Her best friend Christina Jones said she is still holding out hope that Gardner will be found. She said Giordano had invited Gardner on a previous vacation, but she declined.

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"She's just a great,” said Jones. “She's a wonderful female and I hope I can do some justice to bring her home or find out really what happened, the truth."

Jones said the women were roommates at their Frederick apartment, but that Gardner had been spending most of her time at her boyfriend's apartment.

Jones says Gardner spent Saturday night at her house before jetting off the next day to Aruba with Giordano. Jones says Gardner and Giordano knew each other for about a year. She describes the 50-year-old man Gardner met online as eccentric.

“You kind of get a vibe from someone if they have someone good or not great in their life and I just didn't get that vibe,” she said.

Giordano offered to take Gardner on a cruise a couple of months ago, her friend said. When she declined, Giordano wasn't happy. "How he reacted about the cruise is the reason why I was worried about why she was going to be going to Aruba," Jones said.

Boyfriend suspects romantic relationship with travel companion

Gardner’s boyfriend, Forester, said she lived with him in Rockville and that she and Giordano were platonic friends. The pair were scheduled to spend about five days in Aruba, Forester said.

"I'm starting to believe that's not true," Forester said in a phone interview. "I'm starting to believe there was some romantic thing."

Forester said he and Gardner had been in contact through Facebook until just before she disappeared. After she vanished, her Google Chat indicators showed she was active on Gmail, then on but not active, and finally off, he said. It seemed to indicate that she or someone else had been on her Gmail account, he said.

"I'm terrified as to what may have happened to her," he said. "I'm sad and scared that I might not see her again. I love her very much and all I am concerned about is that she gets home safely."

Aruba has experience dealing with missing person cases following the still unsolved disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway during a high school class trip to the island in 2005. Her remains were never found and the main suspect, Joran van der Sloot, is in jail in Peru on charges of killing a 21-year-old woman last May.

Jones says she's staying hopeful her friend is just missing. “I mean we have hope, that's all we've got right now,” she said.