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Honestly, she was ready to just get it done and over with now. Try to put it all behind her as best as possible and move forward with her life—a life with Tyler.
She slipped over to the bedroom door, opening it just a hint to see if she could hear whoever was at the door to know what to expect next. The voice that floated up to her was honestly one of the last she expected, especially at nearly six a.m. on a Friday morning of their official summer break.
“Hailey, slow down,” Tyler said. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t get hold of Isabelle,” Hailey said, and Justine’s brow rose at the panic in her tone.
“Isn’t she sleeping over at Samantha’s?” he questioned but Justine felt a tension in the air that didn’t sit right at all. She’d learned long ago to trust her instincts when something didn’t feel right, and while it might have failed her once or twice, it’d kept her safe far more often than not.
“That’s what we told Mom and Dad,” Hailey stated, her tone betraying her panicked truth. “I promised I wouldn’t say anything. You know how they are when it comes to boys. She’s been talking with this guy we met on TikTok and with school out now, they thought it’d be a good time to meet up. So she drove over to Vincent to meet up with him, but I haven’t heard from her since the message yesterday afternoon that said she got there safely. She was supposed to text me after she met up with Sean, but I haven’t heard anything and I’m really getting worried about her. I pulled up the tracking info on her phone and it’s offline.”
“Maybe it just died? They talked longer than they anticipated, and it died on her way home?” Tyler suggested but a cold wave took hold of Justine, and her worry exceeded Hailey’s by a dozen as a hundred different scenarios played through her mind. The worst of the last five years hit hard, and she was pulling on clothes long before Hailey finished arguing that it wasn’t likely because they had phone chargers in the car.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this now, Ty. I know I need to tell Mom and Dad, but I don’t want to do it on my own,” Hailey added, and Justine had no doubt that Tyler would be back in the room in a moment to finish getting dressed himself.
“Okay, let me grab some clothes and we’ll go talk to them, see what they want to do,” he said, and a few moments later, he slid back into the bedroom, his brow lifting seeing her dressed in her running clothes. “Hey…”
“It’s okay. I overheard,” she said quietly, not knowing how far voices travelled down the stairs.
“You don’t have to go anywhere, baby,” he returned, slipping up next to her, his eyes showing he was more worried than his tone betrayed downstairs.
“Probably better that I head back to the hotel with this going on though,” she suggested, not adding that her laptop was there and since her resignation wasn’t officially accepted, she should still have access to the databases they maintained. “If she would come by here knowing she’s likely to be in trouble if she went directly home that wouldn’t be a good thing, would it?”
“Probably not,” he agreed, giving her a soft kiss, breathing her in for an extra moment. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something. It’s not like Isabelle to do something like this.”
“If you weren’t the one I was sneaking around with, would you have ever suspected that I was sneaking around to see you when we were seventeen?” she asked making his chin lift slightly higher as he nodded. “Look, why don’t you shoot me her phonenumber? I have some friends back in D.C. that could try and get her last known location if nothing else. The apps don’t always update timely when a phone shuts off.”
“I’ll text it to you,” he said, grabbing clothes and changing quickly, before heading back downstairs to get to Hailey and go by their parent’s place.
Justine gave them a few minutes before heading out to get to her car. It was parked in a little overlook thankfully in the opposite direction of Tyler’s parents’ place. She hooked up her phone as soon as she was in it, calling Moe as she pulled up the text Tyler sent her with Isabelle’s number.
“Justine, damn girl, I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth,” Moe said when he answered, and she wished she didn’t have a need to call them ever again. Not because she didn’t like the people she’d worked with, but so she could simply put all of it behind her.
“Just taking some time to get my stuff worked out,” she lied. “I actually was hoping to get a little bit of help with something. Are you at the office?”
“Always on the day shift, Justine, you know that. What do you need, sweets?”
“A friend’s seventeen-year-old little sister is missing. Her twin last heard from her yesterday afternoon and it’s not like them to not be in communication. Her phone’s turned off as well,” Justine added pulling a low ‘oh’ from Moe. “She was supposed to be meeting up with some guy she’d been talking to on TikTok.”
“Damn…did you share your thoughts of what might be for her being unreachable?”
“No, I didn’t want to freak him out if it’s really nothing. If she just lost track of time I don’t want to get into my job stuff. Can you see what you can get off the phone for me?” Justine asked, rattling off the number for it.
“Will do,” he said, and she heard typing in the background as she pulled into the lot for the hotel.
“If you find anything disturbing, call me right back. I’m going to hop on my computer and see if I can find their TikTok connection,” she stated before heading upstairs, logging into her computer then pulled up the account connected to Isabelle’s phone number.
It took a little over an hour before she was able to trace the messages between Isabelle and the other account without getting into Isabelle’s actual account and none of it soothed her worries.
Her phone rang and she answered, holding her breath when it wasn’t just Moe on the other end of the line. “Hey boss…”
“Not the way I wanted to be talking to you again, Justine,” Melissa said, and her tone sent a chill straight through Justine.
“What did you find Moe?” she asked.
“Photos of UL-23 that were sent to Isabelle,” Moe said, and her breath stalled as a wave of nausea rushed through her.
“We thought he’d gone under but apparently you were right, and they simply moved the use of that unknown lure somewhere else,” Melissa stated. “I’m sorry we pulled you off that trail now.”
