One day it was braces and pigtails, now she was on her first spring break in Mexico.

Salma slammed the phone back into its cradle. Her cheeks were flushed red, her eyes puffy. The frustration in her voice cut across the room like a knife. She slumped onto the couch, a sob caught in her throat. “They tell me nothing. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry.’ How can they tell me not to worry? Celine should have been home over a week ago. The police down there are worse than useless.” Her voice took on a patronising tone. “‘Don’t worry. It’s not unusual for a young woman to choose to stay a bit longer than planned. Maybe she found a boyfriend.’”

“Have you heard anything from her at all?”

“The last we heard from her was on Monday. They were all going on a trip to see the pyramids.”

Clay pulled up a wooden stool and sat down. “We all know Celine would have called if she had met a guy, and would definitely have called if she had decided to stay an extra week.” The feeling of dread crept further into Clay’s stomach, a sense of dread he kept from his voice. “What about the people she went with? Have they come home?”

“No. She flew down with three others, two girls and a boy from school. None of them have returned. We should never have let her go. I knew something bad was going to happen to her. She’s still a little girl, my little girl.” Tears rolled unchecked down Salma’s face.

Sebastian lowered his head.

“Have the other parents had any word?” asked Clay.

“We didn’t even know where two of her friends lived. What kind of parents does that make us? She went all the way to Cancún with those kids and we didn’t even know their parents’ phone numbers.” Sebastian’s expression was frozen in misery. “We had to call Marco’s parents to find out.”

Anger flashed again across Salma’s face. “But that’s not the worst thing. We couldn’t even fly down there to look for her.”

“But I can,” Clay said. “I’ll fly down first thing in the morning. Do you know which hotel she was staying in?”

Salma handed him a sheet of paper, the ink near its edges smudged with thumbprints. The details on the page were written in Celine’s handwriting, smooth and uniform. The page contained the name and telephone number of the hotel: the Mayan Fiesta. Below were the names of her travel buddies. Their telephone numbers had been added in blocked numbers that held none of Celine’s delicate penmanship.

The telephone numbers of the hotel and the police station had been underscored with an angry hand.

6

Chrissie Haims smiled at Danny, a single bead of sweat tracing a slow path down her face. “Feel’s good inside, right?”

“Damn good. But I don’t know how long I can last, I haven’t done this for quite a while.”

Chrissie rolled her hips in slow concentric circles.