Page 183 of Chasing Infinity

Silence descends along the line, and then he says, “No? Should I have?”

I pull the phone away from my ear and swear. Then I bring it back and tell him, “Are you at the station? I’m heading that way.”

Charlie acknowledges and says he’ll see me in a few minutes. As soon as we hang up the phone, I rush out of the bar without saying a word to anyone else.

Charlie is waiting for me at the police station. His eyebrows are furrowed in the middle of his forehead as I hurry up to him.

“What’s going on?” he asks, his tone all business.

I come to a stop right in front of him, panting slightly. “Addison’s missing.”

If possible, his eyes narrow even more. “What do you mean,missing?”

Shaking my head, I brush past him and walk into the station. “I mean, she was supposed to meet me at my friend Jordan’s baby shower tonight, and she wasn’t there.”

“And she’s not at home?” Charlie asks, following after me.

“No, and she’s not at the diner,” I tell him. “I know what you’re going to say, and under normal circumstances, I would agree with you. But trust me, Charlie, she’sgone.”

Charlie stares at me as I round his desk and slide the mouse to his computer, booting up the screen. It takes him only a moment to process before jumping into action. “Okay, when’s the last time you heard from her?”

I wince, thinking about the briefgood lucktext message she sent me before I went into my meeting. “Early afternoon, nothing since then. She was super busy today. She told me she planned to close around eight and then head to the bar to wait for me. My flight got in at 10:30.” Charlie nods his head and grips the arm of his work chair, rolling me out of the way and taking his spot at his computer. “What are you doing?” I ask as he takes control of the mouse.

“I’m pulling up the location app for her phone. That will tell us the last place it pinged.”

Charlie doesn’t say anything else as he works to pull up the application. His eyes fly across the screen, and he logs into her account without a moment’s pause. I frown at him as he does so. “How do you know her account information.”

He barely spares me a glance. “I’m her best friend. And the chief of police.”

I frown harder. I don’t like either of those explanations, but I don’t ask any more questions, knowing that Charlie has been in her good graces longer than I have.

“The tracker on her phone stopped moving as soon as it passed city limits,” Charlie says, his eyes focused on the screen. I swear under my breath and move to see what he’s looking at. Sure enough, the Find-My dot hasn’t moved from the location right outside Willow Heights.

“They must have tossed her phone,” I mutter, my voice deadpan.

“It would make sense. If they found it on her, they would want to get rid of it as soon as possible.”

I swear again and run my fingers through my hair, gripping the strands as hard as I can tolerate. I pace back and forth across Charlie’s office, trying to hold myself together. Ever since I realized Addison was missing, my chest has been tight, as if a forty-ton weight was sitting right on top of me. With every minute passing, it’s getting harder and harder to take in a deep enough breath.

Bracing my hands behind my head, I begin to pace, covering the boundaries of Charlie’s office until I know the exact dimensions. My heart rate is erratic, and my chest still aches to the point where I wonder if I might go into cardiac arrest from the stress.

“She could be anywhere by now.”

I must sound as frantic as I feel because Charlie’s eyes dart over to me, and concern etches across his face. “Calm down, Noah. We’ll find her.”

“Where would they have taken her? I don’t even know how long she’s been gone!” I shout at him, running my hand over my face to ease some of my stress. It doesn’t work.

“Just take a deep breath andthink,” Charlie instructs me. “If your father is behind this, you’re the best person to find her. You’ve been working on his case forever. Just take a few breaths and focus.”

Surprisingly, I do what he says and feel a sense of clarity coming over me. I work through my process as if this were just another hot trail I was on for any other case other than this one. What would I do first?

I press my lips together and leave Charlie’s office without a word. I hear him call my name behind me, but I don’t say anything. Wordlessly I walk out to my car and pop the trunk before digging around in my backpack that I brought with me to DC. I find what I’m looking for and then walk back into the station.

Charlie’s standing behind his desk, bracing his palms on the smooth wood. He’s frowning at me. “What was that?”

I hold up my little notebook as if that’s answer enough and then start flipping through, scouring over my chicken scratch notes and searching for anything that might be helpful. My hands shake as I flip through page after page, still coming up completely blank. I finally turn to a particular page that I scribbled out right before my accident, which has me pausing. I stare at my notes for a second before speaking the idea out loud.

“What about the Witch House?”

---