Surely someone has noticed by now, I thought as I had probably one hundred times before. Surely someone has noticed I’m missing. Someone is coming for me…right?
I wasn’t sure exactly how long it had been since I’d been taken from the park, but I knew it couldn’t have been more than a day. I wasn’t hungry or tired enough for it to be longer. The lights had been turned on at some point. A windowless room had greeted me. It was dirty with a cement floor and brick walls. There was one door and before it had stood a man, who I had guessed to be Dan. He was short and stocky with very little hair left. He had a scowl on his face, I guessed he didn’t want to be guarding me; he looked like a person who preferred action to standing around.
We hadn’t talked much since I had woken up. I let my thoughts wander, but I was careful not to let them lead me to panic. If I began to panic I knew that it would be next to impossible to calm myself back down. If I stayed calm I could think clearly, and if I could think clearly I might be able to find a way out of this mess, or at the very least be ready for when they came to rescue me. Whoever “they” turned out to be.
Who would Oliver go to? Not the police, he didn’t seem to trust them anymore. No, I scolded myself. Don’t think about that. None of those thoughts. He’d go if he really had to. You know that. I reassured myself. But then again, did I?
Oliver:
“Clair? Clair are you there?” He called, face pressed against her front door. “Clair, let me in. I need to talk to you.” He waited, still up against the door, listening for footsteps. He heard some though they were coming from the wrong side of the door.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Oliver sprang back from the door and turned around. “What? Nothing.”
“Nothing?” the woman who had come up behind him. “Really? Then why is your ear on the door and why are you calling for Clair?”
“We were supposed to meet up and she didn’t show.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “And that means you need to come here and bother Clair and all of her neighbors?”
“I think something has happened to Clair,” Oliver said, trying to express to the woman the urgency of the situation.
“Do you?” The woman didn’t seem to entirely believe him, but she had lost her accusatory tone.
“Yes, when was the last time you saw her?”
The woman crossed her arms, the bags of groceries in her hands banging together. “Not for a few days.”
“We were supposed to meet up last night.”
The woman looked at him questioningly. “It hasn’t been that long; it’s ten in the morning.”
“I know,” Oliver was beginning to get annoyed with the woman. He didn’t need this distraction. He needed to figure out what had happened to Clair and he was desperately hoping that it wasn’t what he was beginning to fear. “Something doesn’t seem right.”
“Okay,” the woman said. “Good luck. I’m sure she stood you up for a reason. Probably the same reason she’s refusing to answer the door.”
“Right,” Oliver responded deciding the woman was going to be no help at all. “Thanks for listening, and the advice.” He walked off down the hall feeling the woman’s gaze on his back. He stopped halfway down the stairs and waited. A minute or so later, he returned to the hall and found it empty. Oliver walked quickly to Clair’s door, taking his lock picks out of his back pocket as he did so.
He had to know if Clair was home. If she wasn’t…
No, she had to be.
Yipee, another entry on Scribe’s Canvas!
I’m glad you’re excited!