Deter­mined to find any lead, Hol­ly presents Emilio with a pho­to­graph of Peter Stein­man, anoth­er miss­ing per­son whose case may be linked to Bonnie’s. Emilio stud­ies the image, but his response is frus­trat­ing­ly vague, offer­ing only a faint recog­ni­tion that leads nowhere con­crete. With no new infor­ma­tion, Hol­ly leaves the store, her mind already rac­ing through alter­na­tive ways to piece togeth­er the frag­ments of a grow­ing mys­tery.

Back at her apart­ment, she sifts through her notes while deal­ing with a sharp, unwel­come com­ment online, a reminder that pub­lic scruti­ny fol­lows her every move. The frus­tra­tion of dead ends weighs heav­i­ly on her as she pre­pares to make a dif­fi­cult phone call to Pen­ny Dahl, Bonnie’s moth­er. With a mea­sured tone, she shares her grow­ing sus­pi­cion that Bon­nie may have been abduct­ed, a real­iza­tion that sends a fresh wave of grief through Pen­ny and deep­ens Holly’s resolve.

Even as she works tire­less­ly to untan­gle the case, Hol­ly finds her­self at an impasse, strug­gling to deter­mine her next course of action. The call from Pen­ny lingers in her thoughts, a painful reminder of how much is at stake. The miss­ing pieces haunt her, and for the first time in this case, she feels gen­uine­ly stumped, unsure of where to turn next.

In con­trast to Holly’s frus­tra­tion, her close friend Jerome calls from New York with an entire­ly dif­fer­ent ener­gy, thrilled about secur­ing a major book deal. His excite­ment, though gen­uine, serves as a stark con­trast to Holly’s cur­rent strug­gles, high­light­ing the pro­fes­sion­al stand­still she feels trapped in. While she is hap­py for him, the con­ver­sa­tion only ampli­fies her frus­tra­tion, rein­forc­ing the sense that her inves­ti­ga­tion is mov­ing painful­ly slow.

Mean­while, Emi­ly and Rod­dy Har­ris, an elder­ly cou­ple with unset­tling ties to the case, qui­et­ly dis­cuss Holly’s per­sis­tence and what it could mean for them. They are well aware of her grow­ing involve­ment in the miss­ing per­sons inves­ti­ga­tion and begin con­sid­er­ing their next move. Their con­ver­sa­tion car­ries a sin­is­ter under­tone, sub­tly sug­gest­ing that if Hol­ly becomes too much of a prob­lem, they may need to take action to pro­tect their secrets.

Else­where, Bar­bara Robin­son receives a call from Jerome, who excit­ed­ly shares his book deal news before briefly men­tion­ing Holly’s case. Though inter­est­ed, Bar­bara is pre­oc­cu­pied with her own projects and only half-lis­tens, unaware of how deeply Hol­ly is entan­gled in some­thing dan­ger­ous. The call is short, a fleet­ing moment that fur­ther under­scores how everyone’s lives con­tin­ue to move for­ward, even as Hol­ly remains stuck in the labyrinth of her inves­ti­ga­tion.

That night, exhaus­tion final­ly over­takes Hol­ly, and her mind drifts into dreams shaped by her past. Mem­o­ries of her father resur­face, woven into the image of an old post­card writ­ten in Latin, a frag­ment of a rela­tion­ship she still strug­gles to ful­ly under­stand. As she stirs in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, she finds her­self reflect­ing on the con­nec­tions between past and present, loss and per­se­ver­ance, and the relent­less search for truth that seems to define her exis­tence.

This chap­ter inter­twines Holly’s relent­less pur­suit of jus­tice with the intri­cate lives sur­round­ing her, illus­trat­ing the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of an inves­ti­ga­tion that seems to offer more ques­tions than answers. As she fights against doubt and the loom­ing pres­ence of unseen threats, she is forced to con­front not only the mys­ter­ies of the case but also the unre­solved ghosts of her own past.