The Girl and the Unlucky 13 (Emma Griffin™ FBI Mystery) by A.J. Rivers (i have read the book .txt) 📕

We eat as I continue to scroll through the footage. The angle of the camera allows us to see everyone who was going inside, which makes it easy to spot the people who weren’t Ashley. It’s a small hospital; the waiting room was quiet in the early evening. But as the sun went down, more and more people started showing up.

Some were visibly injured, others seemed to be ill. Some wandered in on their own and others came with groups. As it gets more chaotic at the entrance, I slow the pace I’m scrolling to make sure we don’t miss anyone going inside. Suddenly I see a familiar face glance up toward the camera.

“That’s Vivian,” I point to the screen.

The slightly younger version of Vivian looks the way she did in the pictures, her hair longer and her face less stern and intense. She’s on one side of a figure in a sweatshirt, a man on the other, and another girl behind them. The hood on the sweatshirt conceals the figure’s face, but I know it’s Ashley.

“Are you sure?” Dean asks.

“Yes. What’s the timestamp?” He notes the time on the camera and I go to the other set of footage. “This is the camera inside the waiting room.”

We cue the footage to the seconds just before we saw the group walking through the emergency room door and wait.

“There they are,” Dean says. “Ashley is in really bad shape.”

That’s an understatement. Ashley is barely on her own feet. The people on either side of her are holding her up as they go through the entrance toward the chairs clustered to the side of the reception desk. The woman behind the desk is already talking to someone else, so they move right past her. They bring Ashley to the far side of the seating area and lower her down into a chair tucked in the corner.

She slumps in it, looking as though she’s no longer conscious as she’s sitting there. She starts to slide down the edge of the chair, heading for the floor. Allison steps forward and catches her, starting to pull her up. She says something, and Vivian steps up to help her. I can only imagine how weak Allison is feeling, knowing what she has gone through not long before this moment.

The male figure who is with them starts to walk away, then pauses and looks back at them. He seems to be trying to hurry them along. No one around them is paying any attention to what’s happening. The girls look at Ashley one more time, then walk away.

As they’re headed toward the entrance again, the man with them looks up. The camera catches an image of his face. Dean reaches forward to stop the playback.

“That’s Sean Melrose,” he says. “Allison’s ex-boyfriend.”

I stare at the image. I’ve seen that face before.

It was staring at me in the hospital hallway after I talked to Leona.

Forty-Two

“That’s Allison’s ex-boyfriend?” I ask.

Dean nods. “I looked into him as you asked me to. That’s definitely him. Didn’t she tell you he was the one who helped get her into the hospital?”

“She did,” I say.

“Then what is it?” Dean asks.

“I’m not sure yet. Hold on,” I say. “Let’s see what happened to Ashley.”

We continue as the people in the waiting room got called back to the doctor and others came to take their place in the chairs. No one looked Ashley’s way. No one seemed to notice she was there. Suddenly, she stirred. Her head dropped back, then lifted. She looked around. A few seconds later, she stood up and made her way toward the door, walking out of the emergency room.

As quickly as I can, I cue up the footage from the other camera to the right time, so we can watch her leave. She was still shaky on her feet as she stumbled out of the sliding glass doors and onto the sidewalk. It was getting close to midnight, which means the footage will end soon. The back of my neck tingles as I watch her fall sideways and catch herself with one hand against the brick wall of the hospital.

She used it to guide her as she made her way down toward the corner of the building. Leaning against it, she slid down to sit and rested her head back. The minutes tick by. No one checked on her or even looked at her.

She sat there for almost twenty minutes. Silent. Alone. Abandoned by the people she trusted.

My heart breaks for her.

Finally, she used the wall to stand back up, and walked around the corner, disappearing from the frame.

“Is that it?” Dean asks. “Did they give you anything else?”

“No. Those are the only cameras they gave me. They didn’t mention any others on the outside of the hospital. I’m guessing they only have them in the parking areas and at the entrances. That side of the building is just a narrow driveway,” I say.

“So another dead end. We have her right up until she disappears. No idea what happened to her after that,” Dean says, sounding frustrated and angry.

“You looked into Sean Melrose,” I say.

“Yes,” he said. “I sifted through his old social media and traced some of his new stuff, but most of it is private. I can crack it, but it’s going to take some time. I was able to do a quick background check on him, though.”

“What did you find out about him?”

“Not much. He got in some trouble before Ashley went missing. Nothing really serious. Drinking. Some traffic stuff. Trespassing. Fighting. After this, he pretty much went off the radar. It seems as though he and Allison kept things going for a while, but then he skipped town. I didn’t see anything about his being back around town. He might not have been.”

“He has. I saw him at the hospital.”

“When you were getting the footage?”

“No,” I say. “The other hospital.”

“With Allison?” Dean frowns.

“No.” I shake my head. “With Leona.”

“Ashley’s sister?” Ava asks, sounding as