Page 72 of That's Not My Name

“What happened next?” I ask, too loud. Too intense. Again. I force myself to sit back and I shove my hands beneath my legs. “Where did they go?”

She takes another long drink of her coffee, finishing it off, and points up the road. “They headed in that direction. Through town, then they turned north, up the coast.”

“Are you positive?” Autumn asks.

“Absolutely. They went north. That’s all I know.”

Silence fills the booth. Autumn stares out the window in the direction Meredith described. Max eats another handful of fries.

This isn’t enough. We can’t take the highway north, blindly looking for a van. There’re hundreds of little towns and roads that branch off that highway. She could be anywhere north of here, and since we’re about halfway down the state, that’s a lot of road to cover before we even hit Washington. Or they might have headed north long enough to get to a gas station, then doubled back to Mexico.

“North” isn’t a lead.

“Is there anything else you can tell us about the van?” I ask. “Any stickers, or a parking pass? Did it have Oregon plates? Was there anything inside? Anything that might help identify it?”

Meredith pauses, staring into her now-empty cup. Her eyebrows pinch together while she thinks. “I don’t remember any stickers. I think it had Oregon plates, but I honestly can’t remember. I only remember the girl. I can’t stop seeing her face.”

“Is thereanythingelse?” Autumn presses, and the desperate look on her face tells me she’s feeling the weight of this potential dead end as much as I am. “Anything at all?”

Her face lights up. “Oh, actually, yes. They’d been to Nana’s.”

“Huh?” we all say at once.

“Nana’s. Nana’s Favorites. It’s a thrift store up the road. Real gem of a place. You can always tell when someone’s been to Nana’s because she has these bright pink shopping bags with her logo on the side. There was a Nana’s bag in the van with Lola. They must have gone there before they came to the diner. Maybe you could add that to your timeline?”

Autumn and I exchange a glance, and she grins. “Yeah, that’ll work,” she says.

The waitress comes by and asks Meredith if she wants a refill on her coffee, but she holds her palm over the cup and shakes her head. “No thank you. I should get going.”

The waitress leaves for another table, and Meredith gives us a sad smile. “I’m sorry. I wish I had more answers for you. I wish I’d thought to follow them or something… I thought it was her, but honestly, until you all showed up here, I wasn’t sure.”

“You helped a lot. Thank you,” I tell her with a smile. “This is the best lead we’ve had since Lola went missing.”

She slides out of the booth but hesitates at the end of the table. “You’re all clearly invested in finding your friend if you drove all the way out here. I don’t want to hear about the three of you going missing next, so don’t be foolish, okay? Take this information to the professionals, then let them deal with it.”

We mutter a blanket, “Yes, ma’am.” She gives us each a poignant look before clutching her purse to her chest and walking out of the diner.

Max flicks a French fry across the table. “Bummer, huh? That didn’t help at all.”

Autumn throws the French fry back at him, and it bounces off his chest. “Hey, dummy, were you even listening? She just told us someone else in this town could have seen Lola. How is that not helpful?”

Max throws the same fry back at her, and it gets stuck in her hair. “Do you always have to be so smart about everything?”

I slap the fry out of Autumn’s hand before she can throw it again. “Hey, this waitress already hates us. Let’s not get kicked out of here. We’re in enough trouble already.”

They both fold their arms and frown at me, but they stop.

“We absolutely have to go to that store, but we need something here first.”

“More fries?” Max asks with a grin. There’s nothing left on the platter.

“More proof. We have to collect every nugget of information so that we can bring it all to Roane and drown him in evidence. We can’t do that if all we have is an anecdote from a lady at a diner. We need tangible evidence or we’re crafting a story, not a timeline.”

Autumn nods, looking down at her phone screen. “You’re right. We need toproveLola was here before we leave, but the thrift store closes at six thirty.”

Shit. That’s soon.

I look around the diner. “Do they have cameras in here?”

---