Spencer was confused. Nothing was really registering after the words 'Paige is missing'. She didn't understand how a thing like this could happen. It was impossible. There was absolutely no way this could be a thing and yet Paige's dad looked upset and her mother was crying and Emily was by the woman's side and she looked devastated also and this had to be a prank but it wasn't. Paige wouldn't do such a thing.
Spencer couldn't figure out what happened. Was she snatched? Did she run away? Did something happen? Could she be lying in a hospital as a 'Jane Doe', struggling to take her last breaths or maybe she was in a shipping container, being trafficked. Her mind conjured up the most terrifying scenarios. She thought about reaching Caleb and asking him to maybe check her phone, but she was sure that her family had already been all over that so there was nothing to do but sit and wait and hope and pray, but Spencer was never good at that.
It took less than five seconds for her to decide to call Mona. She was in Peru, in the middle of a book tour -not hers, but something she worked on- and when she'd heard that Paige -and Alison, she supposed- was missing under mysterious circumstances she was nevertheless intrigued enough to book herself a flight back home. Within a day she found her car, mobile phone and house keys, all scattered around town and all lacking any decent clues. Alison's stuff was even less helpful, her car having been used by Emily, absentmindedly, and cleaned, after her disappearance, and her keys having been dropped in the bathroom by the girls, but they were able to find her wallet, and noted that none of the money was stolen, which was anything but a good sign for the people involved. It meant this wasn't a mugging gone wrong, this was probably intentional.
Spencer couldn't figure out why but this all seemed slightly familiar. She wasn't able to place what she was thinking, she was just sure she was on the verge of a breakthrough. She remembered being at a party after one and she remembered Paige being there and she remembered being slightly drunk and Paige carrying her home essentially and she knew there was something important about this memory, she just couldn't figure out what. Twenty four hours with no sleep and she was looking at the puzzle, she just wasn't seeing the bigger picture. She couldn't. Her brain was fried.
After a long, deep sleep, it came to her in a dream. Paige had been drinking too but she had not seemed drunk at all. Paige had unnaturally high alcohol tolerance. She couldn't have gotten drunk and wandered off and gotten lost like the police suspect, she had to have been taken by someone.