The Missing
Lisa McMann
Save me. I’m alive. I need you.
When teens start going missing, Kendall’s carefully ordered world begins to fall apart… Thrilling YA paranormal mystery from accomplished US writer.
"An eerie, gripping, totally addictive, breathtaking whirl of a book with an ending that left me haunted for days…" Alyson Noël, bestselling author of THE IMMORTALS
The tiny town of Cryer’s Cross is shocked when a local schoolgirl disappears without a trace. Already off-balance due to her OCD, sixteen-year-old Kendall is freaked out by seeing the empty desk in the one-room school house, but somehow life goes on… until Kendall's boyfriend disappears.
Alone in her depression and with her OCD at an all-time high, Kendall notices something that connects the missing. She knows it's crazy, but Kendall finds herself drawn to the desk that they both sat at… Then she begins receiving messages. Can her boyfriend be alive somewhere? How can Kendall help him? The only person who will listen is Jacian, the new guy she finds irritating…and attractive. As Kendall and Jacian grow closer, Kendall digs deeper into the mysterious disappearances only to stumble upon some ugly – and deadly – local history.
Kendall is about to find out just how far people will go to keep their secrets buried…
Dedication
For Kennedy
Contents
Cover
Title Page (#u99275186-de10-5c75-b74b-a15623ad0b92)
Dedication
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
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgments
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Everything changes when Tiffany Quinn disappears.
Of the 212 residents of Cryer’s Cross, Montana, 178 join Sheriff Greenwood in a search that lasts several days from sunup to after dark. School is closed, all the students taking part, searching roads and farms, trudging through pastures of cattle and horses, through sections of newly planted potatoes, barley, wheat. Up to the foothills and back along the woods. They travel in groups of two or three, some nervous, some crying, some resolute. Shouting to the other groups now and then so nobody else goes missing—cell phones aren’t much good out here. Cryer’s Cross is a dead spot.
After five days there is still no trace of Tiffany Quinn. She is gone, impossibly. Impossibly, because to imagine that there has been foul play here in the humble town of Cryer’s Cross is laughable, and to imagine that sweet ninth-grade bookworm running away, going off on her own . . . It’s all so impossible.
But gone she is.