Free Facade by Susan Cory

sweater and a pair of skinny jeans, then shook her long chestnut hair out of its ponytail. Luc had sounded distant, maybe irritated. She had to smooth things over. After slapping on a swipe of red berry lip stain, she flew downstairs. She put Sheba on her leash, then opened the door. Only to find Jasna standing on the front porch, looking ashen, her spindly arm in mid-reach toward the doorbell.
    “I'm just running out now,” Iris blurted out before registering how debilitated her student looked.
    “I need your help,” Jasna said, her dark eyes pleading.
    Iris checked her watch, then figured she could take a few minutes to calm her student's stress about whatever imagined catastrophe before setting off again for Luc's place. She led Jasna quickly into the living room.
    Jasna perched on the edge of one of Iris' favorite black leather club chairs. “Please, I have to tell someone. This is all my fault and now Lara might be dead.”
    “Lara? The missing girl?” Iris settled onto the sofa across from Jasna. “How are you involved with her?”
    “This is such a mess.” Clearly at the point of tears, Jasna told Iris how she had befriended Lara and tried to help the girl escape from her father's plan for some awful hell of an arranged marriage in Bosnia.
    “What about the police? Or child services? Why didn't you report this to them? They could have stopped the father.”
    “Lara was terrified they would put her in foster care, into some group home or have her adopted by someone even more abusive than her father,” Jasna explained. “She wanted me to adopt her, but I live too close by. Her father would have found her and shipped her off to Bosnia.”
    Iris had to concede that they were right—Lara probably would have ended up in foster care if she had approached any authorities at all.“Okay, what happened next?”
    “I noticed bruises on Lara's arms when I'd see her in her father's shop where she worked after school. He was hitting her when he got drunk. I knew I had to help her get away soon.”
    “Where were you intending to hide her?”
    “I have a brother, Edvin, in another country. He and his partner love kids. We all talked about Lara going to live with them. She and Edvin hit it off when they met, and Lara liked the idea of being far enough away from her father.”
    “And something went wrong with this plan?” Iris said.
    Jasna ran a hand through her choppy black hair until it stood up in tufts. “On the night Lara disappeared, she came to my apartment and waited there while I went to Rory's to borrow his car. I was only gone for half an hour. When I returned she was gone. The window to the fire escape was open and my bedspread was missing. Lara's bag, with all her things in it, was still there.”
    “Maybe she changed her mind and decided to run away?”
    “That's what I'd hoped at first. I thought maybe she'd gotten scared about such a big, sudden change and gone instead to a friend's house. I kept hoping she'd call me in the morning. No call ever came and I got scared. Why would she have left all her things behind? She even left her wallet with some money. And we had already talked about other places she could go—there weren't any. She had no other choices.”
    “Call the police,” Iris instructed. “Now. They need to have it confirmed that someone took Lara. They probably think she ran away.”
    “I already made a call to the police, anonymously, telling them about the arranged marriage threat.”
    “Good. They need to know that. Maybe her father learned about your plan, then followed her to your apartment and grabbed her. She could be in Bosnia by now.”
    “Then why would he have reported her missing to the police?” Jasna asked.
    Iris considered the question, then said “that's something for the police to figure out. But they need to have all of the facts before they can track Lara down. Right now they don't even know an accurate location or time for where or when she went missing. That