Chapter Three
When Gwen woke in the morning, she dressed for the day in jeans and a tank top, along with a sensible pair of sneakers. She was planning on joining the search again as soon as possible, and she wanted to be properly prepared. She knew she should have been wearing some kind of sleeves in case she came across poison ivy while in the woods, but she was expecting it to be sweltering all day and was willing to take the risk if it meant she could search longer without having to stop due to the heat. She was going to stay out as long as they would let her.
She stumbled her way down the stairs, still bleary eyed from a night of tossing and turning. The wolves had kept up their song all night long it seemed, and just when she was about to fall into a deep sleep, the noise startled her awake. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find she’d gotten only a catnap that lasted an hour or two, not any real sleep. Her eyes felt heavy, and she yawned loudly as she sat down at the table. There was a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast in front of her, along with a mug of orange juice and a bowl of fresh fruit in the center of the table.
She poured herself a small glass of orange juice and began to nibble on her bacon. Gabe joined her a moment later and began inhaling his food, earning a disapproving glance from their mother. Karen shook her head and went back to picking at her grapefruit, but she didn’t tell Gabe to slow down. Gwen was surprised at how much their mother had backed down over the last twenty-four hours, becoming a much more lenient woman than she usually was. She normally would have yelled at Gabe and forced him to wash all of the dishes for his poor table manners, and Gwen had to wonder if her newfound control was due to the already tense atmosphere in the house.
Gabe finished up the last of his breakfast, downed a glass of orange juice, and turned to her. “Hurry up. We’ve got somewhere we need to be.”
Karen and Sandra both stopped what they were doing and looked at them. “Where do you think you’re going?” Karen asked, a hint of frost in her tone.
“Somewhere,” he said lightly.
“That’s not an answer, Gabriel,” she admonished. “Where are the two of you going?” She looked over at Gwen, waiting for an answer, but she only shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. She looked at Gabe, a frown on her face. “I thought we were joining the search party.”
“We are,” he said patiently. “Later. Right now, we have somewhere important we have to be.” He got to his feet. “Uncle Geoffrey said we could take Ginny’s car since we don’t have one of our own and I figured Mom wouldn’t let us take hers.”
“Gabe, you’re not leaving this house until you tell me where you’re going!”
Gabe stared at their mother, his face completely neutral. The only thing that gave away his annoyance was his tightened grip on the back of his chair. “I figured since everybody else wants to keep secrets, why not keep one or two of my own.” He grabbed a set of keys from the hook near the front door, not bothering to glance at either Karen or Sandra’s shocked faces. “Come on, Gwen. We don’t wanna be late.”
Gwen was surprised by her brother’s hostility, even if he wasn’t being mean about it. Our talk last night must have really gotten him thinking. Now that he’s positive they’re all keeping something from us, he’s angry about it. She gulped down the rest of her juice and grabbed a piece of buttered toast, following him out the open door without a second look at her mother. And he should be. In a time as hard as this one, nobody should be keeping secrets.
Ginny’s little car was parked in the shade of an oak tree off to the side of the driveway. The old silver Chevy Impala was boiling on the inside, but the seats were cool and wouldn’t stick to their skin. Gabe started the car and rolled down the windows, backing out of the driveway and leaving the house far behind. Gwen watched all of the police and volunteers disappear from view, and she felt a twinge of doubt. “Gabe, where are we going that’s so important it can’t wait? I wanted to join the search.”
“We’re going to talk to Tiffany,” he said, glancing at her. “You guys used to be friends before the distance came between you, but she’s still best friends with Ginny. I talked to one of the police officers and he told me she was the last person to see Ginny alive, but I wanted to talk to her myself. The police questioned her, but I figured she might tell us something she wouldn’t tell the police.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t even thought of Tiffany since setting foot in Brighton, and she felt a twinge of guilt. She and Ginny had been best friends with Tiffany for years, but Gwen wasn’t in Brighton enough to make such a long distance friendship work. She and Tiffany had grown apart, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine how Tiffany must have been feeling right now. Her best friend was missing, and she had been the last person to see her—the person to let her walk home instead of insisting on driving her.
I’d blame myself for sure, Gwen thought sadly, her eyes watching the trees as they zipped by.
They made their way into town, and Gabe pulled into a small coffee shop in town that served food, homemade ice cream, and all kinds of specialty drinks. He locked the car doors as they got out, and together they headed inside the building to wait for Tiffany. Gwen went and found a booth in the back of the store, away from prying eyes, while Gabe went and ordered their drinks. He came back a couple of minutes later with two freshly blended fruit smoothies, and Gwen took a sip of hers, sighing appreciatively as the drink helped fight the heat.
The bell above the door chimed, and Tiffany walked in, stopping to push her sunglasses on her head. Her face was red from the heat, and she flapped the sheer cardigan she wore over her tank top to cool down while she looked for Gabe and Gwen. Tiffany was sixteen, a year behind Gwen, and she was a couple of inches taller, not much shorter than Gabe. Her skin was the perfect shade of bronze that came from a regular tanning membership, and her hair was a natural dark blonde. With her sunglasses off, Gwen could tell her eyes were a blue-gray color.
Tiffany was curvy, with wide hips and an ample chest, but she was a few pounds too heavy to be considered “thin”. Not that it seemed to matter. She was still gorgeous and not many would deny it. Perhaps it was her confidence that made her seem so attractive. Gwen peeked at her brother and almost smiled as his eyes watched her every move from the second she walked into the coffee shop.
When her eyes found them, she walked over, setting her purse on the booth beside Gwen and sliding in gracefully beside her. Her nails were perfectly manicured and they tapped against the table nervously as she waited for one of them to speak. Gabe finally broke the silence, clearing his throat. “You look good, Tiffany.”
She smiled faintly. “I know.” She looked at Gwen, the smile fading from her face as quickly as it had come. “I’m so sorry for what’s happening. This is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Gwen said. “Ginny walked home that night because she wanted to, not because you made her. Right? There was nothing you could have done to change her mind once it was made up.”
“Unless she wasn’t really at your house the night she went missing,” Gabe said, leaning back against the booth. He sipped at his smoothie, his eyes never leaving Tiffany’s as he waited for her to say something. Gwen was shocked by her brother’s casual accusation, but when Tiffany didn’t defend herself, her heart sank. “Where was Ginny really the night she disappeared?”
“I don’t know,” Tiffany said quickly.
“Don’t lie to us,” Gabe said, his voice deepening just a hint. He was doing a good job holding onto his anger and keeping it in check, but all it would take for him to snap was one more lie.
“I’m not! Honest. I don’t know where she was,” she said miserably, putting her face in her hands. “I begged her to tell me, but she refused. She said it was better if I didn’t know who she was going to meet, said it was her business and nobody else’s. I tried for days to get it out of her, but when that night came, she turned off her phone and shut me out.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police this?”
Gabe demanded.
“I felt so guilty,” she said, looking up at him. “Plus I promised Ginny that I wouldn’t tell anyone that she wasn’t at my house that night. She said she didn’t want anyone to think she was out meeting a boy or on drugs. At the time, I thought it was weird she said that to me, but now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I think she was planning in case something bad happened to her. She didn’t want her image or your family’s to be ruined.”
“She was planning for something bad to happen?” Gwen asked, disbelief evident in her voice. “She knew there was a chance something bad was going to happen, and she went where she did anyways.” She glanced across the table at Gabe. His eyebrows were furrowed and he was deep in thought, just like her. “What could have been so important that she’d risk her safety to go? And why keep it secret?”
“People are gonna think she ran away to be with a boy, and they might stop the search,” Tiffany said, her voice trembling. “That was another reason I didn’t tell the police when they asked. I didn’t want them to stop looking and write her off as a runaway or something. I should have still told them,” she admitted. “But I wanted to honor Ginny’s wishes.”
“It’s okay,” Gwen said, putting her hand on Tiffany’s shoulder. “We’ll tell the police when we get home and join the search. They’ll keep looking for her, I’m sure of it. She’s underage and they have no proof she snuck out to run away with a boy or do drugs. They’ll have to keep looking.”
Tiffany sighed, nibbling on her lower lip. “I’m sorry, you guys. I let her down. I should have tried harder to keep her from going.”
“Do you know anything about where she was going? Anything at all?” Gabe asked.
“No,” Tiffany said, shaking her head. Gwen and Gabe traded quick, hopeless glances. “Wait! For a few days before she went where she was going, I noticed she was seriously attached to her phone. I caught her checking her email a lot more than usual, but she was using an email I didn’t recognize, and I didn’t see who she was messaging. If you could get into her computer, you might be able to figure out a password and check her sent folder.”
“She was really going through a lot of trouble to hide what she was really doing,” Gabe said. “Creating a secret throwaway email account just to message someone is a big commitment. I wonder if she really was meeting a boy.” When Gwen glared, he put his hands up, stopping her before she could yell at him. “I’m not saying she was planning on running away with him or anything. But maybe she thought she was going to meet a nice boy, and it ended up being someone else instead. It wouldn’t be the first time a naïve teenager was tricked into meeting a predator in real life. Watch a news special sometime.”
“It’s possible,” Tiffany admitted. “But I think Ginny was far too cautious to go and meet just anyone, especially at night like that. It was probably someone she met before, someone she felt at least somewhat safe with. The police will probably be able to find more than you guys, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look, too. Do some digging and let me know what you come up with?” Tiffany got to her feet, putting her sunglasses back over her face. “Good luck, guys. I’m sorry this is happening.”
Gwen watched Tiffany leave. She was conflicted on how she should feel about this new information. Tiffany had lied to the police at Ginny’s request, but she could have hampered the search in the process. Not to mention, there was no telling if what Tiffany had told them just now was the truth, or all of the truth. Any part of it could have easily been a lie, and they wouldn’t know.
Not until we check Ginny’s email.
She looked at Gabe, studying him for any sign as to what he was thinking. He looked pensive, and Gwen didn’t want to interrupt him, but she was eager to get home and join the search. Not to mention inform the police about what Tiffany had just told them. She was anxious to see how that would change the tone of the search. Would the police stop putting in as much effort if they thought they were looking for a drug addicted runaway instead of a straight A student?
“We should get home,” Gabe said, grabbing his drink. “I wanna join the search, too. And the sooner we give the police this new information the better. That and I should probably apologize to Mom for my behavior earlier. Even if they’re keeping things from us, it doesn’t mean I have to make things harder on them at a time like this.”
“I’m sure she’ll understand.”
Gabe slid out of the booth. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”