The Wolf Code

Chapter 2

The shrill ring of the phone yanked Senora out of a deep sleep just in time to see the room light up so bright that it nearly blinded her.  She fumbled for the phone, answering it on the second ring, the loud rumble of thunder shaking her to her core and making her chest hurt.

“Edwards,” she said, though she knew who it was.

There was another flash and an immediate clap of thunder, then the sky opened up and the deluge began.  Senora struggled to hear J on the other end, but the storm was too loud.  She got out of bed, hurrying into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.  The storm still raged, but at least she could hear.

“J, are you there?” she asked, waiting for the all too familiar, disjointedly spoken voice of the computer talking back to her.

She could hear the click of the keyboard as J typed, and the generic male voice came over the line as it had every year since Senora had been recruited for the high risk missing person unit. 

“Have you made any progress in the case?” J asked through the computer’s voice.

“There wasn’t much to go on,” she admitted. 

She blinked a few times, looking at her watch and noting the hour.  It was only five in the morning, but it was time that Senora got going.  There were some local places she wanted to canvas before it got too hot, and she needed to head out, despite the storm.  Addie Thompson wasn’t going to find herself, though she had in the past, according to the Sheriff.

“How are the locals?”

“Awful,” Senora admitted, dropping her normally professional tone for a second.  “They don’t believe that she is a victim, and they’re not willing to ‘waste’ much time on finding her.  It’s really sad.”

“Did they give a reason for their apathy?”

“Apparently, Miss Thompson has faked her disappearance a few times, and the Sheriff seems to think that if she got kidnapped, she’s finally getting what she deserves.  I am more than a little disgusted with how they’re treating the case, but I guess I can’t blame them.  I’m waiting for the background report on Miss Thompson to come back so I can see for myself what the pattern is with her, and if there’s a chance that this disappearance is a hoax.”

“Do you think it is?”

“No,” she said after a long pause.  “I don’t know how to explain it, but something feels different about this time.  The way the Sheriff described it, Addie seemed to spiral into a funk, then fake a disappearance for attention.  But this time, it looked as if she’d gotten her life together and was doing well.  This just doesn’t have the markings of someone who is doing it for attention.  She had everything going for her.”

“Others have faked their own disappearance while appearing to have their lives together.  I don’t think it’s that crazy to think that too much responsibility could set a person like Addie off if the stories of her past are accurate.”

“That’s why I’m waiting for her background check to come back.  I need to see what happened the other times to get an idea of where I should start.  They don’t usually take this long.”

“That’s actually why I was calling.  Her juvenile records are sealed, and not just by the normal avenues.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Usually, I can get around restrictions and sealed records, but this time, it’s as if her entire childhood was wiped clean and no record was kept anywhere.”

“That’s odd,” Senora said, jumping when another crash of thunder rumbled overhead and shook the hotel bathroom.

“Is everything okay?” J asked in the hollow computer voice.

“There’s just a bad storm,” she said. 

“I’ll send over what I have on Addie, but it’s not much.  Better be careful with that storm.  It’s tornado season in Texas, and you don’t want to get blown away.”

“Tornado season?” Senora repeated, resisting the urge to gulp fearfully. 

“Yep.  Or as Texans like to call it, ‘every day of the year.’”

Before Senora could respond, J hung up, and the portable printer beside her laptop fired up and began spitting out papers in rapid succession.  Senora waited until they were done to retrieve them, sitting down at the desk to look through the file and shaking her head.  J hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said that Addie’s past had been wiped clean.  There was nothing on her prior to her sixteenth birthday.  No school records, no medical history.  Nothing.  It was as if Addie hadn’t existed before she had gotten her driver’s license.

“That’s so strange,” Senora said aloud, flipping through the pages and reading what little the report had to offer.

What the report did show backed up the Sheriff’s account of Addie’s multiple faked abductions.

Senora sighed heavily.  Not that it made what the Sheriff had done and said any better, but at least she understood where he was coming from now.  Addie had faked her own abduction fifteen times in the space of four years, and it was clear that she was doing it for attention.  It was no surprise that the police department was tired of putting their resources toward a girl who obviously needed help.  Looking through the file a second time, Senora didn’t see any indication that the girl had been sent to a counselor, but that didn’t mean anything.  Senora could have sought help on her own, which wouldn’t necessarily be in her file.  If Senora was a betting woman, she would bet that Addie had received some kind of help, or she’d hit a wall.

Maybe, she simply grew up and decided that the attention she was receiving wasn’t the kind that she wanted.  Whatever the reason, the more she knew about Addie Thompson, the more she was certain that this latest abduction was genuine.

Her faked abductions had run on a pretty consistent pattern for years, but the last faked abduction had been over a year before, and that was out of character for Addie.  Senora doubted that someone who faked their own disappearance every three to five months could go an entire year between cons.  That was, unless they had stopped conning people altogether and were making positive changes in their life.  Despite what the Sheriff had assumed, knowing what she did about Addie made it more likely that this abduction was real.  The pattern didn’t fit, and Addie had made herself an easy target with her past behavior.

Anyone who knew Addie knew that no one would believe that she had actually been kidnapped, at least, not right away.  She was the perfect mark, and as Senora finished the file and set it down on the desk, she felt more worried about Addie than she had yesterday. 

Addie was in danger.  Senora felt it down to her very core.  If she didn’t find Addie soon, Senora suspected that she never would.  At least, not alive.

“Stop it right now,” she said to the empty room, shaking off the gloomy thoughts and wishing that she could silence them.