Chapter 32: Ava Disappears
The call came just after sunrise.
Noah had barely managed two hours of restless sleep when his phone buzzed across the nightstand. Vince’s name glowed on the screen. The voice on the other end wasn’t casual, wasn’t teasing—it was sharp and stripped of anything unnecessary.
“She’s gone.”
Noah sat up instantly. “Who?”
“Ava.”
The drive to the bridge felt longer than it was. The morning was gray, low clouds hanging over the water like a lid keeping all the air trapped and stale. Traffic was thin—Bellview wasn’t the kind of place that woke early unless it had to.
He parked on the shoulder, boots crunching on gravel as he made his way down the embankment. The underside of the bridge was a place most people wouldn’t look twice at: a shadowed hollow where the cement was streaked with graffiti, the dirt floor scattered with old bottles and cigarette butts. But Noah had been here enough times to know where Ava’s tent should have been.
It wasn’t there anymore.
The nylon was torn in two, poles snapped like brittle bones. What was left of her bedding lay in a heap, darkened with mud and something darker still.
Vince stood off to the side, arms folded. “I found it like this twenty minutes ago.”
Noah crouched beside the pile, his gaze catching on a scrap of cloth. It was a rag—cheap flannel, torn from a shirt—and it was soaked through with blood. Not dried, not yet.
“She was here recently,” Noah said.
“Or whatever happened to her happened recently,” Vince countered.
The distinction made Noah’s stomach tighten.
“What about the others?” Noah asked. Ava wasn’t the only one who slept under the bridge; there were a few regulars, people who knew enough to keep to themselves.
“Gone,” Vince said. “Tent city’s cleared out. Either they ran or somebody made them run.”
Noah scanned the shadows beneath the bridge, imagining the night before—footsteps approaching, a quick struggle, maybe a muffled cry. Whoever did this hadn’t just scared Ava. They’d erased her.
“Sheriff Mason know yet?” Noah asked.
Vince shrugged. “If he does, he’s not telling you. And if he doesn’t, it’s probably better that way.”
“Why?”
“Because if Mason’s involved—and I’m not saying he is—you’re walking straight into a setup.”
Noah pocketed the bloody rag in a plastic evidence bag from his trunk. He didn’t trust the official channels with something like this.
“She told me someone was watching her,” he said quietly. “Two nights ago. She laughed it off, but…”
“She wasn’t laughing last night,” Vince finished.
The river murmured behind them, the sound too calm for the weight pressing down on Noah’s chest. Ava had been a fragile link in the chain—a witness who might’ve known more than she realized. She’d drifted between talking too much and shutting down completely, and Noah had been trying to keep her steady long enough to get the truth out.
Now she was gone.
And Bellview had a way of making “gone” permanent.
They canvassed the nearby stretch of road, checking the underpass where a few stolen bicycles were chained up, the drainage ditch where kids sometimes hid from the rain. Nothing. No footprints in the mud, no cigarette butts newer than a week old, no signs of where she might’ve been dragged. Whoever took her had cleaned up well.
Too well.
“Someone wanted this to look like she never existed,” Noah said.
Vince eyed him. “Or someone wanted you to know they could reach anyone you talk to.”
The thought burned hot in Noah’s mind. If this was a warning, it wasn’t subtle—it was a declaration. We’re watching. We can touch anything you care about.
By the time they reached Noah’s car again, the clouds had thickened, turning the sky the same color as the water.
“You think she’s still alive?” Vince asked.
Noah didn’t answer right away. He thought about the bloody rag, about the way the tent poles had been snapped deliberately. This wasn’t just a scuffle or a robbery—it was an extraction.
“Yes,” he said finally, because the alternative was unacceptable. “And I’m going to find her.”
Back at the house, Noah spread the contents of his evidence board across the table—photos, scribbled notes, a crude map of Bellview with red pins marking every location tied to Bell’s network. He added a new pin under the bridge.
Ava had been one of the few people willing to speak about the fire without choking on fear. She’d told him about the car she saw that night—a black sedan with its plates covered—parked near the alley just before the blaze. She’d been nervous even saying that much. Now, that detail felt radioactive.
James shuffled in, drawn by the sound of papers rustling. He glanced at the new pin on the map. “Who?”
“Ava,” Noah said. “She’s missing.”
James stared at the map for a long moment before speaking. “Don’t look for her.”
Noah turned. “What?”
“You find her, you’ll find the people who took her. And if you find them, they’ll make sure you’re the next one missing.”
“That’s not going to stop me.”
James’s eyes hardened. “It should.”
The argument died there, but the warning stayed in Noah’s head as he drove to the edge of town. There was one person he hadn’t spoken to yet—an informant who drifted between the motel district and the truck stop. If anyone had seen Ava after she left the bridge, it would be him.
Noah found him behind the gas station, rolling a cigarette with fingers that shook more from nerves than the cold.
“She’s gone,” the man said as soon as Noah approached. “Girl in the purple coat, right? They grabbed her.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Noah asked.
“You don’t want to know,” the man said, eyes darting toward the street. “And I didn’t tell you.”
That night, Noah sat alone in his office, the bloody rag on the desk in front of him. The fabric looked small and harmless, but it was a message written in a language Bellview understood better than anything else.
He thought of Mason’s words from the day before—Even your father had secrets—and wondered if James had ever stood where Noah stood now, holding something that meant someone he was trying to protect had been taken.
If he had… maybe that was the kind of secret he’d carried to his grave.
Noah picked up the rag and sealed it in a second bag. Tomorrow he’d find out whose blood it was. But tonight, he just sat there, staring at the evidence, and making himself one promise:
If Ava was still alive, he would bring her back.
And if she wasn’t…
He’d burn through Bellview until there was nothing left to hide her killers.