Catch up on the previous chapters here
The text came in shortly after Nell got home from work on Monday: Don’t freak out.
Uh. Right. Clearly the FBI didn’t teach its agents social skills—or maybe they screened for them and rejected any hopeful who scored too high. Nell debated, but thought she might as well go for it: Your text is freaking me out. Send. Like fine, Adam wasn’t going to put certain things in writing, but come on, dude. Call if it was that bad.
You’ll know it when you see it.
Cryptic. And anxiety-inducing. And seriously, Adam, the exact opposite of helpful.
Nell had been planning on settling in on the couch with the borrowed Switch and getting some more hours out of it before it was due back at the library, but of course that couldn’t happen now. Now she had to wait and be on edge until she magically stumbled on whatever wasn’t supposed to freak her out. Seriously, Adam.
Her phone pinged again, this time from Art, and it wasn’t any less cryptic: I did not have this on my Bingo card. Okay, gentlemen … but clicking on the notification brought up the rest of the message, which was a link, but of course it didn’t give her a preview, so she had to tap it, and wait for it to load, and …
Fiction Writer Identifies Factual Serial Killer? Author C. J. O’Connell called in for questioning about his upcoming novel.
“Uh.” She hadn’t meant to say anything out loud, but maybe it was all the more surprising it was an open syllable and not a swear word. Nell had to blink a few times before shakily reaching out to scroll down and trying to get at least some of the sentences to stay in her mind.
The author, who writes under a pen name, was surprised to be contacted by FBI agents asking him for his insights into a story that, they suggested, covers a series of five murders, for example. So the FBI actually went to him and … what, exactly? Told him that by Jove, he’d done it? Except there weren’t five deaths in the book.
Since You’ve Been Gone, which releases in just over a week, details three of the deaths connected by the FBI, although only two are in the text as murders. “That’s how they were reported in the papers,” O’Connell explains. He refers to the newspapers around Kalamazoo, Michigan, which related …
Nell knew what the papers related. She’d read them closely, and possibly obsessively. What she didn’t know was how—or why—everyone suddenly thought Rosie was a murderer … and real.
Don’t freak out, huh? Seriously, Adam.
Normally Nell stayed out of the comments, but she had to know. It was about what she’d expected: some of them linking back to the old stories, the real stories, and others arguing that sure, maybe O’Connell used those newspapers as inspiration, but the whole idea of Rosie being a serial killer was just marketing. They want this book to debut at no 1, one commenter reasoned, so this is their final push.
It would be a more comforting point if Nell didn’t know that Rosie was, in fact, real.
We were already supposed to #FindRosie, someone else pointed out. This changes nothing.
omg what if O’Connell’s a fed? another user asked. That one was followed with a lot of declarations that ACAB included feds, thank you very much, so they wouldn’t be buying the book now. A handful even announced they’d canceled their preorders. Nell doubted the preorders would be missed, considering how many people were engaged in it now that it was not just maybe a thriller, but maybe true crime.
This can’t possibly be real, a keysmash username declared. If the Feds can’t find her, seriously? So now we’ve all got her real name? Might as well dox the woman.
Can’t dox someone you can’t find, numerous people shot right back, all trying to be the first to make that point.
Dear God, they were posting screenshots of records. The lease, signed by Heidi Phillips and Ellie Dawson—real names!—and even … seriously, how the hell did they find this? Credit card records. The charge to TGIFriday’s that night was the last one connected back to Lida-Rose Dawson. They were on this, and man, even the ones who complained that they shouldn’t be doing the FBI’s work for them were getting a hand in the game. Rosie HAS to be dead. No way she just disappeared.
Maybe she’s in witness protection.
The Feds would know if she’s in witness protection.
WP isn’t run by the FBI.
On and on and on, back and forth, all of it getting more clicks and more eyes on O’Connell’s upcoming debut.
He’s sending us after this chick and hiding behind a penname. No justice.
Fair point there.
Wait the last time anyone saw Lida-Rose Dawson, she was in police custody. Aren’t they looking in the wrong place?
Okay, yeah, her neighbors would’ve seen that, but O’Connell?
Nell’s hands twitched, because if the FBI brought him in for questioning they knew his real name, but she couldn’t text Adam about that. No paper trail. He hadn’t even called her, so she shouldn’t call him and start demanding answers. Maybe he didn’t have any answers, but hey, Adam, this sort of thing was enough to freak a girl out.
It was just publicity. It couldn’t be libel unless it was untrue that the FBI called him in, and though Nell was surprised if they had, she at least knew why. Or supposed she knew why. The FBI didn’t care about the New York Times bestseller list, but they’d want to know how much O’Connell knew, and why he’d chosen to include Margaret and Trevor when the easy stuff was the clear connection between the three dead women. Sure. Ashleigh was a car accident—and God, was it worse if it wasn’t an honest accident?—but that could be bent more easily into a fictional narrative. Everything was nice and neat and tied with a bow if it was a serial killer, but …
They’d never suspected Nell. She’d been in shock every time, especially after Heidi, but there was nothing that told her they’d actually suspected her. Wanted to check her alibi, yes, but as an initial step so they could clear her and mine her for information that might help them solve the most recent death. They didn’t suspect her, and they didn’t suspect Kent.
Thank God Kent hadn’t made it into the book. Men were more believable serial killers than women, so if they knew Rosie had a boyfriend … if there was any suspicion that the object of Cal’s obsession was already in a relationship …
See, and that would’ve worked! Nell locked her phone and set it face-down on the coffee table before punching one of the throw pillows. Give Rosie a boyfriend, or even, hey, make it a background obsessive character who was clearly a stalker, and bam. Or—the one that was really too close to the truth—make it murders to try to drive Rosie toward someone, except the Cal character ever so annoyingly did everything in the world to prevent himself from pursuing Rosie. He wanted her to come to him and then complained when she didn’t, because hey, maybe she didn’t even know he freaking existed.
Don’t freak out. God, Adam, how was she supposed to prevent herself from freaking out over this? They didn’t know it was her, fine, or how to find her, okay, but now all the true crime fanatics were going to put their training to work, and Adam better be damn well sure the FBI was watertight on this. Their identities … hell, even their ages … if this came out, it would explode. They’d have to move again, except this time maybe they wouldn’t have all that help, or the closed-court name change, and yeah, the birth certificate thing was maybe illegal, and just …
Don’t freak out. She wanted to punch an FBI agent squarely on the nose.
The landline rang and she shrieked, practically levitating off the couch. Why did they even have that thing? It was in the name of Kent Harris, sure, but … Nell shook her head and tried to take a deep, steadying breath, but her muscles were clamped down too tight around her lungs, and who was she trying to fool, anyway? At least the phone had a display to tell her who was calling, and she wasn’t going to answer a number she didn’t know.
Kent’s cell. Shit. Maybe she shouldn’t have put hers face-down. “Hello?”
“Hey. You saw?”
“I saw.” Seriously, this felt like they were in a spy movie. “Did Adam text you?”
“He did.” Kent swore softly, but he was at work, and even swearing in the back room would alert his coworkers that something was seriously wrong. Sometimes the problem was having people around who cared. “Nell …”
“I’m not really okay, but I can’t think of anything we can do.” She licked her lips but, since he didn’t reply, she asked, “Did yours also say ‘Don’t freak out’?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it did, so the first thing I wanted to do was Google some … names.” His family. Kent didn’t talk about it, but he worried that something would happen to one of them, and he wouldn’t know. Nell still didn’t know what his dad did, but maybe it was dangerous.
God, she hadn’t even thought of Gran. Gran, who was tough and spry and refused any sort of offer for some sort of age-based discount. Nell had only thought of herself. “But you found it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, babe, I can’t say it’s much better.” He sighed. “I have to get back out there or else someone will ask me what’s wrong.”
“I told Art that someone from our past has been poking around.”
There was a short pause, and then, “Huh.”
“Yeah, I can be brilliant every once in a while.” Sighing, she tried to get comfortable on the couch even though her body was still too tense for any sort of relaxation. “What about you? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Well, sure, but that’s definitely not safe for work.”
“One-track mind,” she teased, but it was working. At least a little bit.
“Every seven seconds,” Kent agreed. “Otherwise they revoke my man card. Okay, Brendan’s got me in his sights. I’m going to tell him what you told Art. And then, uh … home at the usual time, so be waiting for me with that martini.”
“Of course, master.”
Kent chuckled. She’d hoped for a laugh, but it was better than nothing. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Nell hung up and looked at the back of her cell phone, but this really wasn’t a good time to pick it up. All she’d get would be more comments, more theories, more conspiracies, and she really didn’t need to add to what was already going through her head. The Switch it was, but she checked the clock to note the time because, if she wasn’t completely absorbed in half an hour … well. Her phone would still be there.
Rebecca Frost 
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