By [Reporter’s Name]
It was supposed to be an ordinary drive home.
At 9:17 p.m., 27-year-old Kayla Scott texted her mother a short, loving message:
“I’m coming home ❤️.”
It was the last text she would ever send.
Just twenty minutes later, cell-tower data showed Kayla’s phone leaving the main highway and connecting to a signal from a remote rest stop eleven miles east — a direction opposite of her route home. She had no reason to be there, no known friends in the area, and no record of ever stopping there before.
“The location made no sense,” said Detective Elise Warren, who has led the case since day one. “She’d never even taken that exit.”
When officers arrived, Kayla’s car was gone — but her phone’s final ping provided a breakthrough that would soon shock investigators.
Forensic technicians discovered that the last connection to her device came not from the main cell network, but from a private Wi-Fi hotspot registered to an unknown name. That single digital trace has since become the centerpiece of the investigation.
“Someone set up that signal intentionally,” a cyber-forensics expert confirmed. “It was active for less than nine minutes — just long enough for her phone to connect, send a data packet, and disappear.”
Detectives are now working to trace the router’s origin, which was purchased anonymously two weeks before Kayla vanished.
Her mother still keeps the final text on her phone — a screenshot she looks at every night.
“She was on her way home,” she said quietly. “Something — or someone — changed that.”
The rest stop has since become a makeshift memorial, marked by flowers and a single handwritten note left by a stranger that reads:
“Come home, Kayla. We’re still waiting.”
