Catch up on the previous chapters here
Ben ended up asking the barista about hotels and getting a couple options, as well as a weird look when he pulled out his notebook to write down addresses instead of looking at his phone, but that was how things went. Maybe he’d be remembered for his lack of phone, but that was it. His face was nondescript, his t-shirt and hoodie both solid colors without any markings, and there wasn’t even a credit card to link him to a name. He wrote down the addresses and strolled up and down the rest of what seemed to be downtown before heading back to his car. There wasn’t much to it, but at least there was a corner store if he wanted to pick up some staples.
In the car he pulled out his map and compared addresses to see if there was any reason to pick a hotel closer to her apartment, or if he might as well go for any of them. None of them were nearby, so he selected one that didn’t have a name he recognized—although he could get surprised when he pulled in and saw that it was a Hilton property or something like that—and figured out his route.
Asking directions here was not part of the plan. He didn’t need to talk to someone—like Hillier—and he didn’t want to be remembered. Just another guy, maybe on a fishing trip, or … ugh. He couldn’t pass it off like he was here to golf. He didn’t know the first thing about the game, and he didn’t have any clubs. Didn’t have any fishing gear, either. Wildlife photographer? Did Iowa even have wildlife?
That didn’t matter. If anyone asked if he was here for business or pleasure, he’d say business, and maybe sigh, and that would be that. Clearly he wasn’t even staying at a good hotel, so …
It took Ben two hotels, which was fine, because it meant he got to drive around and see a bit more. It was just the sort of place he’d expect to find her, too: small town, middle of flyover country, a quaint sort of throwback. Not that she’d swap out her jeans and hoodies for a housewife dress or anything, but there was just something comforting about the whole thing. A nothing ever happens here sort of feeling that would be good for her after everything that happened so quickly in one year. And the 50s vibe meant he could hope that, even if she had married the boyfriend, they’d have separate beds, kept apart.
It was a vain hope, because of course any boyfriend would want her physically as well as all the other ways a man could want a woman, and Ben couldn’t really blame the guy, but he could be jealous. Plus a marriage license was just an annoying legal entanglement that would have to be dealt with.
Okay, that meant disappearing again, on the run from all of the FBI this time instead of just most of it, but … they could do it. They’d figure it out. The main point was that this flight would be together. And there wouldn’t be separate beds.
Right, focus. He pulled into a parking spot in front of a motel that looked like it should be covered in one big spider web—clearly they needed some 50s housewives with feather dusters—and decided to try his luck at the front desk. The teenager, very much not a 50s throwback, barely even looked at Ben, which was good, because he put a fake name on the form alongside the number of the stolen license plate, and exchanged cash for a key. If he needed more than three nights, he’d extend it, but for now he had a base of operations that opened directly onto the parking lot, so there was no need to pass other doors—or to have other customers, if there were any, pass his—so he went out, moved his sedan to the proper space, grabbed his suitcase, and went in to investigate.
Sometimes even places like these had little pamphlets about things to do in the area, but no dice. The television worked, and looked like it cost more than the rest of the room combined, so he found a news station and turned it down low. Maybe an FBI agent in Michigan wouldn’t make national news, but he hadn’t checked in with Thom recently, so he needed to know if there was any buzz about that. He might need to use the personal hotspot he’d bought—not entirely sure if those were untraceable or what, but first, he hadn’t been sure if his hotel would have Wi-Fi, and second, that seemed at least a bit more anonymous—to check in and say hey, yeah, things are fine.
If there wasn’t anything on the news, Ben would probably have to email Thom, anyway, because hey, he was supposed to be gearing up for a national reading and signing tour. Thom expected him to have butterflies—which he would, if he didn’t already have her address. If he didn’t already know where she was, just waiting for him. They’d leave here together, and fine, yeah, it would mean surrendering the sales from the book, but that was a small sacrifice compared to the ones he’d already made.
He turned down the sheets, but they at least seemed clean, and his skin didn’t crawl just looking at them, so that was a plus. Since he had the place for three days, he decided he might as well fully unpack to let his clothes air out and get rid of some of the fold lines. She wasn’t going to care, but she was perceptive, and noticed details a lot of people missed, so he wanted to show her that he knew. He could be just as meticulous.
The boyfriend, though. That kept sneaking back into his head. He’d managed to keep himself focused on driving, on getting here, but now, with this down time … with the television on low in the background, talking about things that didn’t interest Ben and didn’t matter to his world … the boyfriend crept back in.
Why hadn’t he known there was a boyfriend? He could swear that no man’s voice had ever been caught on his bug, but an internet boyfriend whose FBI dad swept in and rescued her like this just didn’t make sense. There had to be a deeper connection than that, or else this whole thing turned sour.
An internet boyfriend who used his dad’s position of power to basically kidnap a young woman who was emotionally unstable in that moment was not a good guy. And neither was his dad, unless the boyfriend inflated the story and the dad thought it really was true love. But even then, it left her alone, with these guys planning her future, and helpless.
But, if two people were actually dating, it didn’t make sense that the boyfriend was never around. Seriously never. She was alone when she moved in, and the only friends they had over were female. There wasn’t any boyfriend voice at all on the living room mic—just her phone calls, which, yeah, sure, ended with I love you a lot of the time, but the content was the kind she’d share with her grandma or long-distance friends.
She’d been easy and free with her I love yous. At first it bothered Ben, because how was someone supposed to know they were special if she said it to everyone, but then he sat with it a while and realized that she was just overflowing with love. There was so much of it, she had to give a bunch away or else she’d swell up and explode.
It wasn’t hard to accept that other guys would see that in her, and want to be a part of it. It wasn’t the idea of a boyfriend that threw Ben, but the fact of one. A boyfriend with a father so devoted that he misused his position to help make her disappear, no less. If it had just been a boyfriend … a college boy, probably, simply because those were the guys she met … then they couldn’t have slipped away so completely.
What had Ben written? A rock sinking to the bottom of a murky pond? He should’ve called her a diamond, really, but the murky pond was accurate. She was somewhere so far away from him that her light was swallowed up. Maybe she wasn’t even allowed to shine. Didn’t they tell people starting new lives to change as much as they could about themselves, so no one would make the connection because of habits or a hobby or something?
Maybe the boyfriend, inspired by the 50s atmosphere, made her stay at home all the time. She’d vacuum and iron his shirts and meet him at the door with a martini when he got back from work, whatever his work was, but never leave the house, not even to do the shopping. You didn’t have to these days, what with Amazon and everything else that would deliver. She could be a hermit, a shut-in, and maybe he’d be the first person other than the boyfriend she’d seen in years. God, thinking about it that way, he was really wasting time here. He could at least drive past the apartment building and see if he could guess which windows were theirs.
Hers. Which windows were hers.
Ben could get some staples for the hotel room, at any rate. Instant coffee, that kind of thing. It would give him a reason for the drive, and if he happened to circle around a bit, then clearly he’d gotten lost in a new area. So maybe he could pass by more than once.
The stupid book cover had done a number on him. Here he was, thinking he’d catch a glimpse of her silhouette and he’d just know. Even after all this time, he’d know.
Maybe he would. Maybe the romantics of the world all kept their beliefs because, every so often, it did work out that way for someone.
Maybe, this time, it would work out for them.
Rebecca Frost 
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