Pretty Little Liars: 16 & Pregnant (Sequel)

Riddle Me This

Aria's Pov

We rush into the police station, looking around for anyone to help us. A lady sits at the front desk, and by the look on her face I know she can tell how frantic we are.

"Is everything okay?" She asks calmly.

"No," I answer quickly, going over to her desk "M-my daughter. She's missing."

"How long has it been since the last time you saw her?" The woman asks routinely.

"You don't understand," I whimper "She's really missing, I know who took her. W-well I don't exactly know who but—"

"Ma'am," She cuts me off "When was the last time you saw your daughter." Before I can answer, Ezra steps in holding Stella.

"Okay, we know you can't file a missing persons report for 24 hours after the person's last been seen, but we know someone has her." He explains "We're not just being paranoid, we know for a fact that she's been kidnapped." In stressful situations like this, I'm usually the one to break down, while Ezra can almost always continue to think clearly. I know it's partly because he's in shock and it's his way to cope, but I'm still glad one of us can do more than shutdown.

"I understand sir, but I still need to know when she was last seen." The secretary tells Ezra.

"I-I dropped her off at school this morning, and someone picked her from there." He says "I don't know who exactly this person is or where he took my daughter, but this isn't the first time he's been a threat to us."

"I have a text message from him!" I gasp, pulling out my phone with shaky hands. I go to my recent texts and look for the unknown ID, but it's nowhere there. Ezra and the woman look at me expectantly, causing me to panic even more.

"It's gone!" I sob, fresh tears pouring down my face.

"What?!" Ezra says, looking over my shoulder at my phone screen "How?"

"I-I don't know." I whimper, continuing to look for the message thread. But it's as if it never even existed, erased completely from my phone.

"Look, I understand that you're under a lot of stress right now, but can you think of someone who may have picked your daughter up from school early?" The woman at the front desk asks "Or did you maybe ask someone to, but just forgot that you made that plan earlier? Do you have anything going on today that maybe a family member or friend might have—"

"No one was supposed to pick her up today but me!" I interrupt "I got an anonymous text message from someone saying that they had picked my daughter up, and when I went to her school she was already gone."

"Who was this text from?" She asks.

"I don't know, it was anonymous!" I half-shout "But it wasn't the first time I've got a text from them either."

"Okay." The woman sighs "I'll file the report, but since I'm supposed to wait until it's been 24 hours since the person was last seen, we're not gonna have a whole team going crazy looking for her yet. I'm not even supposed to file it." I open my mouth to protest, but Ezra gets to it before I can, shooting me an apologetic glance.

"Thanks." He says dryly, placing his hand on my back and leading me away. Just as we're about to step outside, I hear a familiar voice that causes me to stop in my tracks and quickly turn around.

"Toby!" I gasp, hurrying back into the police station.

"What are you doing here?" He asks, noticing my puffy eyes and the tear stains on my cheeks "Is everything okay?"

"No," I sob "It's Piper. S-she's gone."

"Gone? What do you mean gone?" Toby questions.

"V has her." I choke out, more tears running down my cheeks. His eyes widen, and he turns quickly around to face the woman at the front desk.

"You filed this right Becca?" Toby demands.

She nods "Yes but I think we should wait—"

He cuts her off "This is a missing child, we're not waiting another minute to do anything!"

"Cavanaugh are you not aware of 24 hour rule we have in place?" Becca snaps "I'm not even supposed to file it until then."

"I don't care." Toby replies dryly "I'm chief and what I say goes. I'm not waiting 24 hours to look for my six-year-old niece if I know she's missing right now."

With that, Toby leads Ezra and I from the police station and outside where we can talk more privately. However after only a few seconds, I get a text that only makes things worse.

You're going to wish you hadn't stepped foot in the police station.

-V for Vendetta

~~~

Half an Hour Later

We're not any closer to finding Piper. Sitting at the kitchen table, Ezra and I anxiously watching him, Toby hovers over my phone as he tries to trace where the messages are sent from.

"I've never been good at this!" He huffs impatiently, before diverting his attention back to the phone.

"Well what do we do?!" Ezra asks frantically.

"I can do it, I'm just not good at it." Toby retorts "I-I've been trained how to trace messages and stuff, but I just suck at it!"

"Caleb can do it!" I nearly shout "He's good at that stuff!"

"Well I can do it." Toby says quickly "This is part of my job, I know how to do this."

"Toby this isn't about your ego!" I say "I'm sure you can do it, but Caleb can do it better."

After leaving work, Caleb shows up at our house with his computer in hand. He wastes no time getting to work on trying to figure out where the message was sent from, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he looks back and forth between the phone and computer.

"This bastard's smart." Caleb says under his breath "He has a dynamic IP address."

"What's that mean?" I ask hesitantly.

"That his IP address changes every time he connects to the internet." He replies "It's way harder to track or hack into because it's not constant."

"Of course." I mutter, looking down at Stella asleep on my lap, hoping the calm look on her face will help me feel the same. Unsurprisingly, I still have to resist the strong urge to cry.

Caleb continues to try and track the message, his determinedness never faltering. He only stops when my phone vibrates, looking up nervously.

"You got a text from V." He says hesitantly. I snatch my phone off the table, opening and reading it as quickly as I can. Though it's not very long, the message is enough to leave me completely speechless.

Riddle me this; where has endless summers, famously dances the samba, and is home to a big stone statue?

-V for Vendetta