MISSING PERSON
“So you met her here?” another of the officers asked.
“No,” April said, with a big sigh. “I didn’t meet her here. But she said she was coming here. That was the last thing she told me.”
“So you don’t know if she actually came here that day?”
“No,” April replied, grimly.
A heavy wave of hopelessness suddenly overwhelmed her. Her patience with the cops’ questions was beginning to wear thin, revealing the truer emotion underneath it. It was the feeling she had been trying, for weeks now, to avoid: raw despair. That was the exact moment she heard a voice from inside the small crowd of onlookers.
“I saw her,” the voice said.
It was a man’s voice. April and the police officers, and a few stragglers standing around in front of Metropolitan Bakery, suddenly turned around to see who’d spoken. Before April spotted the man, she saw the faces of the people who had seen him: the looks were of startled surprise, curiosity, even amusement. And then she saw what they saw. A young Amish man, with wide shoulders and long limbs, stepped confidently forward.
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Table of Contents
MISSING PERSON Also by Title Page Copyright Page Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Teaser chapter ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2020 by Avi Steinberg
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
April wasn’t the type to call the cops. She took care of her own business, didn’t need to rely on anyone. That, at least, was the story she liked to tell about herself. But here she was, standing at the bustling center of Reading Terminal Market in downtown Philadelphia, talking openly with two uniformed officers as a small crowd of curious onlookers gathered around.
She was trying to explain, for the hundredth time, what had happened: her sister, Rose, was gone.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” one of the cops asked.
“Gone,” April replied, already regretting this conversation. “As in disappeared.”
Nobody had heard from Rose in about two weeks. She hadn’t shown up to her job at Walgreens. She had, by all appearances, vanished into thin air. Wasn’t it difficult enough for April to deal with this emotionally? Why did she have to explain it, too?
And there were things April wasn’t saying. Things she’d barely admit to herself, much less tell the police. But here’s what she did reveal: her sister’s last words to her, before she disappeared. I’m going to Reading. I’m going to that bakery. Well, April was now at Reading Terminal Market, at that bakery, doing her part. She was talking to the cops, trying to make them understand.
“So you met her here?” another