Chapter 98: MISSING
I reach the eastern gate forty seconds after the camera footage shows Ariana walking through it.
Forty seconds is long enough for a person to disappear entirely into eleven press vehicles and a treeline and the particular chaos of a story already breaking faster than anyone can contain it. I push through the gate and scan the gravel road beyond it in both directions, the morning light flat and grey, the press vehicles still clustered at the far end of the approach road with their cameras pointed toward the estate entrance. None of them appear to have registered a woman walking out alone from the side gate. Which means Ariana moved quickly and carefully enough to avoid being seen. She planned this. She knew the camera angles, knew the timing, knew exactly how to exit the property without triggering a single press lens.
She is her father's daughter. We all are, apparently, in ways none of us have fully reckoned with yet.
