Prologue #2
I grab it from him and mutter a quick “thanks” before dialing Atlas’ number. The line begins to ring, and I hold my breath.
If he answers, I’ll turn back around. If he picks up the phone, we can figure it out.
If he doesn’t answer, then I’ll keep moving forward.
It takes eight rings before I reach his voicemail.
I feel my heart shatter just a little bit more.
Looks like I made the right choice. In that case, I will at least tell him a proper goodbye.
When I hear the beep, it all just pours out.
I tell him everything on my mind. I’m halfway through when I hear the sounds of tires screeching.
I glance up just in time to see bright lights.
I’m too impaired to comprehend what I’m seeing, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds before impact.
I hear it before I feel it, the sound of metal crashing into metal.
I feel my head ricochet off the window before the car begins to flip, and everything goes dark.
Atlas
My phone starts ringing right on schedule, except it’s not Maizyn’s name flashing on my phone. It’s some unknown number, so I ignore it and let it ring until it goes to voicemail. It‘s probably just a work call.
If it’s important they can leave a message, and I’ll respond to the call in the morning during business hours.
She left my house three hours ago. Usually on her way back here by now.
Just as I go to see if she texted me, I get a notification from my banking app saying my credit card was used, the one I gave her.
I chuckled to myself as I checked the transaction history.
Lucky’s Sports Bar– I should’ve known. She managed to rack up a $150 tab. That’s impressive, even for her.
She was definitely drunk and probably got a ride home. Whatever, if she doesn’t come back tonight, she’ll be back tomorrow.
It’s always the same cycle.
I wasn’t going to wait for her.
I had to work in the morning and didn’t have time for her weekly drama.
∞∞∞
I woke up the next morning to the ringing of my alarm. Still nothing from Maizyn. She’s probably still sleeping off a horrible hangover.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she slept most of the day, I wasn’t going to waste time thinking about it. I go about my normal routine then head into work.
I greet my receptionist as I head into my office. It’s not a traditional office, more of a room with an abundance of computer screens. This is my work space. Any meetings I’m forced to take in person are held in the board room down the hall. No one else, other than Gavin, is allowed in here.
I’m filtering through potential job requests to see if anything requires our immediate attention when my phone rings.
“Torres Security, this is Atlas.”
“Uh yes, this is Corey. I work down at Lucky’s Sports Bar. Um, we just wanted to inform you that we have your credit card here. A woman came in last night and opened a tab with it but she left prior to closing the tab…We are only able to hold it for 24 hours before we have to destroy it.”
“Thanks Corey, I’ll be there later today to retrieve it.”
I exhale as I slam the work phone down. She always had to make shit difficult.
She was so drunk, she couldn’t even remember to bring my card with her.
I fired out a text to her letting her know that she forgot my card, when I noticed the voicemail notification from last night’s call that I forgot about. Might as well listen to it now.
I expected it to be work related, someone inquiring about our services. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Maizyn’s voice cracked as it came over the speaker.
“Hey Atlas… It’s me. I know you don’t want me in your life anymore.
While that sucks, I will respect that, because you’re right.
All I ever do is fuck shit up. I make life messy for you and you don’t deserve that, so I’m breaking the cycle.
I won’t come back this time. All I ever wanted to do was love you but I can’t even do that right. So this is…”
Her voice trails off before there is an audible gasp followed by the sound of metal colliding, and glass shattering right before the voice recording ends.
Something in my chest breaks as the phone slips from my hand. I’m frozen in place for a few moments, trying to comprehend what I heard.
Was she driving drunk?
What the fuck happened?
After a few minutes, the shock wears off and I spring into action.
I fire off an SOS text to Gavin and then I call her. The phone doesn’t ring, going straight to voicemail meaning it’s probably dead or worse.
Gavin storms in with his laptop as I try to think of what to do next. Normally I’m fine under pressure, but something has me shaken.
“What’s the SOS, Atlas?”
Before I respond to him I throw the mask back in place. I wasn’t about to show my cards to anyone, not even Gavin, until I figured out what really happened. He didn’t know about her and I didn’t think now was the time to tell him everything.
“We have a high priority job. Missing persons case and it hasn’t been long enough for the police to step in, so they hired us.”
“Okay, what do we know?”
“Target’s name is Maizyn Lewis, 26 year old female. The last known location was Lucky’s Sports Bar some time between 11pm and 2am. There was a tracker placed on her phone, but it is currently disabled.”
It’s possible, with a little bit of work, I could ping the last location but it’ll take time.”
He studied me for a few seconds before responding, “start trying to locate the last ping on the cell phone, I’ll start on the cameras and see if we can find something.”
I nod my head at him as I turn towards my screens and begin typing. It didn’t take long for Gavin to hack into the CCTV cameras near Lucky’s.
“Can you give me a description so I know what I’m looking for?”
“Shit, yeah my bad, long wavy brown hair. Last known wearing blue jeans and black shirt. She should’ve been driving a black Altima.”
It takes a few more minutes before he spins his laptop to face me. “Is this her?”
I turn to see the recording of her getting out of her car and storming into the bar.
“What’s the time stamp?” It takes everything in me to keep my emotions in check. I force my voice to stay monotone but it comes out sounding so detached, I barely recognize it.
“11:48pm.”
I scribbled that down on the notepad next to me. “Okay, watch and see if you can find what time she left the bar.”
“Gotcha.” Even though his response was quiet, it was measured, clearly depicting how focused he is on the task at hand.
I lose track of time trying to ping the cell phone location, when Gavin finally speaks up. “Uh. She leaves at 1:16 AM, but you might want to see this.”
I glance at his screen and see her stumble her way towards her car. She is so drunk, she can barely stand up straight. She is definitely too drunk to drive.
Fuck.
Panic arises in my chest as I remember that voicemail, but I shove it back down. Now is not the time to lose my shit.
“Call Kyle and have him put an APB on her car. I should have the last known cell phone location in a few minutes.”
As soon as the screen pings the coordinates, I send them to Gavin, and we rush out the door. I’m not familiar with the location so we map it as we climb into my car.
The GPS led us to the side of the road, ten minutes from the bar, but we didn’t find her or her car.
There was nothing here. It was deserted.
Even though we don’t see anything, this is still the last known location of her phone.
We pull over and start looking around until I spot it, her phone shattered to pieces in the middle of the road.
I step closer to the phone, but I already know it’s useless.
The phone won’t give us anything in this condition.
I pick it up, putting it in my pocket anyway.
So much for a tracker.
Feeling defeated, we climb back into the car and start heading back towards the office when Gavin’s phone pings. He glances at me, looks back at the phone, before his eyes lock on me again.
“Spit it out already. What’s the text about?”
“It’s from Kyle. They found the car. It’s about twenty-five minutes from here. How she got that far, that drunk, I have no idea, but do you want to check it out now?”
“Yeah, the faster the better, which way?”
He points behind us, so I pull an illegal U-turn and continue in that direction. The further we drove, the more anxious I got. The sound of metal crushing replayed in my head as I imagined what I was going to see when we arrived.
My heart beat sped up as her car came into view. It was definitely in a ditch, but didn’t look as bad as I thought it would, considering what I heard. I jump out of the vehicle and rush to her car as soon as I put mine in park.
“Alright, Gavin. I’ll check the car. Can you check the roads ahead to see if you find anything while I do that?”
“Of course, man. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
He jogs ahead as I look in the car. Any amount of hope I had vanishes when I find that her keys are still in the ignition, and her belongings are still in the car. Everything she always brings with her is here, but she is nowhere to be found.
Where the fuck can she be?
There isn’t anything here to make me assume she was injured. Not a single trace of blood can be found. Snapping my head in each direction, I look for any signs of her.
Nothing.
It’s a dead end.
While I’m glad I didn’t find her lying in the fucking ditch or bleeding out somewhere, that doesn’t ease my mind. There aren’t even footprints leading away from the car.
Gavin runs back to me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Atlas, I think it’s time we head back to the office and try to find out more. There’s nothing we can do here; there are no leads.”
While it pains me to agree, I know he is right. I let my silence say everything that I currently can’t. No matter how bad I want to keep looking, we have no leads, so I agree, and we head back to the office.
The only thing left to do was to call hospitals to see if she was at any of them. I called twelve hospitals. Fucking twelve, and every single hospital said the same thing.
She wasn’t there. Twelve different calls just to be told that she wasn’t at any of them.
There’s no way she can just vanish. She has to be somewhere, so I hacked into the city cameras trying to find any trace of her. I was able to code in an alert that would ping my phone anytime facial recognition came across someone fitting her description.
Before I noticed, the sun had gone down and was currently rising again. She had officially been gone for over 24 hours, and the longer it took to find her, the worse I felt. I wouldn’t give up until I found her.
All the files on my desk blur together at this point. I know what they all say. I could probably recite the papers word for word without even looking at them. It doesn’t matter how many times I reread them; they still won’t lead me to her.
I run my hands over my face before tugging at my hair in frustration. There has to be something I missed.
Suddenly, I remember the voicemail didn’t come from her number.
Whose phone did she call from?
I scramble for my phone I threw across the room earlier in anger. I click on the voicemail, calling the number. On the sixth ring, a woman’s voice came on the phone. “We won’t be taking any calls while we’re mourning our loss,” then the line disconnects.
My phone fell from my grasp.
My thoughts start to spiral, making it difficult to keep up with them.
She said mourning.
Maze used this phone and now they are mourning someone.
Is that what happened to her?
When she said she was leaving, I thought she meant me, not this world.
It felt like I was just shot in the heart. I can’t breathe, my ears ringing. I clutch my chest as I try to squeeze the pieces back together, but it is no use. All I manage to do is bloody my hands as I watch the sharp fractures fall through my fingers and scatter to the floor at my feet.
My vision goes blurry and I panic when I can no longer see anything in front of me. I think I’m going blind until warm droplets run down my cheeks, and realize I’m crying… I didn’t know I could even do that.
I didn’t know what to do.
I want to tell Maze I was sorry for everything.
She was the only good thing in my life… I know that now.