ASHAL
The first thing I feel is the sound of my own pulse drumming fast and erratic in my ears as I pace the floor of Maddi's family home. My palms are clammy and my throat is dry. I call Maddi's phone again, praying she'll pick up this time. Her voice mail cuts in, bright and chipper and so wildly inappropriate for this moment that I nearly fling my phone at the wall.
"Damn it, Maddi, where are you?" I mutter, dragging my hand through my hair. Where else could she be?
Her parents had sounded bewildered, blindsided even, when I rang their house. Mrs. Dunn's voice cracked as she repeated it back to me, "She hasn't been here. She hasn't called us." Mr. Dunn wrestled the phone from her, insisting in his steady baritone that Maddi was a grown woman, that she'd show up soon and that panicking wouldn't help. But I heard the tremor in his voice too.
They just lost one daughter, and now the surviving child is missing.
Maddi is missing!
