Page 31 of Organized Chaos

Chapter 9

“Brandon, there is noone here.” Milo sighed for the umpteenth time. It made me want to punch the fucker.

“Just give me a second, will you?” I impatiently moved through the rooms. Milo held up his hands in surrender, leaving me be.

I should never have left Maya alone.

After reaching the town center, I called Aldo to run a thorough background check on one Maya Mathews. When I returned later that afternoon, the cottage was deserted, and Maya was long gone.

Frantically, I had searched room after room and the grounds. No traces of her whatsoever. It made no sense. Maya couldn't have left this property without transportation. It was impossible.

My first impulse was to call the police or first responders to search the surrounding areas, but it hadn’t been long enough to file a report. A nagging thought had me driving to Nice instead. Her flight was the following day. If she somehow managed to get out of here, that’d be the destination.

Aldo called during my anxious drive.

“What do you have for me?” I had simultaneously picked up the phone along with my speed on the deserted road.

“I wanted to double-check the spelling for the name you gave me.”

“Why?” I snapped, urgency spiking with every passing minute.

“Because I can’t find a Maya Mathews that fits your description. Are you sure she lives in Paris?”

“Positive.” I had memorized every detail on Maya’s ID when I first glanced at it.

“I tried multiple variations of the name and the ID number. It’s a fake.”

“What!” I slammed the brakes abruptly. If there were cars behind me, it would have led to a pile-up.

Aldo explained that every detail I had given him was off by a number or two, making the ID seemingly real to the naked eye without amounting to much. The peculiarity of the situation only intensified upon my arrival at the hotel I had stayed the night I met Maya.

“What do you mean you don’t remember her?” I hissed at the bartender. “You asked for her ID right in front of me.”

So far, my search had been futile. There wasn’t a trace of Maya at the cottage. Aldo couldn’t locate any person by the name of Maya Mathews. The bartender didn’t remember her, so I went to the hotel manager, demanding the surveillance footage from the night in question. Several “this is unorthodox” and rejections later, they relented, only to find out that the footage had been wiped out, leaving me to harass the poor bartender once again.

The second round of interrogation ticked him off. “Sir, as I already explained, there were many guests at the bar on Friday night. I don’t remember everyone.”

“Brandon!”

I closed my eyes at Tasha’s irritatingly loud voice (or was her name Farah?). I wasn’t expecting to run into her, but a eureka flashed in my mind.

Tasha/Farah was also present that night.

“I didn’t know you were still in Nice.” She moved closer to me.

“Hey! Do you recall the girl I was with on Friday night?” I had cut right to the chase, dismissing all formalities.

Tasha/Farah appeared contemplative, tapping her lips with her thumb. “Umm...”

“Blonde. Thin. Blue eyes.” I attempted to jog her memory. “I left with her at the end of the night.”

She simply squinted her eyes, perplexed.

I suppressed the urge to yell at her. “We were standing here, remember?”