Chapter 3 – The Bestie’s POV

Catherine Jorgenson, Ashleigh’s best friend since practically birth, raised as sisters by their mothers, who were inseparable as well. The two girls grew up together, went to school together, hung out with the same people. To the world, the girls were soul-sisters.

The Ashleigh and Catherine’s friendship changed when the girls began middle school and their classmates invited Ashleigh to their parties. Catherine felt left out of the loop. Ashleigh was the prettier of the two…Catherine the mousier one and nerdish too.

Before middle school, the two girls talked of books and tv shows they liked. But when middle school came, Ashleigh was often invited to parties and Catherine was not. Their classmates didn’t care for the nerdish girl. She cramped their style, so to speak.

To Catherine, Ashleigh had it all. Friends. Popularity. And all the boys were crazy about her. No boy ever dated Catherine. In fact, they all mocked her. Ashleigh, wanting to please her new friends, went along with the name-calling, despite feeling guilty for going along with it.

Catherine was reading one of her romance books when the doorbell rang. It was an officer from the police station here to ask her some questions about Ashleigh Crimson.

Chapter 4 – The Interrogation

After the officer spoke with Catherine about Ashleigh’s disappearance, the officer was sure Catherine had something to do with Ashleigh’s disappearance. He went to see Charles to see if he knew about Catherine Jorgenson.

Happy that someone knew there was something more to Ashleigh’s disappearance, Charles gave the officer everything he could remember about what Ashleigh told him about Catherine.

With the description of what Charles told the officer, he was sure that Catherine was behind the disappearance. It was perfect. The best friend…jealous of her friend’s success. Her wedding. And what did Catherine have. Nothing. No one. To Catherine, Ashleigh was all she had and she was leaving her to get married. They would have no friendship after the wedding. It would be just like middle school and high school. Everyone shunning her, including Ashleigh, just to fit in with the crowd.

Surveillance was set up to watch Catherine’s movements to see where she may have taken Ashleigh. But either the officer was wrong, or Catherine was on to them…because his surveillance didn’t find anything incriminating involving Catherine.

Chapter 5 – The Search for the Bride

The hunt was on for the Ashleigh, but leads were getting cold when exhaustive efforts to find her came up cold. Until….

The officer on the case, Det. Frank Chase, got a surprising lead while he was searching Catherine’s Facebook profile.

Det. Chase found pictures of what appeared to be Ashleigh in some dungeon lying on the dingy floor. The only problem…the location could not be determined.

Det. Chase downloaded the photos onto his flash drive and took the pictures and took them to the police department’s IT guy, Seamus O’Riley, who was a techie at this kind of stuff. If he couldn’t find the location, no one could.

Now all Det. Chase had to do was wait…

1 hour…that was all it took for Seamus to find the location…and it wasn’t what Det. Chase expected. Seamus told Det. Chase that Ashleigh was in Shady Hills here in the same city and even more daunting was that it looked as if Ashleigh’s parents had put her there…

Det. Chase headed over to Ashleigh’s parents to get to the bottom of it.

“Mrs. Crimson, I may have located your daughter?” Det. Chase said when Ashleigh’s mother opened the front door to him.

“Oh, thank heavens, that’s great news.” Mrs. Crimson said, sounding relieved.

“Cut the crap! You knew where she was this whole time?!” Det. Chase accused.

“Whatever are you talking about?” she asked, defending herself.

“You had your daughter committed!” Det. Chase said angrily. “Did you disapprove of your daughter’s engagement, you had her committed to keep her from marrying her fiance?!”

“I don’t know what you’re implying, but I never had my daughter committed!”

“So you didn’t have Ashleigh put into Shady Hills?”

“No I did not!” Mrs. Crimson asked. “Is that where she is?”

“We got a tip that is where she is?”

“Well, I don’t have any idea how she got there?”

“Well, you and your husband’s name came up as the ones who put her there?”

“Well, obviously we’ve been set up by the one real culprit who did it? My guess is, it’s that witch, Catherine, Ashleigh’s best friend!” Mrs. Crimson accused.

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Crimson for your honesty.” Det. Chase told her. “We’ll look into this and find a way to get your daughter out, since it seems it was under false pretensions.”

Det. Chase headed back to PD headquarters to come up with a game plan to get Ashleigh out of Shady Hills.