Walk beside the Creek

I woke up later in the emergency room and saw Jordan speaking to an officer up front. I got off bed only to get dizzy and I held on to the bed post before I fell. Jordan ran to me. "Ella you need to rest." He held me and helped lay back on bed.

"What happened? Where's Keira? I need to see her." I tried pushing Jordan's arm away and get up but he didn't let me.

"She's missing, Ella." He spoke the words I dread to hear. When all I gave was a shocked look he continued. "Everyone's out looking. We've got the search dogs out there too. We can't confirm anything until we find her."

"The blood. There was blood on her shoe. And the knife. You couldn't find anything? There has to be something." I spoke without a pause. I need to know where Keira is. She was like my own.

"It was not hers. The blood, I mean." Jordan explained. "It was animal blood. And we couldn't recover any prints off the knife."

"How long was I out for?" I asked.

"Long enough." He replied.

"I need to get out of here." I told him feeling a tear creep out of my eye. "I need to find her, Jordan." He pulled me into a hug when I couldn't stop the rest of my tears.

"Ssshh! We are going to, Ella. I promise you."

Turned out I was dehydrated and the anxiety of what might have happened to Keira took a toll on me. It was dark outside when Jordan and I left the hospital. Quarter past ten to be precise.

"Where are her parents, Jordan?" I asked on the drive back home.

"We're trying to track them down. Right now they are our primary suspects."

I was always so disgusted by the thought of Keira's parents. She was treated like a slave. Every morning she would have a new bruise on her face or arms. Result of being beaten by her father. I never liked dropping her back home. I even insisted that she come stay with me. "That's my home, Ella. And they are my parents. Doesn't matter if they don't treat me as their child, but I need to treat them as my parents." She had replied. She was only nine, yet so wise.

Jordan dropped me home and headed back to the department. He was taking charge of this case since he knew how much Keira meant to me.

I couldn't sleep that night. My thoughts and dreams were all Keira. I hope she's okay. I thought about her and felt myself drown in anxiety all over again. I walked out into my balcony and looked up at the stars.

"You don't just see, Ella. You have to look." It was Keira's all famous sentence.

Keira and I used to always watch the stars together when she was over for dinner. Making jokes and telling each other really bad ghost stories. Sometimes we played a round of three-word-story and we got really creative building up the most ridiculous story known to mankind.

I laughed thinking about all that time we spent together. She never disappointed me and I made sure I never did either.

It's been just over seventy-two hours and there still is no sign of Keira. Her mother came home the following day finding the house under surveillance and her daughter missing, threw her hands up in the air screaming and bawling when she received the news. The police had ruled her out as a suspect as was Keira's father.

They had been out of town with Keira's sick grandfather and they had a strong alibi. With them out, the police were having a hard time with this case. Jordan contacted me every day even though they were getting nowhere close to finding Keira. He never told me that, but it was pretty clear to me. Anxiety was taking over me and I was not doing very well. I started a search party and we looked in so many places covering the towns on either side of ours as well. Walking into houses, speaking to people, but nothing helped. We were hitting a brick wall.