Chapter 6 Colleen

• Mildly drunk and dog-tired, Levi was tempted to sleep in his office after the phone call with his parents.
• The idea of spending the night on a couch that wasn't as comfortable as his king-size bed, though, did not make business sense, whichever way he looked at it. So he threw on his jacket, grabbed his bags and headed out.
• Dozing off in the lobby in one of Mark's new fancy chairs, Sol jerked awake at the sound of his footsteps, smiling sleepily. "Mr Van Holt, are you off, sir?"
• "Yes. See you later, Sol!" Levi waved goodbye, pushed the emergency exit door and ran down the two flights of stairs to his reserved parking spot in the basement.
• His Porsche Cayenne didn't look too bad for a car parked in a dusty basement for over three months, but stopping by the car wash one of the days wouldn't hurt.
• Twenty minutes later, Levi was at his penthouse in Green Point, a plush neighbourhood north of Rock Castle.
• He hadn't been home in a while, but the place looked as pristine as he'd left it months ago, and his fridge was fully stocked with precooked meals, thanks to Mrs Ackerman, his housekeeper.
• As he made his way to his bedroom, Levi made a mental note to give her a raise. He'd called her just before he boarded his homebound flight to let her know he'd be arriving soon, but he never expected her to handle everything so quickly.
• After a long shower and a shave, Levi made himself a sandwich and took it to one of the four barely-used guest rooms he and Mark had turned into a situation room when the tips and leads were still promising.
• Levi paused outside the door, afraid to step in and confront his failure. Six months on, other than Seth's lead, they were still nowhere close to the truth.
• He took a long, deep breath and pushed the door wide open, regretting it immediately when the first thing his eyes found was his twin's photo connected by multi-coloured strings to numerous Post-It notes and clues on the whiteboard.
• A searing ache—like someone had shot him in the chest with a poisoned arrow—pierced his heart as he walked up to the Polaroid and stared at his sister.
• He'd seen this photo at least a million times. But every time he looked at it, he was struck anew by how happy and radiantly alive Colleen was as she smiled brightly at him, the pair of grey eyes they shared twinkling with amusement.
• Colleen—his Leeny—always looked secretly amused in photos, like she knew something the rest of the world didn't.
• "Where are you?" Levi asked the empty room as he placed his plate on the desk and turned to the clues on the board.
• Mark had stopped by a few times and added a few more leads. Judging by the cross marks, none had checked out, though.
• Levi picked up a marker, moved Colleen's photo to one side, wiped off the dead-end clues and scribbled the word 'Dreams' at the centre of the board.
• He took his sandwich to the window, and as he watched the sun creep up the sky, he thought about Colleen's digital trail and her constant need to post every little detail of her life on the internet.
• Could that be the reason behind her disappearance? Had a psychopath stalked her on social media? Did she fall prey to an internet predator?
• As the CEO of a gaming studio, Levi made sure his digital presence was purely for promoting the company, and even so, he was careful about how much he shared. He never posted photos of himself or told the world what he ate for breakfast, let alone where he vacationed.
• He didn't think of the internet as a bad place—heck, people needed an internet connection to play his games—but it was easy to lose oneself in it. And he suspected that was how his twin had gotten lost.
• When Colleen vanished a little over six months ago, besides his best friend, everyone around them thought he was blowing things out of proportion since his twin was used to running off, disappearing for months on end, and showing up like she never left.
• The longest she was away was two months, and it turned out she was backpacking in the Blue Mountains with a group of hippies she'd met at a commune. She'd stayed in contact during that time, popping him an occasional call or text.
• But this time was different.
• The last text message he got from her before she disappeared was a bunch of random letters everyone—including the police—had told him meant nothing.
• A pocket dial, that's what they'd called it.
• But random or not, pocket dial or not, the text didn't stop Levi from agonising over its meaning.
• He still spent nights trying to decode it, more so because growing up—from around four until they were ten—they had a secret language and made-up words they'd used when they didn't want their parents to know what they were talking about.
• His hopeful twenty-eight-year-old self kept thinking there was some hidden meaning in the text and he'd figure it out with enough time.
• But time had become a luxury he could no longer afford.
• Levi munched his bread and let his mind wander to Dreams.
• The site was their only promising clue so far.
• With all these new internet privacy laws and acts being written left, right, and centre, though, he was pretty sure what he and Seth were doing wasn't entirely legal and could earn them a hefty fine or possibly land them in jail if they were ever caught.
• But what other choice did he have?
• His father's highly specialised team had done shit, and the police lacked the motivation to find his sister. If he hadn't kept up with his relentless pursuit of progress on the case and checked in with the detectives every couple of days, Colleen would have joined the million other cold cases as soon as the ink in her file had dried.
• Having spent the last few months living out of a suitcase, chasing down every possible sighting of his twin only to end up at yet another dead-end, Levi was truly out of options. Turning to her internet life was the only key to uncovering her disappearance.
• Mark had warned him not to go down this road, though. The truth might be far scarier than any of them could handle. But not knowing where his twin was or if she was still alive was a far worse fate.