A/N: I've decided to take this story off hiatus now, though it may still be a few weeks between updates. Chapter 7 is in progress, but I still won't make any promises about when it'll be uploaded.
Disclaimer: You all know the drill by now. I don't own Cars, but I do own Aiyana and Maya.
For three days, Maya's car sat out in the car park, but of the woman there was no sign. Sally knocked on Aiyana's door several times each day, but as always, the door remained locked, and the food was virtually untouched. On the fourth day, the Lamborghini was gone, and concern set in.
"Have you tried looking through the window?" Doc asked. He was standing with Sally facing the locked door as they tried to work out a way to get in to the room.
"She keeps the curtains closed."
"No open windows?"
Sally shook her head.
"And the door is definitely locked from the inside?"
"There should be a spare key, for getting in and cleaning during the day, but I can't find it."
"Perhaps the door was locked from the outside then."
"I haven't heard either of them in the last few days, let alone seen them."
Doc pulled his phone out and sent a short message. A few minutes later, Mater turned up with a large bag of tools. Sally took a step back as Mater and Doc puzzled through how to remove the lock and door handle to the room in question. Lightning emerged from his room in time to see Doc take a screwdriver to the door handle.
"Don't you have a key?"
"It's missing."
Lightning stepped forwards to help, and moments later the door swung open.
"My baby cousin got locked in a bathroom when I was babysitting," Lighting replied when he saw the assorted bemused expressions. "You learn a few skills when that happens."
Sally pushed passed him and peered into the room. The bed was made, as if waiting for the occupant to return in a few hours. All signs of Aiyana had been erased. Sally pulled the wardrobe open to find empty hangars.
"This isn't good," Doc observed the scene before him. "We need to find them."
Sally bent down suddenly and picked up something from the bottom of the wardrobe.
"What have you found?"
Sally showed Doc the keyring in her hand.
"Her uncle gave it to her years ago. I've never known her to leave it behind before."
"You'd better ring your father, Sally. I have a feeling we're going to need him. I'm going to find Sheriff, then we need to organise search parties. We'll use the café as our base."
Lightning and Mater left quickly, no doubt to round up the rest of the town's residents.
"I don't like this, Doc."
The café was subdued by the time Sally got there. All the faces bore serious expressions, and they all turned to look at her as she entered. Doc and Sheriff seemed to have been briefing the rest of the residents on what was going on.
"My father will be here in a couple of days," Sally announced.
"We have a few hours of daylight left. You know who your partners are and where to search. If you find Maya, do not engage with her but report to me. Sally, you're with Doc."
Sally nodded, agreeing with Sheriff.
"Be careful. We don't know what this woman is capable of, or where she's taken the girl."
The townsfolk departed, leaving Lizzie, Red, Flo, Sally and Doc in the café.
"We're staying here to keep an eye on the town," Flo explained.
"We're going out to Wheel Well. We'll use my car. Maya is likely to recognise yours," Doc added.
Sally nodded again.
"Be careful," Flo echoed Sheriff's earlier words.
Sally followed Doc back to the clinic, and waited with nervous energy as he fetched the keys and opened the garage.
"What happens if we don't find her?"
Doc paused momentarily. "We have to call in the state patrol. There's no guarantee that she's even around here. Maya could have taken her somewhere that's hours away."
"Dad said he's got people keeping an eye out for Maya, and they'll report in with him if she returns to work."
"That was fast."
"He already suspected something was going on. Apparently Seraphine went to him with concerns a few months ago."
"At least we'll have him on our side. I suspect we're going to need all the help we can get with this situation. There's only so much evidence I can come up with."
Sally was silent on the ride up to Wheel Well, various scenarios running through her mind, each worse than the one before it. Doc's phone rang just as he stopped outside the second motel. She watched as Doc flicked the phone into speaker mode, and listened as he and Sheriff discussed something Sheriff had found out at the Butte. It didn't bode well.
"We can cover more ground if we split up. There are a lot of places to search up here," Doc passed Sally a bottle of water. "Try to keep out of the sun if you can. If you see Maya, don't engage with her."
"We have to find her, Doc."
"We've got the whole town out looking for them. You start with the motel. I'll head a little further out and start searching the cliffs."
Sally unlocked the small office and grabbed the keys for each room. There was nobody booked in at Wheel Well, but she knew caution would still be needed. She slipped from one room to the next, checking all the possible hiding places carefully as she went along. It took her almost an hour to ascertain that the motel was empty. Once she'd returned the keys to the office and locked up again, she went to the overlook and paused for a while. Doc was right when he said there were a lot of places to search. She contemplated where to go next. She could see the glint of cars spread out in the valley. Any one of them could be Maya's car. Had they scared the woman off, or had she simply done whatever dirty work she wanted and run back to LA? Sally wished her father was there.
As Sally turned back towards the motel, her favourite gulley caught her attention. It was secluded there, and few people knew it lead up to the cliffs above the motel. There was still enough daylight to get up to the top and back again. Sally checked her pockets for her phone, and strode forwards, drawn to the remote part of the area.
Sally searched carefully as she scrambled up the path. The river bed remained dry and dusty, littered with stones that rolled out from beneath her feet. When she finally made it to the top and emerged into the bright, warm sunlight, she was almost surprised to see Doc had beaten her to the top. There had to be multiple paths up the side.
"Did you find anything?" Doc asked her.
Sally shook her head. "Nothing."
"I thought I found a trail earlier, but I lost it when I got up here."
"I can't bear the thought of her lying injured somewhere," Sally looked around the top of the plateau and shivered despite the warmth of the day.
"We've got a few more hours of daylight. I'll check in with the others and keep on looking."
Sally picked a different path off the plateau, but although they searched until it grew too dark to see very far, there was no sign of the missing girl.
"She could have found shelter somewhere," Doc mused, leaning on the railing outside the Wheel Well Motel, watching the sun setting over the valley.
"What do we do now?"
"Try again tomorrow. Sheriff says he'll give us one more day before he calls it in. We should head back to the town."
"I'm going to stay out here tonight," Sally took a step back from the railing.
"Are you sure?"
Sally nodded. There was no way she was going to leave the girl alone if she was out there.
"Do you want me to send Lighting over?"
"It might be better if I'm alone out here. Aiyana trusts me, but she's shy around other people. If there's someone else here, she might not feel able to come up to the Motel."
"Be careful, and stay in touch. If she turns up, call either myself or Sheriff."
Sally nodded again. Safety for the girl was of the utmost importance.
Sally was used to being at Wheel Well on her own, even over night, but the moment Doc's car was out of sight, she felt incredibly lonely, and almost regretted declining Doc's offer of sending Lighting along. She stayed outside the Motel for a little while longer and watched the lights turn on in the town below. Eventually she retreated inside the Motel as the temperature dropped. Nights in the desert were surprisingly cold. She sat in the office for a while, catching up on any work that needed doing, before she grabbed a set of keys off the wall and headed for one of the rooms for the remainder of the night.
Sally's sleep was restless. At one point, she woke thinking she could hear someone calling out and stumbling around outside. She sat up and grabbed the torch off the bedside cabinet, but all she could hear was the wind. When she lay back down, she was awake for several hours, listening carefully to her surroundings.
Sally was leaning against the railings, sipping a cup of coffee, when Doc returned not long after sunrise. He passed her a paper bag from Flo's, and joined her at the railings.
"I thought I heard her calling my name last night," Sally admitted quietly.
"Did you go looking?"
"I didn't leave my room, and I feel awful for not investigating, but when I was listening for her, I didn't hear anything."
"If she is out here, we'll find here," Doc tried to reassure Sally.
The morning yielded no results. Doc had decided to go further away from the town and extend the search even more, but Sally wanted to have another look around Wheel Well. She searched as far away as the waterfall, before returning to Wheel Well to check in with Doc, grab some lunch, and resume the search.
Sally was drawn to her favourite gulley again as they set out for the afternoon. She slipped through the opening in the cliff and started along the path. At first it all looked the same as the day before, but as she looked closer, she saw broken branches on the bushes that she was sure hadn't been broken yesterday. It urged her to pick up her pace. The ground was scuffed, and stones disturbed.
"Aiyana!" Sally tried calling for the girl. The name echoed around the walls of the gulley.
Sally paused where the gulley widened, carefully looking around the space for anything unusual or out of place. There was a flash of colour that didn't match the rest of the terrain. She moved forwards slowly this time. The flash of colour was hidden behind a clump of bushes. Was someone watching her, ready to pounce? Sally shook her head and told herself to stop being ridiculous. But still, it didn't hurt to be on her guard, and she approached cautiously. She ducked around the branches of the bush, and let out a soft cry when she finally saw what was hidden. She tugged her phone out of her pocket and, praying for a signal in the gulley, connected the call.
"Doc, I've found her."