"There's still a good chance that she did indeed willingly go home with somebody," he said. "The married waiter, maybe. Or somebody she didn't want to admit to you. That's our perfect scenario. But if these disappearances are indeed the work of one guy, and he's got your friend...well, that's not good news."

Charlene went inside and punched in. The restaurant opened in fifteen minutes, so right now everybody was just doing prep work. She walked over to the chef's station, where Marco was busy dicing green peppers.

"Where's Travis?" she asked.

"Gonna be late. Got errands to run."

"He's coming in late because he needs to run errands?"

"That's what he said."

"That doesn't sound like him. Did he say what he was doing?"

"Nope," said Marco. "I didn't ask. Not in the habit of interrogating my boss."

"Okay, thanks." Charlene returned to the back room, took out her cell phone, and gave Travis a call. It went straight to voice mail.

She typed in a text: Hey, call me ASAP, okay? Gertie's gone missing.

No, wait. Charlene was probably far overreaching the scope of the problem, but if Travis was in danger, the culprit might have access to his phone. She deleted the message and retyped it.

Hey, give me a call when you get a chance. Might need to come in late tomorrow.

She sent it off, hoping there'd be an immediate response, and then she could call him to hear his voice.

No response.

No reason to freak out yet, but she did call Lugens to let him know.

The day was maddening. Charlene wanted to do something to help, yet there was nothing she could do on her own that wouldn't put Gertie (and Travis?) at more risk. She absolutely would not ignore Lugens' orders about staying in the restaurant. That would be stupid. Which meant that all she could do was wait tables and helplessly hope that Gertie or Travis would return her message.

Neither of them returned her message.

She tried to think of some clue she could've missed, but the situation seemed pretty straightforward: Gertie had gone to dinner with "Warren," and he kidnapped her. The mystery was whether she was still alive.

Charlene believed that she was.

She also believed that she might be deluding herself.

Though she didn't dump lasagna on anybody, she didn't provide very good customer service for the first few hours of her shift, and her tips suffered accordingly. She also had to go into the walk-in freezer, shut the door, press her apron against her mouth, and muffle a frustrated scream.

* * *

Everything hurt.

Gertie's fingers hurt the worst, of course, followed by her stabbed legs. The rest of her body was in agony from having so little room to move in the cage. She couldn't imagine what it would be like if she wasn't so thin. Plus she had a pounding headache and was sick to her stomach.

She wasn't ready to die, though.