The silence against the walls unnerved him, as if the apartment itself were holding its breath.
After pacing for what felt like an hour but was only minutes, he called her again. Straight to voicemail. He checked his call log—a neat, damning row of unanswered attempts, each timestamp a tiny accusation. His fingers trembled slightly as he refreshed the screen, as if sheer force of will might suddenly change the status. Nothing did.
He opened the shared Uber app, checking recent rides, thinking maybe she’d left in such a hurry he’d somehow missed the sound of the door. The history showed only their trip from last night. No new trips, no bookings under her name. The absence of any digital movement felt like another missing piece in a puzzle he couldn’t yet see the shape of.
His mind raced through a frantic list of benign possibilities. Maybe she’d gone to meet a friend for an impromptu coffee and lost track of time. Maybe something urgent had come up with her family back home. Maybe she’d had to rush to help someone and hadn’t been able to call before her phone died. Maybe. Maybe.
Those fragile maybes, though, tangled instantly with darker, thornier thoughts. What if she’d been in an accident on her way somewhere? What if someone had followed her from the building? What if the missing passport, a thing he had treated as a joke, had somehow put her in real danger? Fear swelled then, heavy and insistent, a physical pressure in his chest that he could no longer push aside or rationalize.
Finally, Adam called Leo, trying to keep his voice steady and failing miserably. He described what had happened in a rushed jumble—the prank, the missing passport, the unreachable phone, the strange, heavy emptiness of the day. A loaded silence followed on the other end for a beat too long before Leo simply said, “I’m coming over.”
Leo arrived with his familiar mix of concern and practicality, listening quietly as Adam paced the living room and retold everything from the very beginning. He suggested, gently, that maybe Clara just needed some space or fresh air after the morning’s tension, that she’d show up later, annoyed but perfectly fine. “People sometimes just take off for a few hours to clear their heads,” he offered.