as flat as possible. "I haven't."

Karen shifted uncomfortably, her hands twisting in front of her. "I just... I've been thinking about her. It's terrible, isn't it? A young girl like that, just... gone."

"I'm doing what I can to find her," Maia replied, inching the door closed. "If I hear anything, I'll let you know."

Karen opened her mouth to say something more, but Maia didn't give her the chance. She shut the door firmly, the click of the lock echoing in the quiet apartment. Leaning against the door, she exhaled slowly, trying to push down the frustration that was rising in her chest. People in this town always liked to know everything, but no one ever wanted to help.

She glanced back at the kitchen table, where her laptop sat open to the same page she had been staring at for hours the night before. A map of Hillstone, with pins stuck in key locations—places the police had already searched, places they hadn't bothered with, places that no one else had thought to look. She had circled the last known location of each of the missing girls—Camilla, and others before her. Black Creek, the abandoned psychiatric facility, and other shadowy corners of the town.

The map was starting to feel like an obsession, but Maia couldn't stop. Something connected them all. She could feel it. There had to be more to it than a string of runaways or accidents.

She took another sip of coffee and ran her fingers through her hair, trying to force herself to focus. The police weren't going to help. That much was clear. So it was up to her. She had to figure this out, piece by piece.

Her phone buzzed again, but this time it wasn't her mother. A familiar name flashed across the screen—Detective Ross. He had been assigned to Camilla's case, though his interest seemed to fade after the first few days. Still, he had promised to keep her updated.

"Lockhart," his voice crackled through the speaker when she answered, "just letting you know we haven't found anything new. We're scaling back the search."

Maia clenched her jaw, the frustration bubbling up again. "You can't just give up."

"I'm not giving up," Ross said, his voice calm but firm. "But we've combed through every lead. Nothing's turning up."

"Then you're looking in the wrong places," Maia shot back. "What about the old psychiatric facility? No one's even been near it. Camilla hated that place, but she mentioned it once."

There was a pause on the other end, then Ross's voice came back, resigned. "It's been abandoned for years, Lockhart. There's nothing out there but dust and rats."

Maia bit her lip, holding back the retort she wanted to throw at him. He wasn't going to listen. The police were done, and Ross was no exception.

"I'll look into it," he added after a beat, though Maia knew it was just to placate her. The line went dead, leaving Maia staring at the phone in her hand, her pulse quickening.

She glanced back at the map. Black Creek and the facility. They were the missing pieces, the ones everyone else was ignoring. She wasn't going to let it go. Not now.

She grabbed her keys, slung her jacket over her shoulder, and walked out the door. If no one else was going to search for Camilla, then she would do it herself.

As she stepped outside, the chill in the air bit at her skin, but Maia barely noticed. Her mind was already elsewhere, her thoughts circling back to the past. The nights her father had stayed late at the facility, the closed-door meetings he'd had with men she didn't know. The way her mother had avoided the subject, her voice tight with worry, but never asking questions.

Maia had learned not to ask questions, either.

But that time was over.

As she made her way down the street, the old facility loomed in the distance, its crumbling structure barely visible through the mist. Answers were there, somewhere in that decaying building. And Maia was finally ready to find them.