Roman - Lane Hart Page 0,13
building and taking them to the front where the line to get in still stretches down the boardwalk.
“Bruce, man, have you seen this woman?” I ask the bald bouncer, holding up the image.
“Ah, yeah, boss. She’s right beside you,” he says. He’s not the brightest bulb in the fucking box, but he can whip someone’s ass in a heartbeat. “The other one, with red hair,” I clarify. “What kind of dress was she wearing tonight?” I ask the women who are standing behind me.
“Green sequin,” Charlotte says.
“Oh yeah, Ariel,” Bruce says. “She came out about fifteen minutes ago or so and went that way.” He points with a big, meaty finger toward the row of stores on the strip, most of which are still open.
“Thank you!” Charlotte tells Bruce before she grabs her phone from me and takes off at a jog in that same direction with the other women following behind. I’m not the type to just stand around and do nothing, so I fall in behind them. “Tessa?” she calls out as she stops at each storefront. I lift my chin at the staff who all know me before Charlotte thrusts her phone in their face. “Have you seen her?”
“Yeah,” Mikey says. “Walked by a few minutes ago on her phone talking to someone in a rush, but she didn’t come inside here.”
“Thanks, man,” I tell him before Charlotte and the women take off to the next store.
We go through five more before we hit the end of the line. No other store clerks seem to have seen her.
“She must still be around here somewhere, right?” Charlotte says when she calls her friend again, still not getting an answer. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, she didn’t just disappear. The last clerk said she was standing on the sidewalk one second, and then a minute later he looked up and she was gone. Maybe she got an Uber home and didn’t want to spoil the night for the rest of you,” I offer.
“She wouldn’t have left to go home without telling us,” Charlotte mutters.
“Maybe…maybe she got sick and didn’t have time to tell us,” Bev offers.
“Not even time to call before she left in the Uber? No, that doesn’t make sense,” Charlotte says with a shake of her head.
“My feet are killing me,” Sydney says before removing her heels and taking a seat on the curb. “I can go back to the house and see if she’s there or not.”
“I’ll go with you and get my phone, see if I have any calls from Tessa,” Ruth says.
“Okay, you two go back and keep in touch. Bev and I will go across the street and talk to the clerks over there,” Charlotte tells them. “And you,” she turns to me. “You don’t have to keep following us around.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell her. “Besides, the locals all know me but not you, which makes them more willing to talk and not blow you off if I tag along.”
“Fine!” she huffs.
“I’ll ask our IT guy to pull up the surveillance videos, see what he can find,” I offer. “Send me that photo you have of her and a few others.”
“Okay. Thank you,” Charlotte replies with a sigh.
Charlotte
My head is pounding with worry, and my feet are one big blister by the time Bev and I walk through the door at the beach house a little after two a.m., well past the time when all the stores had closed on the strip and even the clubs and bars had started locking up.
“Did you find her?” Ruth asks from where she and Syd have been waiting in the living room.
“No.”
“This isn’t good,” Sydney says. “Do you think we should call her parents or Paul?”
“No, not yet,” I say. “It’s the middle of the night, and I don’t want to unnecessarily worry them when she could very well be off with…”
“With what?” Ruth asks when I pause.
“What if she went home with someone?”
“You think she would do that to Paul?” Syd asks.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to be the reason everything goes to shit with him if she did.”
“So we’re going to wait until the morning?” Bev asks.
“Yeah, we’re going to wait and pray that she comes home or calls by noon tomorrow. If she doesn’t, then…”
“We’ll call her parents, Paul, and the police?” Ruth finishes.
“Yeah,” I say with a heavy sigh. “Until then, we should probably all try to get some sleep.”
“How can we sleep when we don’t know where