Little Girl Gone by Brett Battles Page B

room/kitchen to the left. Logan checked the kitchen first. There were several dishes in the sink, and a box of cereal sitting on the counter, but nothing that really told him if Angie had bolted or not. He headed into the back of the apartment.
    There were two bedrooms at opposite ends of a short T-bone hallway, with a bathroom smack between them. Each bedroom was loosely divided into two separate areas, with beds, dressers, and, in three cases, small desks.
    He found Elyse’s room first. He knew this because of the framed picture on the desk under the window. In it, Elyse, Lara and Anthony were mugging for the camera somewhere along the beach.
    There were several paintings on the wall next to her bed. The images were almost cartoonish. Illustrations, he guessed you’d call them. The common thread in each was a young girl who looked more than a little bit like the girl in the graduation picture Tooney had given him. In the paintings, she seemed to be playing the role of the observer, not quite part of whatever was going on, but always hovering nearby. The girl in the one that stood out most to Logan had wings far too large for her body, and was sitting in a barren tree watching some other kids go by. If the colors hadn’t been so vibrant, and if there hadn’t been a mischievous smile on her face, it would have been depressing, but it was far from that. When he looked at the bottom corner, he wasn’t surprised to find it was signed Elyse Myat .
    He moved to the other half of the room. There were a dozen photos pinned to the wall, but the girl who reoccurred in most of them was not Angie, so Logan assumed Elyse’s roommate had to be one of the other two girls.
    He walked over to the second bedroom, and quickly determined that the bed nearest the door belonged to the last of the long term roommates.
    The other half of the room, Angie’s half, was considerably less lived in. She had no desk, and what pictures she’d taped to her wall were limited to ones taken right there in the apartment. It was as if she had no life before moving in.
    When Logan looked around the bed, he stopped and stared.
    Sitting on the floor were a suitcase and a backpack. He checked inside each. They were stuffed with clothes and a few personal items. He zipped them up, then looked through the dresser he figured belonged to Angie. It was empty.
    Clearing out, he thought, but not cleared out .
    He thought for a moment, then walked back to Elyse’s room, and found a clear spot on the floor next to the wall to sit.
    An hour and twenty minutes passed. Several times during that stretch he wondered if Angie might have left town without her bags. It was always a possibility. But then a key entered the lock, and the door swung open, and someone stepped inside.
    He sensed more than heard the person rushing through the apartment.
    A light flicked on in the hallway spilling into Elyse’s room. Quietly, Logan rose to his feet, ready to act if Angie or whoever it was decided to come his direction. Instead, the person entered the bathroom.
    Logan repositioned himself so that he could see into the hallway, but wouldn’t be noticed without effort. Soon the toilet flushed, then water ran in the sink. A few seconds after it shut off, the person stepped back into the hallway.
    It was Angie, and she was obviously in a hurry as she all but sprinted into her bedroom.
    Logan stepped lightly out of Elyse’s room, and into the dark living room to wait.
    It was only a few moments before he heard the suitcase bang against something. Once Angie reached the hallway, she stopped just long enough to flip off the light, then enter the living room.
    Logan remained motionless as she lugged her bags toward the front door. As soon as she passed his position, he moved silently in behind her, then reached out and grabbed a loop on her backpack, and gave it a tug.
    “Going somewhere?” he asked.
    She swallowed a scream as she whipped around, nearly losing her balance in the