Catch up on the previous chapters here
A knock on the door jerked him out of his reverie. It was his first sex scene, and he was deep—heh—into it, to the point where he nearly felt every inch of her skin and heard her sigh. It would need work, because he wasn’t the sort of guy who usually read this stuff and had all the proper vocabulary at the ready, but it wasn’t exactly something he could shake off, either. At least his phone was right there so he could scope out the view from the doorbell camera, because maybe it was just a package.
Shit. Two men in dark suits. If he didn’t answer, they’d check the garage—van on one side, sedan on the other—and then start circling the house, peering in windows. That, for some reason, wasn’t trespassing. The problem was how you had to be home to tell people to get off your property, or else they’d put on their puppy eyes and say they were just worried about you. It was a wellness check until you told them to go the fuck away, but that would mean showing them he was home, after all.
Sighing, he decided to leave his notebook open, the pencil—mechanical, and almost out of lead—next to it as he stood up, slid his phone into his hip pocket, and tried to think cool, calming thoughts. This wasn’t the time to think about her, or about the scene he’d just been writing, although part of him was far less inclined to simply let that go. Would they notice? Probably. He was a single man who lived alone and wasn’t often seen out with friends, so why not scope out his den for some porn if they got half a chance? The problem was balancing exactly how much of a chance he should give them.
He reached the door just as one of them knocked again and opened it up with a carefully practiced expression: a little distracted because he’d just been pulled from his work, but concerned enough about what, exactly, brought these two strangers to his stoop.
“Bentley Beckett?” the one on the left asked. They were nearly twins: chiseled jaws, hairlines just starting to recede, that one blond and his partner brunet.
He blinked, because the script called for it. “Ben to my friends. Who—?”
They held up their IDs in unison, making them synchronized swimmers as well as almost-twins.
“Uh.” Ben blinked again, eyebrows raised. “What’s going on?”
“Likely nothing, Mr. Beckett,” the brunet assured him, tucking his ID away again. “But I wonder if we could come in?”
Good cop? Not that there really were any good cops. He calculated the risks and rewards as quickly as he could, but he thought that the blond might have noticed him doing it before he nodded and opened the door wider for them to come inside.
“Mr. Beckett,” the brunet—seriously, they flashed those IDs too quickly for him to catch their names—repeated, lowering his head a little like this was serious personal business. “We’re here to confirm that you’re the author of the book Since You’ve Been Gone, published under the pseudonym C. J. O’Connell.”
He jerked back. “What?” Ben was a man caught in his lie, of course, but it was an accepted lie. Even the biggest names published under a pseudonym now and then. “You’re not supposed to—” He deliberately swallowed the rest of that sentence, too, and it worked, because the blond looked smug: Gotcha.
“We presented your agency with a warrant,” the brunet explained, and yes, he was at least soothing cop, if not good cop. “They resisted and ran it by legal, but we got the warrant, and they gave us your name.”
“Mr. Beckett, do you know where Lida-Rose Dawson is?” the blond rapped.
Uh. What?
“Lida-Rose Elizabeth Dawson,” he repeated. “Informally known as Ellie. From her initials, I guess. Because a lot of people are interested in finding her.”
This was not how he’d imagined it. “I’m sorry?” Shit, what did they know? What did they think they knew? What did they want him to give away? Every blink, every glance … they’d read into it. Into all of it. And he could review his own footage later, trying to judge his performance, but what was he supposed to do now?
“Mr. Beckett, she’s wanted for questioning in the murder of her roommate,” the brunet explained. “The inspiration for the final murder in your book, right?”
“Uh.” Okay, this, at least, was expected. Ben gestured back into the house. “You want to look at my research? Because it’s all newspaper stuff, so …”
“Could we?” the brunet asked while his partner nearly shouldered him out of the way in his own house. Eminent domain, gentlemen.
He—Bentley Brooks Beckett, and seriously, Ma, why?—followed along, offering, “My den’s the room on the right,” in case the FBI agent couldn’t tell the difference between a den and a laundry. In case the FBI agent chose to make a mistake and stumble around like Ben had a body hidden back there.
Ben couldn’t turn around and watch both of the agents at the same time, but he saw the way the blond swept his eyes over the stuff hung in the hallway—some photos of him and Ma at different ages, some thrift store paintings—and he figured the brunet was doing it, too. Scoping him out. Figuring out the king from his castle. They would’ve clocked his clothes, too: jeans and a chambray shirt, leather belt clearly old and well-worn, work boots that clomped on the bare wood floor. His hair, in need of a cut, and his beard, trimmed just the way he liked, which would mean something to them. All of it would mean something to them because they wanted it to mean something to them. They had a story, so their report would include the details that supported it and ignore anything that tried to tell a different one.
“Yeah, so …” Ben sidestepped the blond agent to open the lower desk drawer and pull out one of those expanding folder things, although it wasn’t expanded very far. “Those three college girls, right?”
“We’re interested in the fourth,” blond told him, taking the folder anyway and opening it to pull out the contents. “The one who didn’t die.”
“Rosie,” brunet supplied. “In your book, she’s the one you call Rosie.”
He grimaced and shrugged. “I’m not good with names. I guess I didn’t change it very much.” There was a lot he hadn’t changed very much, thanks, but why were they here after her? Did that mean that she wasn’t in witness protection, after all? That she’d disappeared, but without help? Shit, had she been out there on her own all this time? Without some group of them acting as her support system while keeping him away from her?
Blond ignored the notebook on his desk and fanned the printouts of the newspaper articles dealing with the deaths of Kelsey Morgan, Ashleigh Fisher, and Heidi Phillips. Two were drunk when they died, one in a bad part of town and one in her own car—operating heavy machinery after imbibing, tsk tsk—and the third had been safe at home, but clearly she’d invited the wrong person in to join her.
Ben shifted, rubbing at his left arm because of course he’d be anxious about two feds dropping in on him like this. “I mean, they’re inspiration for the book, yeah,” he offered in the silence, “but the people in my head aren’t anything like the real ones were. Inspired, you know? But not …” He trailed off, because this was a good time to trail off.
Blond held up the paper-clipped stack—if a half-dozen sheets constituted a stack—of articles about Heidi Phillips. “In your book, the roommate’s out to dinner with a friend when the murder happens.”
He blinked. “In the …? It’s fiction. It’s—look, I didn’t date Lida-Rose Dawson.”
“And she wasn’t out with ‘a friend’ that night.” He tried to level his gaze at Ben, but Ben had two inches on him. “Her alibi was her boyfriend. Long-distance, and he just happened to show up that night and say oh, no, Ellie couldn’t have done it because she was with me all evening.”
“Until they both walked in and found the body,” brunet agreed. “Together. Or so they said.”
Shit, what? “What?”
“Yeah, that part didn’t make the papers,” brunet added almost comfortingly.
It looked like he’d have to learn their names.
“It didn’t make the papers because the boyfriend’s dad happened to be one of us,” blond snapped. “So they helped cover for her. The boyfriend and the dad.”
“Jack—”
The blond—Jack—slashed a hand through the air, ignoring his partner and focusing on Ben. “She disappeared. Ellie. We’re pretty sure her boyfriend’s dad orchestrated it, off the books, and we’ve been trying to find her ever since. So when we get wind that there’s this book coming out, and it’s going to be big, and it looks like the author had some inside knowledge about the person we’d like to question for Phillips’ murder …”
Seriously, there had to be a better reaction other than blinking, but he just couldn’t think of one. “Uh. It’s fiction.”
“Well, then, you’ve got quite the imagination, don’t you, Ben?”
He didn’t, actually. That was part of the problem with the second book. “I don’t … you’re saying that the … the sort of general case I used as a, I don’t know, plot backbone for my book means you … you think I’ve written a book where the main character falls in love with a murderer?”
“Possibly a serial killer,” Jack said, once again overriding his partner. “The other two women? She knew them, too. They were over at her apartment all the time that year.”
“The … the one killed on Elm and the one who crashed her car?”
Jack clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Should’ve done some more research there, Ben. Fisher’s car was tampered with.”
“They kept that out of the papers,” the brunet said quietly.
“Sure, so the real killer might slip up and mention it, but …” Jack dropped the printouts on the desk, scowling when they weren’t heavy enough to make a satisfying sound. “The real killer pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes and ran off, didn’t she?”
“Mr. Beckett, the reason everyone’s in a frenzy about your book is that you seem to have some sort of insight into Miss Dawson.” It seemed that the brunet’s usual volume was quiet, which Ben realized could easily be mistaken for calm. Or friendly. “Would you at all be willing to come with us into the office and tell us about your process?”
He licked his lips.
“You’re the first possible thread we’ve found to pull on this thing in years, so if you could help us find her … get our questions answered …” The brunet shrugged. “For Miss Phillips. For all of them.”
He ran a hand over his hair—at least it wasn’t a blink—and sighed. “I was writing, but … you’re talking right now?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
He minded. He minded a whole lot. But this thing went both ways. They wanted to know what he knew about her, right? He could say the same thing about them.
They let the silence drag on this time, and he sighed, lifting his hands and letting them fall to slap his thighs. “Sure. Okay. I don’t think this is going to help at all, but …”
Jack smiled tightly. “Thank you. We’ll caravan on over.”
Right. Okay.
This definitely wasn’t an eventuality he’d planned for.
To: MathyMart
From: LidaRoseElizabeth
Sent: January 11, 2019 10:48PM
I know I’ve got class tomorrow, but I can’t sleep. You should be in bed so you won’t get this until the morning, and even then I don’t want you wasting time worrying about it. I know you’ve got enough going on, and in case you need it in writing, I’m glad you told me. I worry about you, you know? That’s what you do when you love someone.
The TL;DR is that Trevor from 17 hasn’t been parking in my spot anymore because he’s been dead for weeks.
Now for the part you don’t have to read. Hell, I might even delete it. Sometimes just writing it out helps.
Is this like normal as you grow up? The more people you meet, the more are going to die. Right? But we’re not talking people who were old or sick. Margaret was killed by her boyfriend, for crying out loud, and that’s not okay. That’s not normal. Right? Most guys aren’t like that. Can’t be like that.
Right?
Or is this me being young and naïve and all the things Gran keeps telling me not to be, using the voice that means she doesn’t think I am, but maybe I am, after all? Like when she just got fixated on how I only did the single semester in Rome so I’d be home for your graduation, and that was the only reason. Because I’m still too young to make decisions like that? I don’t know. Fuck, I’m rambling.
Trevor’s been dead in a snowbank probably since the last time he parked in my freaking spot. I guess not many people hike that trail this time of year, or maybe he was found off the trail—there aren’t many details, but this is the second person I know who’s been murdered in months, and that’s absolutely not normal.
I should’ve just taken the single on campus. Or even a double. I didn’t have to save Heidi’s ass, and that’s not exactly paradise, either. We’re cordial, and we’ve managed not to go off on each other, but if she tries to tell me I haven’t done my share of the freaking chore list when we both know which one of us steps up and fills in when it’s not her week, and which one just sits there on her ass and goes “Well it’s your job this week,” I might just storm out. Leave her hanging.
God I’m distracted. In a mood. Everything’s going wrong, so everything seems like it’s going wrong, and I just don’t know what I’m doing here, but I’m too close to the finish line to back out now. I’m counting down the days because I’m done with this part of my life, you know? I’m ready to stop transitioning from high school to real life and just start living real life.
If you’ve read this far, I want you to know something else, too: I don’t care if Erin and Liza and whoever else keep telling you that the first year’s the worst and you need to come back for a second year and it’ll be so much better. If you don’t want to teach after this year, then don’t. No one’s going to make you sign that contract. We’ll work it out, because that’s pretty much the only non-negotiable here: the future is us. I want you happy, and if that means riding into battle against your mentor and your principal and whoever else, fine. I’ll get my sword.
I love you and I wish you were here. This whole long-distance thing really sucks.
E
Chapter Fourteen – coming January 14
Rebecca Frost 
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