Hey guys, Mark here...
I'll just jump in and update the sequence of events from last night to this morning.
I was going to call Maddie after my last update, but instead, I have another idea.
I went to Celine's house instead. I would have called, but I didn't have her number. Her calm demeanor from before made me think she would be the best person to approach about this. Maddie might have set up a crime scene and taken away all the evidence I had found.
I didn't touch anything in Amit's hideout before I left. I figured it was better to have Celine see it as it was when I'd arrived, after all, she had known Amit longer.
Celine's home is about an hour from Amit's hideout, which is pretty lucky considering all the other options for hideouts that were much further away
I knocked on her door at 9 PM and her startled mother opened up with the chain strung across the door. It took a moment of convincing for me to be allowed inside to speak with Celine. Celine acted even more blank than before around her mother. But her eyes sharpened once her mother left us alone in the living room. We sat on the couch, angled towards each other.
"I found where Amit was hiding," I said quietly. Celine's house was as silent as a tomb, and every door I could see was shut tight. It made me want to speak in a whisper.
"Was hiding?" She picked up on that.
"He's not there. I don't know how long he's been gone. But his cell phone was left on the ground."
"His cell phone?" She asked.
"Yeah," I said, fishing it out of my pocket. I handed it to her. She unlocked it and clicked around a little. It's an iPhone 6 for those who care. Oh, another worrying fact, his phone didn't have a password set. It used to before.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.
"New pictures, new emails, new texts, voicemails, voice recordings, anything which is useful," she said. "What was the battery percentage at when you got it?"
"...Huh?"
"Was the battery charged? At halfl? Dying?" She clarified.
"It was at...like 45 percent?" I guessed. I remembered seeing that the battery was about halfway in the status bar.
"Okay," she replied. "Did you change any settings? WiFi? Data? Running apps? Have you restarted or charged it since you got it?"
"No," I said. "I found it, looked around a little on his Discord account, posted on it, then drove to your house."
"Okay," she said. "Take me to the hideout."
I drove her there and we were there in an hour. On the way, we charged the phone in my car. It reached 100% before we arrived. She asked me to keep it unplugged use it until it got to 45%
We climbed through the second story window and down to the basement. Celine held out her arm as we approached the door.
"Stay here," she said, slowly stepping into the room. She pulled out her phone and started taking pictures. As if it were... a crime scene.
"Celine, what aren't you telling me?" I said, my voice catching in my throat. Her attitude introduced a fear that was now putting me on edge.
"At the moment, nothing important," she said in a distracted voice. She snapped several pictures. "But I'm trying to find out where he is."
After a long time of pictures and slowly moving things around to take more, Celine let me come in.
She was flipping through a stack of papers on top of a computer tower.
