“The woman, what name did she check in under?” Dallas said.
“I can’t give out information like that.”
“We’re her sisters.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got to protect the privacy of my guests.”
“The dark-haired girl is my daughter, my seventeen-year-old daughter,” I said. “We need to find out where she went.”
The woman looked nervous now. “Maybe I should talk to the police.”
Dallas reached into her purse, pulled out a couple of twenties, and slid them across the counter. “Maybe we can work something out?”
The woman looked at the money, glanced around as she picked it up.
“She called herself Courtney something or other, can’t remember the last name.” She looked down at her registration book, flipped through some pages.
“Here it is. Courtney Campbell.”
She’d used her real name? What was going on with my sister?
“We’ll pay for the room for another night,” Dallas said.
“Room’s sixty bucks a night,” she said. “And that girl stole from me.”
I counted out five twenties and she gave us a key.
*
We pushed open the door, blinking from the bright light outside until our eyes adjusted. Clothes were strewn around, some shoes in the corner, and the bed was still unmade—there’d been a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. Crystal’s old suitcase was in the closet, one of her T-shirts tossed onto the bed. I pressed the shirt to my face, smelling her perfume, the scent faint but so familiar it brought tears to my eyes. Where was she?
Dallas was in the bathroom.
“Her makeup bag’s still here,” she called out.
“Crystal would never take off without her makeup and it doesn’t look like she’s been back here for days. I think we need to talk to the police.”
“They’ll want to know why they came here,” Dallas said, coming out of the bathroom.
“If Skylar’s looking for Crystal, she’s been asking around about her. God knows what she’s been telling people—or who she’s been talking to.”
“That’s why we need to stay calm and think this through,” Dallas said. “We don’t know what happened at this point.”
“If Brian’s figured out who Skylar is…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“There’s no way he could, and Skylar could be on her way home, for all we know. Crystal could’ve hooked up with someone—you know how she is.”
“She wouldn’t do that in this town.”
“We don’t know what she’d do. When she’s in one of her fucked-up moods all bets are off. That’s why we shouldn’t jump the gun just yet.”
I thought about how Crystal had used her real name. She definitely wasn’t thinking straight.
“So what’s our next move?” I said.
Dallas thought for a moment. “Let’s ask at the restaurant first. Maybe someone saw something.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAMIE
We snagged a seat by the front window. The restaurant was starting to fill up, loud with clanking noises from the kitchen, the cook yelling out orders. The air smelled of burnt toast.
“Be with you in just a minute,” a waitress with black hair and blunt-cut bangs said as she walked by with some plates for another table.
I glanced at my watch, feeling restless, agitated. It was only quarter after four, but I wanted to find the girls before it got dark, didn’t want to be in this town at night. I looked around the room at the other diners and caught my breath when I saw the back of a tall man with dark curly hair and a baseball cap. My heart started to race. I tried to find my voice to warn Dallas, but I couldn’t speak.
Dallas was giving me a strange look. “What?”
“Is that…”
She turned to see what I was looking at, then sucked in her breath.
The man looked to his left and I caught his profile.
“It’s not him,” I said. But Dallas was still staring, like she couldn’t hear me. All the color had gone out of her face.
“It’s not him. Hey, look at me.” I grabbed her shoulders, forced her to face me. “It’s not him.”
She finally met my eyes, heard my words. Her face relaxed, but her breath was still rapid. “Jesus,” she said. “I thought … I thought he was going to turn around and see us.…”
“I know.” I looked around for the waitress. I needed water, had to get rid of the acid taste of fear in my mouth.
“Do you think he still works there?” Dallas said. She was staring out the window at the garage. The boy I’d noticed earlier glanced toward the diner as though he felt us watching him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we should find out.”
The waitress came back carrying a coffee carafe and menus for us. “Sorry about the wait, ladies. Coffee?”
“That’d be great,” I said. “And some water, please.” While she poured coffee into the cups on our table, I added, “You didn’t happen to see a teenage girl in here recently, did you? She’s tall, with black curly hair.”
“Oh, yeah, she was here with her friend a few nights ago.”
I felt a stab deep inside, pain mixed with hope.