To the dump, looking for clues

It was stationary now. But it had history.

He zoomed in. The timeline showed it leaving the downtown sidewalk where she’d dropped the phone, heading north, then west, looping through residential streets before stopping at a large property on the edge of the city. A mansion, judging by the satellite view. Then, hours later, it moved again. Short trip. Ended at the city dump.

Owen’s stomach lurched.

The dump.

He stared at the pin dropped right in the middle of the landfill. His blood went cold, prickling down his arms. Had they… dumped her? But why–

No. Don’t go there. He told himself.

He shoved the phone in his pocket, stood so fast the chair scraped loud. A few heads turned. He didn’t care. He walked straight past the desk sergeant without a word, out the glass doors, into the blinding Texas sun.

He got into a cab and told the driver where wanted to go, “Austin City Landfill”.

The driver raised an eyebrow when Owen climbed in. “You sure, man? That place stinks.”

“Just drive. Please!”

The ride was twenty-five minutes of silence broken only by the AC rattling and Owen’s knee jumping. He kept refreshing the Find My map. The dot didn’t move. Still at the dump.

When they pulled up to the entrance, the smell hit first, rotting food, wet cardboard, something chemical and sour. Owen paid cash, told the driver to wait if he could. The guy shrugged. “Meter’s running.”

Owen jogged through the gate, boots crunching on gravel. A bored attendant in an orange vest looked up from his booth.

“Looking for a bag,” Owen said, voice hoarse. “Black leather satchel. Expensive. Lost yesterday. Has an AirTag.”

The attendant snorted. “Buddy, we get a hundred ‘lost’ items a day. People dump shit here on purpose. You got a description? Brand?”

Owen rattled it off, designer name, size, the small silver tag on the strap. The guy typed something into a tablet, shook his head. “Nothing logged like that yet. Trucks been dumping all morning. If it’s here, it’s probably already under a pile.”

Owen’s chest tightened. “Can I look?”

“Public access is limited. Liability shit. Sorry can’t help ya.”, the attendant responded.

Owen stood at the chain-link fence a minute longer, staring at the bulldozers churning trash below. His throat felt raw from the smell and from shouting Paige’s name into dead air all night. He turned back to the attendant’s booth.

The guy was still there, scrolling on his phone behind scratched Plexiglas. Owen leaned in, voice low but urgent. “Hey…anything suspicious come through this morning? In the garbage, I mean. My girlfriend’s bag ended up here. She’s missing. I’m looking for her.”

The attendant looked up, took in Owen’s red-rimmed eyes, the way his hands shook on the counter. Something shifted in his expression, not pity exactly, just recognition that this wasn’t some lost-keys bullshit. He set the phone down.

“We got scanners on the inbound trucks,” he said. “Metal detectors, a couple X-ray setups for the bigger loads. Plus eyes on the piles, guys who’ve been here twenty years, they spot weird shit quick. Human remains, weapons, cash bundles, whatever. Nothing flagged this morning. No reports of body parts, no blood-soaked clothes, no screaming woman. If your girl was in there, we’d know by now.”

Owen exhaled hard through his nose. Relief hit first, then guilt for even thinking about it. “Okay. Okay. Thanks.”

The attendant nodded toward the map still open on Owen’s phone. “That dot stopped here last, right? But it was somewhere else before. Backtrack it. See where the bag came from. That’s probably where she was.”

Owen blinked. Why the hell hadn’t that occurred to him? He’d been so locked on the dump pin, on the worst-case scenario, that he’d missed the obvious. Stupid. So fucking stupid. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

“Thanks again,” he muttered, already turning. The attendant just waved him off, no big deal.

Owen jogged back to the waiting cab. The driver was still idling, windows cracked, radio low. Owen slid into the back seat, pulled up the AirTag history again. The mansion stop jumped out, big property marker, gated, tucked off a quiet road north of downtown. He shoved the phone toward the front seat.

“You know this place?” Owen asked, tapping the screen. “Big house here. I need to get there”

The driver glanced at the map, then at Owen in the rearview. He was older, maybe late fifties, salt-and-pepper hair, calm eyes that had seen every kind of passenger drama.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the Whitaker place. Belongs to Victoria Whitaker, one of the richest divorcees in Austin. The husband was some tech guy, got caught with the nanny or something. She kept the house in the settlement. Why do you wanna go there?”

Owen’s pulse kicked up. “My girlfriend’s bag was there. She disappeared yesterday. I need to get there. Now.”