My Word files keep being deleted?

I'm an online ebook author, and before I ever make a story, I make an outline--what I want to happen, what order the events happen in, etc. I worked really hard on a particular one, and i made sure that i saved it. I wrote chapter one and chapter two, and saved both of those. Yesterday, I tried to open chapter two, and it was deleted. The exact words were "The item 'chapter2.docx' that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved, so this shortcut will no longer work properly." I decided no big deal, I mean, it was a bummer, but I would just rewrite it in the morning. So this morning, I tried to open the outline, and the same error message popped up. I've tried contacting Microsoft, but it says that I need to pay to get some online help. What am I supposed to do? I'm peed off about this!