She wanted to help. She wanted to tell the officers what she’d seen. But at the same time, she knew that she couldn’t, at least not yet. The last thing she wanted was to get involved in a case and have everything she’d been doing get out in the open.
“That seems to be the case,” Officer Sullivan said. “We’re just hoping someone close to her may know why.”
“I can’t think of anything. But like I said, I don’t really know her that well,” said Allison. “If you don’t mind, officers, I need to get back home.”
“Oh, absolutely.” Officer Jones reached into a pocket on her shirt. “This is my card. If you hear anything about Ariel, or find out anything that could help us, would you give me a shout? My office number is on there as well as my email address.” Allison took the card. It read Henderson Police Department Tina Jones, Detective with the phone number and email address underneath.
“Yes ma’am,” Allison said. She pulled at the leash and Jake stood from a sitting position and came to her side. They walked away from the officers, back toward home. Allison was still nervous, and she wiped her sweaty palms on her shirt.
The two police officers watched as Allison walked away, the dog at her side.
“She knows something,” Tina Jones said to Sullivan.
“What makes you think that?” her partner asked.
“I can just tell. She seemed nervous. Women’s intuition.”
“That’s not a real thing, Jones. Kids get nervous talking to cops.” Sullivan pulled the notepad he had been writing on out of his back pocket. “What did she say her name was? Allison Hayes?”
“Hanes. Allison Hanes.” Officer Jones started walking back to the front porch where Ariel’s mother was still standing, her hands folded across her chest, waiting for more information. “And let’s go ahead and call in the Amber Alert.”
CHAPTER SIX
Saturday March 15 | 11:50am
“IT’S GONE.” Lucas’s voice broke with fear and exhaustion. He tried to catch his breath. “Destroyed. Like a tornado hit it.” He sat on the ground with a paper towel pressed to his bare knee poking through a rip in his jeans, the paper showing red with blood.
“Yeah, man.” Tyler sat on the floor of Elijah’s bedroom with his back against the door. Beads of sweat collected on his forehead and created lines down his temples. His dark skin glinted in the sunlight filtering through the bedroom window. “Freaking destroyed.”
When Lucas and Tyler saw the destruction of the treehouse, they sprinted back through the woods to where their bikes were parked. Lucas had never felt such panic in his life. He had turned his head while running, to see the remains of the treehouse one more time, when he tripped over a branch. Falling face-first onto the forest floor, his skinned his knee against a piece of bark on the ground. His hands still stung from breaking his fall.
Tyler had helped him up to his feet and they continued, brushing by branches, the thin ones whipping against their arms and faces. Once they reached their bicycles, resting against a tree trunk, they picked them up and pumped their way back to Elijah’s house. The whole ordeal was a blur. At one point, Lucas considered breaking away from his friend and just going home. The fleeting thought passed, however. He could not abandon Tyler.
They rolled up to Elijah’s front yard, dumping the bikes on the grass. Both boys tumbled through the front door, shutting it and locking it behind them. Elijah’s little sister sat in the living room eating cereal from a plastic bowl and watching a Disney cartoon on television and was unphased by their intrusion. The boys burst into Elijah’s bedroom, where they sat now, breathless and afraid.
Elijah sat backward in his computer chair, his face twisted in disbelief. He interlocked his fingers above his head as he tried to calculate what his friends were telling him. “How? How is that possible?”
Tyler shook his head. “Whoever buried that body must have gone back to the fort and tore it down. Like, he wanted to make sure it was demolished. Keep us from going back out there.” His words were disjointed as he caught his breath. He grabbed a plastic water bottle from his backpack, twisted off the cap and downed nearly the entire contents. “Which means,” he said, catching his breath, “he knows we were there. He knows we saw him.”
Lucas leaned back, his head resting against the wall. His breath was short and forced. He reached around for his own backpack and rustled around the internals until he found his asthma inhaler. He shook it, held it to his mouth and pumped twice while inhaling. “I don’t know. I just…” His voice trailed off. Lucas’s head drooped and he sighed. “I think we may have messed up here.”
“Well, what can we do?” asked Elijah.
The emergency notification tone on Lucas’s phone began going off. He pulled it out of his pocket. The notification bubble on the lock screen read AMBER ALERT Henderson, TX. No vehicle description. Check local media.
“Look, guys!” he said, perking up. He turned the phone screen to his friends. “This is from the news story this morning. The missing girl.”
“So what?” Tyler said, standing up. “We can’t do anything! Whoever did this, whoever took this girl, whoever buried that body in the woods, knows we saw! Why else would they do that to our fort?” He was heated at this point, pacing across Elijah’s bedroom floor. Sweat continued to drip down Tyler’s temples.
“Yeah, Lucas,” Elijah quipped. “We’re just...we’re just kids.”
“Come on, guys!” Lucas pleaded. “We know something here!” Lucas didn’t want to feel helpless. He wanted to feel like they could do something. “That guy, whoever he is, destroyed our fort because he wanted to scare us!”
“Well,” Tyler said, “he’s doing a damn good job of it, because I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty scared. And at this point, I wouldn’t even want to go back out to the fort.”
“I don’t either, man,” Elijah said. “I mean, I was hoping last night that we could go back out there after this whole thing blows over. But man, there’s a girl missing, and she’s probably in that hole out there, and I don’t want to go back near that place.”
Lucas felt a tinge of pain in their words. All their hard work over the last three months; all the planning and excitement now lay in a heap on the forest floor. The planks and sheets of plywood were broken and destroyed by the same man who’d buried a body not even fifty yards from their treehouse.
Tyler turned to Lucas. “He’s right, bro.” He pointed to the iPhone still in Lucas’s hand. “That girl, she’s in the woods. She’s in that hole.”
“So, let’s tell someone!” Lucas stood up. “Come on, guys. We can make this better. We can fix this! All we have to do is go to the cops. You guys said we could make a call if we saw something on the news today. Well, we saw something!”
Tyler walked over to his friend and put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “I know, bro. I don’t want to freak you out, but here’s the thing; that guy destroyed our fort. He knows we were out there. And if he knows we were out there, who’s to say he didn’t watch us leave? What if he followed us and now he knows who we are? What if we go to the cops...and he comes after us?”
Lucas’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t thought of that. The idea of a killer watching them, possibly even now, filled him with even more dread. He looked at Elijah’s bedroom window, paranoia taking over, to ensure the curtains were drawn.
He sat down on the beanbag chair on the ground and ran his hands through his hair. His hands felt clammy and his hair was full of dirt and sweat. Tyler sat down next to him and Elijah crossed the room to do the same.
“Let’s just stick together right now,” Tyler said. “Once the cops find the body, and they will soon, it’ll all be okay. But until then, let’s stick close. Right now, we’re safe here at Elijah’s house. We can go back to my house tonight.”
“Hey guys, remember the whole TV forty-eight hours thing,” Elijah said, hoping to bring some positivity to the situation. “That’s not too long. Tyler’s right. Let’s stic
k together for the next few days and everything will be alright.”
Lucas nodded and obliged, but internally was still feeling like they should be doing something. He knew these emotions would pass, especially if the crime scene was actually discovered soon. He conceded that they couldn’t go back to the fort, but he just wanted to be able to enjoy spring break with his friends.
His phone buzzed again, and he pulled the device out of his pocket. It was a text from his dad. I need you to come home it read. Need to discuss something with you.
“Oh no, guys,” he looked up at Tyler and Elijah, who were firing up Fortnite on the Xbox. “I think we’ve been found out.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Saturday March 15 | 1:00pm
LUCAS WALKED THROUGH the garage door of his house – the front door seemed more as decoration than an egress – and found his dad, Bobby, in the master bedroom. Lucas tried to remain calm, not wanting to give away any of his current nervousness. He worried that the fort had been discovered, or that he, Elijah, and Tyler had been found out somehow.
His fears were immediately squashed when his dad took him up in his arms, embracing his son in a bear hug. “Hey bud! How was your sleepover?” Bobby asked.
Lucas let out a sigh of relief. “It was good.”
“Well, what did y’all do?”
“Oh, nothing really. Played video games.”
Bobby released his son from the hug and went back to his closet. Lucas watched as his dad piled a couple of polo shirts and jeans on the California king bed in the middle of the bedroom. ESPN played on the TV hung on the wall.
“Is everything okay?” Lucas asked, hoping to solicit some information, hoping that his parents were in the dark regarding the events of the last twelve hours.
“Oh yeah, why?”
“Oh. Well,” Lucas paused, “I was just wondering why you’re packing clothes.”
Bobby looked down at the pile on the bed and chuckled. “Oh goodness. Yes, everything is fine. I wanted you to come home so I could tell you what’s going on.” As he spoke, Bobby went back to the walk-in closet and emerged into the bedroom carrying a black leather duffel bag. “I have a site walkthrough in Houston on Monday, and your mother is going with me, which means you and Allison will be alone tomorrow night.”
“Oh.” Lucas had never felt more relief in his life. As frightened as he was about the treehouse and the body in the woods, he felt like he was bought some time here. Even if the body was found soon, he figured that his parents would be in Houston during the immediate aftermath. “Well, Tyler asked if I could spend the night tonight.”
Bobby folded a pair of jeans and stuffed them into the duffel. “I thought that’s where you were last night.”
“Oh, I was,” Lucas lied. “For a little bit. But we actually ended up going to Elijah’s house because he got the new Fortnite update.” That in itself wasn’t a complete lie, he rationalized. There was a new Fortnite game update that all three boys were looking forward to playing. In fact, he knew that’s what Tyler and Elijah were doing at this very moment.
“Gotcha. Well, just be sure you let me know where you are. So, yeah, you can spend the night with Tyler tonight after you clean your room though. I went in there earlier and it looks like a laundry bomb went off. Also, I’d prefer it if you stayed here tomorrow night. I don’t like the idea of you or Allison out while we’re gone, especially right now.”
A lump formed in Lucas’s throat. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” Here it was again. Did his dad know something that he didn’t? As close as the woods were to their neighborhood, he felt like he would have heard police sirens if the body had been found.
“It’s not a big deal, and I don’t want to scare you but there’s a girl missing. She goes to school with your sister. She probably ran away from home, but just to be safe, I’d like for you two to stick around the house tomorrow until we get back.” Bobby must have seen the worry on his son’s face. He ruffled his son’s hair. “It’s okay, bud. Between you and me, I don’t think anything happened to her. She probably ran off with some boy she met on one of those phone apps. She’ll show back up soon, I’m sure. Who knows, probably today.”
Lucas hopped onto the bed and swung his feet over the wooden footboard. He continued watching his dad packed the duffel with his clothes for the trip. “So what are you building in Houston?” he asked, changing the subject from the missing girl.
“We’re building a new hospital down there in one of the suburbs, and we’re just doing a walkthrough of the project so far. It should be done and complete by August, so we’ll have to go back a couple of times this summer.”
Bobby had been in the construction industry Lucas’s entire life, and longer. These kinds of trips were not uncommon, but this was the first time that his mom, Stephanie, had gone with Bobby overnight. Which meant it was also the first the first time Lucas and Allison would be left alone overnight while their parents were out of town.
Lucas felt a tinge of pride in that fact. He liked that his parents felt that they could trust them to be by themselves. That feeling was fleeting, however, as anxiety started to creep into the boy’s mind. He tried to push it away. Deep down, despite the current situation, he knew that he could be trusted. And, frankly, he was tired of thinking about what he and his friends had seen. Maybe Tyler was right – the police would be on the case and the body would be found.
Deciding to forget all about the treehouse and the body, he looked up at his dad with a mischievous grin. “So, dad, how many people can I have at my party tomorrow night?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Saturday March 15 | 3:02pm
ALLISON’S PHONE WAS inundated with messages about Ariel from her friends. A Netflix series droned in the background on her TV mounted above her vanity. She laid on her bed, the Tiffany-blue sheets and comforter a mess around her, reading. Her phone straight up in the air above her head, she scrolled through the messages between an iMessage group and different Snapchat threads. Instagram was full of “Come home Ariel” posts and “We love you Ariel” comments under pictures of a girl who Allison knew, for all intents and purposes, would not be coming home.
A text from her best friend Amilyn came through. I wish I was home so I could be with you right now. Allison wished she was as well. If anything, she wanted someone to cry on, to open up to. Someone who wouldn’t judge her for her choices. Or, more appropriately, she wished she’d been allowed to go with Amilyn to San Antonio for the weekend. However, Bobby and her mother thought it inappropriate for her to be away without adult supervision in another city with three other high school girls. But, at this point she wished she’d put up a fight, argued her case a little more persistently. The girls would have stayed at Amilyn’s older sister’s apartment, who was technically an adult. They didn’t budge, however. But if they had, if she’d been allowed to go, then perhaps she would have been just as perplexed about Ariel Perez’s disappearance as everyone else in Henderson.
I wish I could be with you! I hope you’re having fun! Allison typed back to Amilyn. She decided to keep her inner turmoil just that for now; inner.
She watched the three dots on her screen and waited for Amilyn’s response. A few seconds later, her phone dinged. We are having fun. Would be much better with you here.
How’s the riverwalk? Allison typed out.
OMG girl it’s so pretty. We need to plan a trip this summer. They have a minor league baseball team. And I know how much you love those boys in baseball pants lol.
This made Allison smile, the blue message bubbles going back and forth. She didn’t feel so alone now.
Coming home soon?
Tomorrow.
Perf. My parents are leaving for Houston in the morning.
Oooh girl. Gonna get you some Brandon lovin’?
Stopppppp.
Lol. see you tomorrow love.
There was a knock at her bedroom door. Her mother cracked it open. “You taking a nap, sweetie?”
Allison shoved her phone under her pillow and sat up on her bed. “No, just watching some Netflix. How was your showing this morning?”
Stephanie Beaker stepped in. She was still in her business dress, a black dress that accentuated her hips. Even in her mid-forties, she still had a youthful body and figure. The only thing, really, that gave away her age were the wisps of grey beginning to show up in the part of her otherwise dark shoulder-length hair.
“I think they’re going to buy, actually,” she said. “Which is good. Momma needs to sell some houses.” She sat down on the edge of Allison’s bed. Her daughter scooted over a few inches to give her some room.
Stephanie Beaker was fairly new to the real estate game. She’d had a couple of secretarial jobs when she was younger, the longest as a receptionist at a law office downtown. She’d quit working for several years after Lucas was born, but between a mix of boredom and wanting to capitalize on a hot market, she decided to dive head-first into real estate. She’d sold four homes her first year and seven her second. Now in her third year, she was becoming a known-name in the industry. “Do Better With Beaker!” was the slogan on her business cards.
Allison looked up at her mother. “Mom, has anything bad ever happened in Henderson?”
“Oh, honey. Are you worried about Ari?”
“I mean, a little bit. What if she didn’t run away? What if something bad happened to her?”
“Well, from what I’ve heard through the grapevine, you know how word travels around this town, is that there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary at her house. No signs of struggle, no blood or anything like that. She very likely just walked out the front door and went somewhere. Probably ran off with some boy she met in Nacogdoches. I hear she was pretty promiscuous.”
“No she wasn’t, Mom,” Allison said defensively. She caught herself talking about Ari in the past tense, like it was a foregone conclusion. “I mean, she’s not. Ari’s a good girl.”
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