“So, she said she wanted to get out,” Bryce said, then shrugged. “I was cool with that. But she said she just wanted to go. No plan or anything.”

“So you just started driving?” Lauren asked.

“Sort of,” he said. “She messed with the GPS. Told me where to go. I thought we were on a road trip.” He looked at each of us again. “How did you find me?”

“Credit card,” Lauren said.

His face flushed. “Shit. My mom’s gonna be pissed. And so’s my dad.”

“They already are,” I told him. I drummed my fingers on the linoleum table. “So, where is Elizabeth? She’s not at the hotel.”

“You’ve been to the hotel?” he asked, his voice disbelieving.

“Credit card,” Lauren said again.

“Oh, right,” he said, shaking his head. “No, she’s not there. She bailed this morning.”

I stopped drumming, my fingers gripping the edge of the table instead. “What do you mean bailed?”

He shifted in his chair. “She woke me up. She was already dressed. Said she was leaving. I tried to get up to go with but she said no. She was leaving and I couldn’t go with her.” His face fell. “She broke up with me.”

His story wasn’t making sense and I was aggravated. Lauren must’ve sensed it because she clamped her hand down tightly on my shoulder.

“She broke up with you?” Lauren asked. “This morning?”

He slumped a little lower in the chair and nodded. “Yeah. Woke me up. Said she had to go but I couldn’t come with. Then said she was sorry but she had to break up with me. She thanked me for bringing her here but said that I should go home to Minnesota. I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s so goddamn stubborn sometimes.”

I had a weird flash of pride hearing that. She may not have been with Lauren or myself for the last decade, but she’d clearly inherited some of our personality traits.

“I don’t know why she’d bring me here and then just bail on me, you know?” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Totally not like her. At all.”

“Where did she go?” Lauren asked.

He frowned and shook his head. “Some friend of hers came to pick her up.”

“A friend?” I asked. “From here?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Someone she already knew. She said she was coming to pick her up at the hotel. I stayed in the room for a few minutes after she left. I was pissed, you know? And then I went downstairs because I was mad. I was going to yell at her, tell her it wasn’t fair.” His face fell again. “But she was already gone when I got down to the lobby.”

“Who was the friend?” I asked.

He shrugged like he didn’t care. “I don’t know, man.”

“Think,” I said. “She had to have talked about her before.”

He shrugged again, his eyes cast downward.

“Hey,” I said.

He lifted his eyes from the table.

“You brought an underage kid about eight-hundred miles away from her home,” I said. “You’re legal. You’re responsible here. And we already know you’ve got a record.”

His face darkened.

“So unless you want to spend the rest of the day with a bunch of cops here in Denver, I’d suggest you try and remember a few things,” I said.

He turned away from me and stared out the window.

We waited him out.

“I think her name is Morgan,” he finally said.

“First or last?”

“First,” he answered. “Last name is Thompson. Or Thompkins. I’m not sure.”

“How did she know her?”

He thought for a moment. “I’m not sure, but I think a while back she mentioned a friend of hers from middle school moved to Colorado. So I guess from Minnesota? I don’t know. Ellie, she doesn’t talk a whole lot about herself.”

I wasn’t sure why, but that stung me. “What do you mean?”

“It takes awhile to get to know her,” Bryce said. “She’s not quiet, but she asks a lot of questions. But the questions are about whoever she’s talking to. Like she wants to know everything about you. But then you ask about her and she’s just sort of…I don’t know. Vague? I don’t know.”

I wondered why that was. Because she couldn’t remember who she was? Or because she could remember, but didn’t want to?

“It’s not like I know all of her friends,” he said. “I don’t even know a lot of her friends from school.”

I didn’t care about her friends at school. All I cared about was finding the one person who would help me find my daughter.

“Any idea where Morgan lives?” I asked.

He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. I wanted to slam my fist down on his hand. “I don’t know for sure,” he said. “But we were driving yesterday. Somewhere in Wyoming. And she was looking at a map. We bought one at a gas station. I’m pretty sure she marked something on the map. I asked her why she was drawing on it, just like teasing her or whatever. But she got all annoyed and folded up the map and never answered.”

“So you never saw it?” I asked.

He stopped tapping his fingers and looked across the table at me. “No. But I’m pretty sure it’s still on the chair in the hotel room.”

FIVE

The clerk at the hotel was busy with a guest checking out when the three of us walked in. I moved us quickly past the front desk so we wouldn’t have to go through the charade of explaining why we were together. We rode the elevator in silence. Bryce had his hands shoved inside the pockets of his sweatshirt and kept his eyes glued to the elevator door. I watched him. He seemed genuinely broken up that Elizabeth had left him and I didn’t think it was just about ego. There was a look on his face that said it was more than that.

I was pretty sure he loved my daughter.

The door opened and we followed him down the hall to his room. He shoved the keycard in the slot on the door, the light blinked green and he pushed the door open. The room was hot, warm air pulsing out of the wall-mounted heater. The thick brocade curtains were drawn closed, a sliver of sunlight slicing through where the two panels met. The king-sized bed was unmade, the gold-colored comforter pushed to the edge of the bed. A small duffle bag sat on the dresser next to the television, unzipped, clothes spilling out of it. The small table in the corner was cluttered with several half-empty bottles, soda and juice and water. Spare change and a couple of receipts were spread out between the bottles.

And there was a folded-up map on the chair next to the table.

Bryce walked over to the chair, picked up the map and sat down. He unfolded it, stared at it for a minute, then poked at it with his finger. “Here. She circled it. Castle Rock.”

I crossed the room, my hand outstretched, and he held the map out to me. I took it and stared, my eyes drawn to the circle my daughter had drawn. I studied it, my eyes focused on the circle alone and not the surrounding area on the map. When I finally expanded my view, I saw it was south of where we were. Eyeballing it on the map, it looked to be maybe thirty miles from the hotel.

Lauren came up next to me. “She write anything else?”

I scanned the map, flipping it over, but saw nothing. “No.”

She looked at Bryce. “Have you tried calling her?”

“She turned her phone off when we left Minnesota,” he said. “I think so her parents couldn’t track it.” His cheeks flushed pink. “Or whoever they are, I mean.”

“Can you give me the number?” Lauren asked. “Just in case.”

He pulled a phone out of his pocket, scrolled through numbers on his screen, then recited a number. Lauren typed it into her phone.

I looked around the room. There was nothing that I could see that belonged to Elizabeth. “She took everything with her?”

Bryce nodded. “Yeah. She told me to go home.”

“Are you going to?” I asked. “Go home?”

He shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Not sure what else to do.”

I grabbed a notepad from the dresser, a thin white pad with the hotel logo. I scribbled my number on it and held it out to him. “My cell. If she calls you, I’d like for you to call me.”