Chapter 16 - The Runaway Bride 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice quiet.

“You’ve always been too intense when it comes to Ayra,” Ferdinand said, his tone almost fatherly. 

“I needed to ensure this was handled with precision, not the brute force you would have preferred.”

Lisbeth could not argue with that. 

"So, what now?" She asked. 

Ferdinand chuckled. 

"Now, we hunt down Ayra."

As if on cue, Lisbeth’s phone rang in her pocket. She retrieved it with and her brows knitted together when she saw Sarah’s name flash across the screen. She answered, putting the phone on speaker.

“Sarah, what do you have?” Lisbeth asked. 

On the other end of the line, Sarah hesitated, her voice uncertain. 

“Lisbeth, Ayra called me just a minute ago. She asked after the tickets I told you she'd asked me to help her book.”

“What did you say?” Lisbeth interrupted. "She called you? Now?"

"Yeah, I just got off the phone with her. Said she would call me again and I should get the train ticket ready for her."

“The train ticket. Did you book it?” Lisbeth repeated, her voice rising. 

"No, I didn't, just like you asked."

Lisbeth's mind raced. Marcy had called her earlier that day so it was easy to figure out that Ayra was setting up decoys. 

"Book them now and send the details to her. Send them to me too," Lisbeth said. There was no need to scare Ayra just yet. 

Ayra's three escape routes were firmly in their hands and if one suddenly disappeared, she would try to replace it, potentially slipping from their grasp. 

"Alright." Sarah ended the call. 

Lisbeth looked at her father. 

"Ayra's left the venue it seems," she said. 

Ferdinand leaned back in his chair, his expression thoughtful.

“What about Marcy?” he prompted. “Ayra had spoken to her as well this morning, hadn't she?”

Lisbeth nodded, her fingers flying over her phone and pulling up Marcy’s number. When the call connected, she didn’t bother with any greetings. “Marcy, where are you?”

Marcy’s voice came through the line, clear and chipper. “I’m at that little cafe Ayra told me about. You know, the one out near the old mill road.”

Lisbeth exchanged a concerned look with Ferdinand. “Has she shown up yet?”

“No,” Marcy replied, her tone turning curious. “I’ve been waiting for a while, but she hasn’t called or texted to say she’s on her way. Is everything alright?”

Lisbeth forced a smile into her voice. “Everything’s fine. Just stay there and keep an eye out, will you, sweety? Let me know the moment you see her.”

She ended the call and turned back to Ferdinand.

Her father didn’t say a word. Instead, he picked up his phone and dialed a number. He held the phone to his ear, his face calm and unreadable. 

“It’s me,” he said after a moment. “Has there been any sign of Ayra?”

The person on the other end answered immediately. “No, sir. The driver has been at the rendezvous point for over an hour. Ayra hasn’t shown up.”

Ferdinand pressed his lips into a thin line. “Stay on him. If she makes contact, let me know immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

He ended the call and looked at Lisbeth. “She’s avoiding Eleanor entirely. That much is clear.”

Lisbeth exhaled sharply, her frustration mounting. “If she’s not there, then she’s already in the city and moving. Question is - where? If Eleanor's a dud, that leaves Sarah and Marcy.”

Lisbeth ran a hand through her hair. “She’s playing games with us. Anyway, there are three routes she can take - train tickets, Marcy, and Eleanor’s car—it’s impossible to tell which is real."

"The train tickets are a dud too. She knows that Sarah was the one who leaked her location the first time she ran away. It is obvious she would expect for her to leak it again."

Lisbeth shook her head. 

"Ayra knows that. She would expect you to dismiss it so she can safely get on. On the other hand, she may want us to look for her there instead of at Marcy's, banking on the fact that you know she expects us to dismiss it and so we won't. So there's no saying if it is a dud or not."

"Then we simply close down that route," Ferdinand said. "We can't mobilize much people on such short notice so we better block her at the station and drive her toward Marcy. At the very least Marcy is on our side."

Lisbeth nodded reluctantly, her mind already racing with possibilities. Things were coming together neatly but she still could not shake the feeling that they were missing something. 

....

Eleanor pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache threatening to form as she leaned back in her chair, frustration bubbling within her. 

The tiny screen before her displayed the real-time location of the burner phone she had oh so carefully provided Ayra. 

Its signal hadn’t moved for over twenty minutes, hovering stubbornly just a few meters from her hired driver.

She pressed her phone harder against her ear, her tone clipped. “You’re telling me there’s no one there, and yet the signal shows that she's right in front of you. What are you? Blind?”

The driver’s voice crackled through the line, defensive and uncertain. 

“Ma’am, I swear, I’ve checked more than thrice already. There’s nobody here, just the same stretch of road and a bit of overgrown brush. No girls, no Ayra, no nothing.”

Eleanor’s jaw tightened, her free hand drumming a rhythm on the table. “Look again. If she dropped the phone, it could be nearby, but I highly doubt she vanished without a trace.”

The driver sighed audibly, muttering curses under his breath before the faint sound of his boots crunching on gravel filtered through the phone. 

Eleanor waited in tense silence, her sharp eyes glued to the blinking dot on her laptop screen.

“Found it,” the driver said after a moment, his voice tinged with surprise. “The phone’s here on the ground, face down. But there’s no sign of the girl.”

Eleanor’s frustration boiled over. “You mean to tell me she dropped the only means I had to track her? How does that even happen? Did you see anyone nearby? Hear anything unusual?”

“No, ma’am,” the driver replied, sounding a bit nervous now. “It’s quiet out here. Too quiet, to be honest. She must’ve ditched the phone on purpose.”

Eleanor clenched her teeth, her mind racing as she tried to piece together what had gone wrong. From Ayra she had expected hesitation, panic even, but not... This.

“Bring me the phone,” Eleanor said finally, her tone clipped. “And stay where you are for now. Keep your eyes open.”

The driver murmured his acknowledgment before the line went dead, leaving Eleanor in silence save for the faint hum of her laptop. 

She stared at the blinking dot on the screen, now utterly useless. Ayra had outmaneuvered her, and that realization gnawed at her. 

Her brother and Lisbeth were bad enough and now even AYRA was out to thwart her? Ridiculous. 

“She’s playing a dangerous game,” Eleanor said to herself, her voice low and bitter. “But two can play.”

Ayra was still on the run, slipping through everyone’s grasp like smoke.

Picking up her phone again, Eleanor dialed another number, her patience fraying. 

“Any news?” she asked.

"None."

Eleanor tapped her fingers against the desk, her frustration mounting. “Keep an eye on all major routes out of the city and don't forget the airport too. She might be trying to blend in with the crowd.”

The voice on the other end hesitated. “Do you think she’s going off-grid completely? If so, it’s going to be harder to track her.”

Eleanor’s lips pressed into a thin line. “She doesn’t have the resources for that. She’ll need help eventually, and when she does, I’ll be there.”

Quite a few people were interested in Ayra. She could not run.