Page 191 of Hunting Pretty

I clambered up the ivy, not bothering to keep my movements slow and quiet. I practically tumbled over the railing onto her balcony and burst into her bedroom through her balcony door.

“Ava?”

There was no response.

I raced through her room to her en suite, screaming her name, my heart thudding louder and louder as the silence swelled to deafening.

I ran out into the hallway and toward the stairwell, satisfying myself that she was not here, before I raced back to her bedroom, calling her phone as I ran.

Her phone went straight to voicemail.

I had to stay in control. I had to manage the torrent in my chest.

I’d check Lisa’s house first.

Maybe she’d gone there to say goodbye, despite my warning her not to, lost track of time, and her phone ran out of battery.

I raced back into her bedroom, ready to sprint out the balcony door again, when I spotted her backpack, zipped up and lying askew on the floor.

I skidded to a halt.

It was then that I spotted the overturned lamp, the pillows shoved aside. Small subtle signs of a struggle.

They had taken Ava.

I had to find Ava. I had to get her back before anything happened to her. I just prayed I wouldn’t be too late.

Something occurred to me as I stormed back into Dr. Vale’s house.

Something so glaring that it snapped me right out of my single-minded focus on getting Ava back.

He had claimed that his family had been threatened, butI saw no evidence of a family living here, except for those framed photos of them on his desk.

I snatched up a photo of his wife and two girls from his desk and studied it.

Now that I was inspecting it closer, something looked off.

I opened the back of the frame.

It wasn’t a photo. It was an image printed out on paper.

It was a fake photo.

I opened up the rest of the photos and sure enough, they were all faked.

Dr. Vale’s “family” wasn’t real.

Which meant that Dr. Vale was lying when he said he was being forced into drugging the girls because his family was being threatened.

Heknewsomething.

I stormed down into his basement.

I had planned to make an anonymous call to the police once Ava and I were safely out of the country.

Ava had made me promise to let him live.

But now, all bets were off.

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