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A suburban woman reported missing after she didn't come home from work on Monday is being questioned by authorities Friday night, just hours after police called the search off when they suspected she had voluntarily run off with a male friend.

Authorities say they are speaking with the 24-year-old in an undisclosed location, but that she appears fine. No charges have been filed Friday night.

"We believe that Anu is in fact alive and that she had an ongoing relationship with someone for approximately a year," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced at a news conference Friday afternoon.

Authorities believe the missing woman left on her own with a 23-year-old acquaintance. Police identify the man as Karan Jani.

Authorities said they have spared no expense when it comes to manpower in the search. Chief Richard Waszak of the Cook County Forest Preserves said they had a minimum of 40 people working around the clock during the investigation, at a conservative estimated cost of $250,000.

Investigators earlier Friday encouraged Solanki and Jani to do the right thing and turn themselves in.

"You've caused a lot of heartaches for your family and the public" said Deputy Chief John Palcu of the Cook County Sheriff's Department.

Anu Solanki's family had not heard from her since Christmas Eve, they said.

"If you feel guilty just you know, relax, you know, just relax and think about it, and if you need to talk to anyone, I'm right there, you know I can help you any way possibly I can, just come to me," Solanki's brother, Dhiren Patel, said Friday afternoon.

Solanki's brother also said that if this does turn out to be a false alarm, and his sister willingly disappeared, he wanted to say thank all the people who have searched for her.

Cook County authorities say if Solanki faked her disappearance, they may try to recoup the money they spent looking for her.

Police say cell phone records helped them track her whereabouts. The call she made to friends on the day of her disappearance was tracked near DeKalb.

Anu Solanki may have met the man near a dam where her car was found, investigators said. At a news conference Friday afternoon in Chicago Ridge, officials said they have cell phone calls from the man to Solanki on the day she vanished.

The disappearance of the hotel gift shop worker touched off an extensive search along the Des Plaines River in the Wheeling area by dozens of police and rescue workers that at times included divers, sniffer dogs, a sonar unit and a helicopter.

Solanki, who moved to the Chicago area in May just after she married her 27-year-old husband, left her car Monday afternoon in a Cook County forest preserve parking lot near the river, authorities said.

Solanki placed a call to a female friend at about 1:40 p.m. Monday, approximately 90 minutes after she left work, police said. During that conversation, she indicated that she was on her way to the Dam One Woods to discard a religious idol in the Des Plaines River.

She also indicated to her friend that a car with four male passengers may have been following her. However, Solanki's cell phone records indicate that call was actually routed through a cell phone tower near DeKalb, nearly 60 miles west of Wheeling, leading investigators to believe Solanki may have been traveling west on Interstate 88 when she placed the call.

"Our records indicate those phone calls were made in western Illinois and not by the dam area," Dart said.

Jani is a recent graduate of University of Southern California and may still be living in Southern California, police said. Investigators have been unable to determine his whereabouts. He apparently lived with a friend in the Leavittown, Pennsylvania for a short time earlier this year.

Before she vanished, she also had told husband, Dignesh Solanki, she planned to stop at a riverside forest preserve near Wheeling to properly dispose of a broken Hindu religious statue that had been used at their May wedding.

Solanki, who, like her husband, was born in India, was advised by a Hindu priest that the statue of Ganesh should be wrapped in a red cloth and placed in a lake or river to avoid bad luck, family members have said.
Despite the two extensive searches, police did not find the statue or any fragments of it, sources said.

Investigators say Solanki's husband didn't know of Jani's existence until he was informed by detectives. But Dart stopped short of calling it a love triangle.

"To what extent how romantic it is, we're not sure. But they are close friends," he said.

CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli, Mai Martinez and the STNG Wire contributed to this report.

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