Free The Vanishing by Ruth Ann Nordin Page B

getting married. She hardly talked about anything
else. So why would she leave?
    It didn’t make sense.
Autumn sat down and willed her mind to clear. If she could just
think clearly, she’d be able to figure out what was going on. She
closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, counting backwards
from ten and exhaled when she reached one. Calm down, Autumn. Focus. There’s got to be a rational
explanation for all of this.
    “ She’s not here,” Alex
said.
    Autumn opened her eyes.
    Alex approached the doorway and turned
to the astonished clerk. “Do you see her in there?”
    “ She could have left out
the back,” the clerk replied in a shaky voice. “It’s happened a
couple of times. Some brides get cold feet.”
    Autumn wiped her wet cheeks with her
shirt sleeve. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. Sniffing back
the observation, she shook her head. “Marianne and I were close.
She would have told me if there was a problem.” Settling her hand
on the floor, she got ready to stand up when something hard pricked
her palm. “Ouch.”
    “ What is it?” Alex
asked.
    She quickly pulled her hand up and
turned to the source of the pain. It was Marianne’s cross necklace.
Well, there. That solved it. She held it up for them to see. “This
was a gift from our parents before they died in the plane crash.
She wouldn’t have left this behind if she ran off.” She blinked
back more tears. Gone. Her sister was gone. Just like that. She put
the necklace and other items back into her sister’s purse and stood
up. “I don’t know what’s going on, but someone must have kidnapped
her.”
    “ I’ll call the police.”
The woman ran out of the room.
    “ Did she have any crazy
ex-boyfriends who didn’t want her to get married?” Alex wondered as
he collected the clothes.
    “ No.” She thought over
everyone her sister had dated. “I don’t think so.” She swallowed
the lump in her throat and ran her fingers through her hair. She
felt the barrette her sister had put in her hair less than five
minutes ago. Five minutes. It had just been five minutes! How did
someone disappear in such a short time?
    “ I wonder if there’s a
surveillance tape in this place,” Alex said. “Maybe we can see if
someone entered this store and kidnapped her.”
    “ But she’d still have on
her underwear.” At the very least. As it was, wherever Marianne
went, she was naked. And that was nothing at all like her sister.
Still, she followed him to the front where the clerk hung up the
phone.
    “ I can’t get through,” the
young woman said. “The phone is busy.”
    Alex grumbled but dug his cell phone
from his pocket and pressed the buttons. He frowned. “I’m getting
the same thing. Autumn, will you try yours?”
    Even though she figured it would be
pointless, she obeyed. “Same thing.” She hung up the
phone.
    “ Do you have a
surveillance tape?” Alex asked.
    “ Of course.”
    “ Can I watch it to see
what happened to my fiancée?”
    “ Let me pull up the
system.” She fiddled with some keys on the computer.
    He went around the counter so he could
watch what she was doing.
    “ I don’t have anything in
the dressing room, but the rest of the store is covered,” she
said.
    “ That’s all we need,” he
replied.
    It wouldn’t do any good. Autumn already
knew that they wouldn’t get any answers from the tape. She
reluctantly turned her attention to the window. What had started as
a slight disturbance had turned into a full-blown panic. People ran
past the store, crying out for others that they couldn’t find. A
woman had stopped pulling her stroller and was weeping over an
empty seat with a sippy cup and toddler clothes hanging over the
belt strap. A fire truck and ambulance roared by, dodging a few
cars that remained in the street.
    “ We interrupt this program
for another special report,” the TV news anchor said.
    She rushed over to the television and
sat in front of it, turning up the volume.
    “