Chapter 9
I tried to run after Madison.
Dad caught my arm.
“No.”
“She’s gone!”
“That’s why you stay here.”
Daniel and two security officers moved toward backstage.
Police entered from both exits.
I could hear shouting.
Doors slamming.
Someone yelled that the west corridor was clear.
My pulse pounded so hard my vision blurred.
“This was a setup.”
Dad looked toward the stage.
“Maybe not hers.”
Claire stood beside us.
Her face was pale.
“Power doesn’t fail in one building by accident.”
A police officer approached.
“We found an exterior door open.”
“Madison?” I asked.
“No sign yet.”
Dad called Richard.
Straight to voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
He looked at Claire.
“Try his corporate line.”
She did.
Disconnected.
Dad’s expression became colder.
“His access was frozen. He knows.”
I stared at the empty aisle where Madison had been standing.
“What if someone took her?”
Nobody answered.
Then my phone rang.
Madison.
I answered immediately.
“Madison?”
Heavy breathing.
“Avery.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m outside.”
Dad reached for the phone.
I put it on speaker.
“Where outside?”
“I don’t know. Service road.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
She sounded like she was running.
“Someone came through backstage.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Come toward the main building.”
“No.”
“Madison—”
“They’ll see me.”
“Who?”
She was crying.
“I don’t know who I can trust.”
Dad spoke.
“You can trust the police.”
She went silent.
Then she whispered, “My dad said that too.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“Last night.”
Richard had spoken to her.
“What did he say?”
“He said if anything happened, I should go to the police.”
“Then do it.”
“No.”
Her breathing quickened.
“Because he also said not all of them.”
Dad’s face changed.
“What did Richard know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Madison, listen to me,” Dad said. “Tell us exactly where you are.”
Silence.
Then a metal clang.
She gasped.
“Avery.”
“What?”
“If I don’t make it—”
“Stop.”
“The drive is in my locker.”
Dad looked toward Daniel.
“Which locker?”
“B-fourteen.”
Daniel immediately relayed it.
Madison continued.
“Inside the back panel.”
“Come back.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
Her voice became tiny.
“Someone’s here.”
Then I heard a man.
Too muffled to recognize.
Madison screamed.
The call ended.
I stared at the screen.
Dad grabbed my shoulders.
“Avery.”
“We have to find her.”
“We will.”
“You heard her!”
“So did twenty police officers.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I looked toward the hallway.
“My locker is near hers.”
Dad knew what I was thinking.
“No.”
“The flash drive—”
“Police will retrieve it.”
“What if whoever took her is trying to get it?”
“Then they will encounter police.”
Claire stepped between us.
“Ethan, take Avery outside.”
I turned.
“No.”
“Avery.”
Aunt Claire’s expression was firm.
“You are involved emotionally. That makes you useful as a witness and terrible as an investigator.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Dad looked ready to argue again.
Then an officer shouted from the corridor.
“Found her!”
I ran before anyone stopped me.
Madison was crouched near a service stairwell.
Alive.
A female officer wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
I stopped several feet away.
“Madison.”
She looked up.
Then ran to me.
Her arms wrapped around my body.
I froze.
This was the girl who had dumped noodles over my head twenty-four hours earlier.
Now she was shaking against me.
“He tried to grab me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see his face?”
“Mask.”
Dad arrived.
“Was he wearing anything identifiable?”
Madison pulled away.
“A security uniform.”
My stomach tightened.
“Westbridge?”
“No.”
She looked toward Claire.
“Gray shirt. Black shield logo.”
Claire whispered, “Ward Strategic.”
Sienna’s father.
Police exchanged looks.
Dad called Daniel.
“Lock down Oliver Ward’s access to every Harrison property.”
Daniel answered through the radio.
“Already underway.”
An officer approached Madison.
“We need you to come with us.”
She panicked.
“No.”
“You’re not under arrest.”
“No!”
Her reaction was immediate and raw.
Richard had terrified her about police.
I took her hand.
“I’ll come.”
Dad looked at me.
I expected another no.
Instead, he nodded.
The officer led us toward the administration building.
On the way, we passed Madison’s locker.
Two investigators were photographing it.
Daniel removed the back panel.
Inside was a black flash drive wrapped in plastic.
Madison stopped.
“That’s it.”
Dad stared.
“Maya’s drive.”
She nodded.
Forensic technicians bagged it.
I felt hopeful for exactly ten seconds.
Then Daniel noticed something.
“What?”
Dad asked.
Daniel held the bag toward the light.
“The casing is cracked.”
Madison frowned.
“It wasn’t.”
“Could be age.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“I checked it last week.”
I stared at her.
“You checked it?”
“I got scared after Maya’s missing-person poster got shared online again.”
“What’s on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never opened it?”
“My laptop wouldn’t read it.”
Daniel looked closer.
“This device has been physically damaged.”
Dad’s jaw tightened.
“When?”
Madison looked around.
Then her face changed.
“What?”
I asked.
“My locker.”
“What about it?”
“The combination.”
She stared toward the office.
“Only three people knew it.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
She swallowed.
“Chloe.”
“And?”
“Sienna.”
I thought of Sienna trying to leave yesterday.
Her panic.
Her claim that she’d been told what to say.
“Which one would damage it?”
Madison started crying again.
“I don’t know.”
A voice behind us answered.
“I do.”
We turned.
Sienna stood at the end of the hallway.
Her father, Oliver Ward, stood beside her.
Two police officers were with them.
Oliver looked calm.
Too calm.
Sienna looked destroyed.
She stared at Madison.
“I broke it.”
Madison stepped forward.
“You what?”
“I broke the drive.”
“Why?”
Sienna looked at her father.
Oliver said nothing.
That told me enough.
Sienna’s voice shook.
“Because my dad told me Maya’s video would send all our parents to prison.”
Oliver’s expression hardened.
“Sienna.”
She began crying.
“You said it was only about money.”
Every officer in the hallway went still.
Oliver’s face lost color.
Sienna looked toward me.
May you like
Then she said the words that turned the entire investigation darker.
“He said nobody was supposed to find out what happened the night Maya disappeared.”
