Page 92 of Diluted Truths
I stalked past the group into Jackie's office, hoping that I could find any sort of revelation within these four walls of where she could be.
Missing for Twelve Hours
“Will! Where are you?” Theo yelled as she ran into the foyer of the office. I had taken up residence in Jackie’s office and was pouring over hernotes about the case. I didn’t know if this information would hold the key to finding Jackie when I began, but I knew I needed to do something. Anything.
Just as I began to turn to the next page of Jackie’s notes, which were barely legible due to her handwriting, the office door flew open.
“Oh thank god! What’s going on? Jackie’s missing?” Theo asked in a rush.
“Yeah, she has been for nearly twelve hours now,” I stated as I continued through my current section of notes that focused on Joey and the shadow in the pictures. I had hoped that the answer would present itself but I was there when Jackie took most of the notes. I knew what had happened to Joey, I had talked to him. It was the notes about her thoughts that nearly killed me to read. It was as if she was here telling me how she thought Joey’s father knew more than what he was letting on. Or how Joey seemed more lively this time meeting him than the first time she had. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“The second Sarah called, I packed up mine and Vi’s stuff and drove here. Flying may have been faster but honestly I don’t think I was in the right mind, you know shock and it…. Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you please look at me?” At her command, my head rose slowly to see her. It was difficult to look at the women who so closely resembled Jackie. Her face was nearly identical, but lacked the light that Jackie always had, which I missed more than I could admit.
Jackie was my sunshine.
Theo looked to have not slept at all throughout the night and there was a mysterious stain on her shirt. She looks much like I assume I did at that point. It had been a grueling twelve hours.
Twelve hours.
Jackie had been gone for twelve hours. It still didn’t feel real. With every passing second I hoped I would wake up from this nightmare and roll over in bed to find Jackie asleep… and safe.
“Will, are you okay?”
“No.”
Missing for Twenty-Four Hours
“Has he eaten anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He hasn’t gotten up from that chair since he sat down.”
“He hasn’t even slept yet.”
The voices I heard seemed a million miles away as I continued to pore through the documents. The only lead we had was the case. It had to be connected somehow. Griffin had stated she would go missing. He believed her to be what they called an Advocate. An Advocate? It was said in passing, but as I pondered the word it struck me as familiar. However, I couldn’t place the familiarity.
“Advocate. Advocate. Advocate,” I muttered to myself, hoping the repetition would remind me of where I heard it before.
“Did you say Advocate?”
I looked up to see Oliver staring at me in the office doorway, perplexed. “Yeah, it’s something Griffin called Jackie when we were in New York. I never thought too deeply about it. But it reminds me of something and I can’t figure it out,” I stated as I leaned back in the chair and rubbedmy eyes. “Maybe I just need sleep or food or something. I think I am just grasping at straws at this point.”
“Are you sure he said the word Advocate?”
I looked back to Jackie’s best friend. What was he thinking? I had never seen him so… perturbed before.
“Yeah, it was when we were leaving he said she was an Advocate. The guards then made us leave because he was basically screaming at this point.”
“It could all be connected. It must be,” Oliver muttered to himself as he turned and entered his office across the way from Jackie’s. I immediately stood up and followed, confused by the sudden change of behavior by Oliver. Up until this point he was calm and collected.
“Oliver, what’s going on?”
“I’ve been studying this case. I got it around the same time Jackie got her case. It was about a young man who was on some research expedition and when he came back almost two years later he was… well… insane.” Oliver continued as he picked through the papers on his desk. “He kept rambling on about the four Advocates. They are essentially the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the way he explained them. He was also drawing this on everything he could.” Oliver handed me a picture. As I studied it, my breath was taken from me once again. It was the drawing. The same drawing they saw in Joey’s closet, the pictures from Carter, on the bodies of Griffin’s victims, and on the wall of the asylum. It was the emblem of the Cult of Creatio.
