The latch on every window in the small apartment was broken. Kristi figured she wouldn’t mention the lack of security to her father. Immediately, as she headed down the exterior staircase for her things, she called Hiram’s cell. Irene’s grandson didn’t answer, but Kristi left a message and her phone number, then began hauling her few belongings to her new home, a crow’s nest overlooking the stone fence surrounding All Saints College.

Seated at her desk at the Baton Rouge Police Department, Detective Portia Laurent stared at the pictures of the four coeds missing from All Saints College. None of the girls had resurfaced. Just disappeared, not only from Louisiana, but, it seemed, the face of the earth.

As computer keyboards clicked, printers hummed, and an old clock ticked off the final days of the year, Portia eyed the pictures for what seemed to be the millionth time. They were all so young. Smiling girls with fresh faces, intelligence and hope shining from their eyes.

Or were their expressions masks?

Behind those practiced smiles was there something darker lurking?

The girls had been troubled, that much had been ascertained. So they’d been written off. No one, not the other members of the police department, not the administration of the college, not even the missing girls’ families seemed to think that any serious foul play was involved. Nope. These smiling once-upon-a-time students were just runaways, headstrong wild girls who had, for one reason or another, decided to take a hike and not reappear.

Had they been into drugs?

Prostitution?

Or were they just tired of school?

Had they connected with a boyfriend who had whisked them away?

Had they decided to hitchhike around the country?

Had they wanted a quickie vacation and never returned?

The answers and opinions varied, but Portia seemed to be the only person on the planet who cared. She’d taken copies of these girls’ campus ID pictures and pinned them to the bulletin board of her cubicle. The originals were in the general file of all the recent missing persons, but these were different; these photos connected every girl who had attended All Saints College, disappeared, then left no trail. No credit cards had been used, no checks cashed, no ATMs accessed. Their cell phone usages had stopped on the evenings they’d gone missing, but not one of them had turned up in a local hospital. None of them had bought a bus or plane ticket, nor had there been activity on their MySpace pages.

Portia stared at their pictures and wondered what the hell had happened to them. Deep inside, she believed them all dead, but she hoped against hope that her jaded cop instincts were wrong.