Rebecca Frost

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Part Four: The Saddest Experience

The fact that Thom made sure the FBI’s accusation of Rosie was in the news was helpful because Ben didn’t have to try to figure out digital access to keep up with it. Granted, everyone was looking at and talking about and commenting on those stories, but he didn’t want to connect with something attached to his real name and ping something somewhere. That sounded like a spy movie concern, not a real-world ability, but you never knew.

None of the papers Ben bought with cash mentioned anything about an FBI agent in Kalamazoo.

He’d gotten out of state on that first day, so that was probably why. And maybe he hadn’t actually killed him, but … those details were fuzzy. His hands were sore, his knuckles scabbed from rubbing against the inside of the sweaty garden gloves, but he didn’t think punching was all he’d done. When he got into those fogs, he could be … creative.

The drive wasn’t helping his sore back, and he preferred not to use cruise control, so his leg ached, too. Plus he wanted to avoid turnpikes, with their cameras and toll-takers—if there were still toll-takers who’d deal with cash and not just cameras that caught you if you didn’t have a Fast Pass—so the trip was longer than it normally would’ve been. He should’ve made it in a single day, easy, but with everything he wanted to avoid, he was pulling in late on the second day, grouchy from a night in a bad motel along with the drive.

There might have been bed bugs. He hadn’t thought ahead to buy one of those sleeping bag things the travel magazines advertised, so you never actually touched the mattress in a strange place, mostly because he hadn’t pictured himself staying somewhere that barely rated half a star. Ben tried telling himself that it was all in his head, and of course he was nervous, because he was heading to the small town where she lived. He was nervous because he was trying to figure out the best approach.

Once he arrived, he’d probably have to risk a Google search to see if his photo was out there yet. Thom said it wouldn’t be until his first event, but things had changed. If it wasn’t, then he could find a place to stay for the night, and casually scope out what there was to see. Not much, but that could play in his favor. If they happened to cross paths in the dinky little two-block downtown area, that would be perfect, but he couldn’t plan on that.

Ben didn’t try stopping anywhere for lunch because the last thing he needed was to send back a mostly full plate or to rush into the bathroom and throw up whatever he’d managed to force down. He made do with a gas station top-up and an assortment of things that looked less unappetizing than the others, but mostly coffee. The acid played hell with his stomach, but it was already a mess, and he needed to stay alert for the boring drive and in case he saw her on the street.

If she was alone, he could stop her. Ask her for directions to somewhere, the way he’d asked Hillier, to give her time to realize that yes, it was really him. It would be a complete surprise, so he couldn’t be hurt if she didn’t recognize him right away. He was supposed to be in Michigan, not Iowa, and she might panic when she realized. She couldn’t have a handler on her at all times, right? But she’d have to tell him where and when they could meet and properly talk if she was being watched.

If she wasn’t alone, he might still try asking, but having her realize in front of someone else—not the boyfriend not the boyfriend not the boyfriend—could be a problem. Of course one of them could always explain they were old friends and had known each other before, but he didn’t know what her cover story said about before. If he said they’d met in Michigan, but she’d told everyone she was from Wisconsin …

He wouldn’t run into her on the street. Ben kept telling himself that and hoping he was lying at the same time. He wouldn’t run into her on the street, so tonight he’d sleep in a motel—hopefully a step up from last night—and get out his map, or maybe buy a new map that zoomed in right here, and figure out his drive, or his walk, or where to drive to and start walking so he’d pass her apartment building.

The problem with the boyfriend—she didn’t have a boyfriend—was that he couldn’t just leave a note under the door or through the mail slot or whatever they had here and know that she’d be the first to find it. He didn’t even have a name for her, which was just sloppy thinking, but he’d been so focused on the where because he knew the who. He just didn’t know what everyone around her thought when they thought of her.

And thank God, the speed limit was dropping. Ben wasn’t on a main road, and he’d been keeping an eye on his trip odometer, but it was comforting to see the actual Earth match up with those calculations. Although it was also weird to pass a freaking golf course. Wasn’t Iowa supposed to be all corn? Who went to Iowa to play golf?

Not Ben, certainly. He’d never played golf in his life. Golf was bad for the ecosystem. Maybe they didn’t have to clear much of a natural environment out here in the middle of nowhere, but the care and maintenance of the grass … he clucked his tongue to himself as he drove by and switched his thoughts from fertilizer and water wastage to keeping an eye out for hotels, or at least some sort of local diner or something where he could get some dinner and ask about hotels.

As long as his face wasn’t out there yet. It would be best if he could find someplace with a public television permanently on the news, but that didn’t seem like something you’d find around here. In an airport, sure, but this was a small town, no matter how close to a city it was. If an hour or so counted as close.

This was the main road, so it did take him to the quaint little downtown area, which looked like it had been forgotten back in the fifties. Ben pulled into one of the slant parking spaces and tried to stifle a sigh at the fact that it had a number instead of an actual parking meter, but the machines generally took cash along with cards. He had a good amount of change, and he’d wipe the buttons down afterward.

If it had a camera, he’d just deal with it if he couldn’t cover it. He wasn’t wearing anything with his name on it today, but he also didn’t have a hat he could just pull down over his eyes or something … in order to look like someone who was trying to hide.

As Ben got out of the car, he saw a presumably homeless woman shuffling by. When she saw him looking at her, he nodded, but she jerked her head away and changed her course so she wouldn’t pass too close by him. He was pretty sure she was muttering to herself as she went, but that didn’t bother him. She was far too old for his interest, although … would she be homeless? If she’d run away from the boyfriend, then she would be, but if she’d run away from the boyfriend, then the address Hillier coughed up would be useless. She wouldn’t linger in the same small town, no matter how well that town served its unhoused population.

She was here. Hillier said she was here.

He set his sights on a storefront that looked like a diner, or maybe a café: a local place with a name he didn’t recognize instead of a chain. It wasn’t like chains wouldn’t take cash, but he always felt awkward when he went to order and didn’t know all the lingo. He’d stick out like a sore thumb. He might, anyway, since he wasn’t a local, but there just didn’t seem to be the same pressure at a little place instead of something all fluorescently lit and with sleek tabletops and uncomfortable chairs that didn’t want you to linger.

Ben didn’t know how to describe the lights here—they hung down and had shades—and the tabletops were old wood and looked scarred by frequent use and, maybe, the ghosts of old initials. The chairs might not be super comfortable, but they were wood and metal, not plastic. He approached the counter with its bakery case and looked up at the chalkboard menu while the barista—were men still baristas, or did the ending change?—finished with the customer in front of him.

The man greeted him with a smile, and Ben ordered a latte and a sandwich, negotiating the string of follow-up questions: dairy milk was fine. No, no flavor. Yes to all the toppings. For here. Sheesh. Maybe this was why he so rarely went out. It wasn’t just the chains that could annoy you.

Ben paid, accepted his change, and confronted the tip jar. It asked him to decide which of the animated characters was most likely to take over the world, and he didn’t recognize either, so he paused long enough for the barista to turn away before tucking a couple bucks into the left slot. That way he wouldn’t have to make even the smallest of small talk by admitting yeah, that one rocked.

He waited for his coffee and took a seat along one of the walls, sipping absently as he watched the front windows. It wasn’t like he was going to see her walking by, but …

“Here you go,” the barista announced, setting Ben’s sandwich down in front of him and making him jump. “Sorry, man. Head in the clouds.”

At least he didn’t have to respond, since the guy had to report to his post behind the register for the next customer, so he picked up his sandwich, took a bite, and tried to just … let things happen.

---

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Adam took a deep breath and ran his hand over his hair. Nell couldn’t tell if this was him stalling or him figuring out what to say, so she pressed her lips together and crossed her arms and tried to wait.

“C. J. O’Connell’s real name is Bentley Beckett.”

Nell blinked, then frowned. “Pretty sure I’d remember a Bentley Beckett.”

“He goes by Ben, and it’s possible you never really met him. He was a janitor and worked for the company that cleaned the units between renters.”

Her frown deepened. “So … if I never met him …?”

“We’re back to him bugging the rooms. He’s had his own business for a while now, so we don’t really have a way to go in and check the apartments, but …”  Adam shifted.

Okay, seriously. She could use a few interrogation techniques herself.

“He’s had his own business for a while, including cleaning up at crime scenes.”

“So …?” So what? It wasn’t like he’d worked any of the crime scenes that mattered the most to Nell, right? And, as a janitor, he’d only be called in after all the techs and stuff were done.

“So he’s had a full background check, and he’s clean. No reports of anything.”

At some point she’d reach maximum frown and not be able to force her eyebrows any lower.

“The story about agents picking him up and asking him about the truth of the book? Those are real.”

Nell pointed to a dough mixer. “I am sticking your arm in there and turning it on if you don’t start talking faster.”

“Look, Nell, all of this is already done and there’s nothing we can do, so I’m trying to be careful with how I explain it.”

“Then be careful faster.”

Adam scoffed and shook his head and crossed his arms. “Two agents went to see him, and asked him to come in and give them a statement, because he’d somehow Mindhuntered his way into connecting all five cases. They said he was kind of thrown by that—not too much, but they’d poked him. And they’re the ones who told him they want to talk to the real-life Rosie, because they think she killed all of them, but they can’t find her because …”

Oh, no. “Because?” It came out as a whisper.

“Because the real-life Rosie’s boyfriend had a dad who helped them disappear.” He licked his lips. “And he’s an agent. Nell—”

She shook her head and pulled away from his hand, bursting through the door between the café and the back room because her phone was out here. Art and Brandon looked up from one of the tables, startled, and of course Since You Went Away was there between them, because there was no escaping it.

“Kent said he’s coming right over,” Brandon offered before she ducked down behind the counter to grab her purse. “Didn’t even ask who Adam was.”

Like she was cheating on Kent or something. And why did her phone always fall out of its little pocket just when she needed it? Nell dug into the depths of her purse, went to her texts, and yep, there was one from Kent: I’m on my way. She checked the time stamp, but the bus schedule wasn’t in their favor.

Adam groaned, and Nell straightened up, phone in one hand, and then followed his gaze. “Exactly how many people have read that damn book?” he grumbled.

“How many people in the world, or how many people that matter to me?” she snapped, wanting to tell Kent to forget it and grab a cab or something, but Adam already said it: whatever was done was done, and it was all unfolding in another state, anyway. If Kent checked his messages he’d see she’d read it, but she stuck the phone in the pocket of her dress and crossed her arms.

Brandon looked at Art, then back at Adam. “If that’s not a rhetorical question … both of us.”

“Wait, you read it?” Nell asked Art.

He shrugged one shoulder. “All the new hype got me going. I like thrillers. This?” He tapped the book cover with one finger. “Not a thriller. And there’s no way Rosie did it. It’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”

“Good reference,” Brandon murmured.

“You can say the compliments out loud,” Art countered.

Adam held up a hand. “The murder of who?”

“Classic Agatha Christie,” the head librarian explained. “It’s a Poirot novel, but it’s not narrated by Hastings. His Watson,” he added, either because he thought Adam needed the explanation or because he was simply used to clarifying. “The narrator’s a doctor, and it turns out he’s the one who committed the murder. He just tricks the reader by neglecting to mention it, and then he follows Poirot through the case and pretends to help him, but it doesn’t end well for him. Poirot figures it out, anyway.”

The agent shook his head a little. “You think the Cal character’s a serial killer?”

“Hell, if we’re saying this whole thing is based on real life, I’m thinking C. J. O’Connell’s the serial killer,” Art almost laughed. “It can’t be Rosie.”

“You’re blinded by his clear adoration of her,” Brandon protested.

“Wait, so you think Rosie is a serial killer?” Nell wanted to know.

Brandon shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a serial killer. I looked into those cases. The bus driver was killed by her boyfriend, the neighbor guy got whacked by a loan shark, the one friend was in a bad part of town, the next one was drunk driving, and the last one was murdered. That’s one murder.”

“Whacking’s a murder,” Art argued.

“Different purpose.”

Art shrugged. “The FBI thinks it’s a serial killer. Don’t you,” he added pointedly to Adam.

“Oh, come on,” Brandon laughed. “Next you’ll tell me he’s here because Nell’s the real Rosie, so he’s going to arrest her.”

Nell froze, but Art was already looking at her, ignoring Brandon’s laughter. If she tried to un-freeze, he’d see that, too, and note it, and know …

“Rosie’s a college senior,” her boss said conversationally. “In the book.”

Nell swallowed.

“So she’s probably about twenty-two. Right?”

She could feel Adam practically vibrating just behind her.

“But maybe she looks younger?”

“Art?” Brandon asked, like someone else should’ve already stepped in.

Still ignoring him, Art held Nell’s eyes. “Rosie doesn’t have a boyfriend in the book. But if she did, Nell … how much older would he be? Not ten years.”

“Art, I think you’re getting fact and fiction confused here.”

Nell looked away, toward the window where she’d see Kent coming, but it wasn’t time yet. The stupid buses might run on schedule, but the stupid schedule wasn’t all that frequent.

The silence stretched until Brandon broke it. “For fuck’s sake. You’re not telling me my sarcastic ass is actually right about something?”

For once, Nell thought, but didn’t say. Maybe she didn’t have to say it.

“Fuck, Nell …” Brandon shook his head and slouched, ready to laugh it off, then caught sight of the book again and stilled. “Fuck, Nell.” It was the same words, but the tone meant he’d truly stopped laughing.

Art looked at him, then back up at Nell. “Someone from your past was reaching out again. That’s what you said.”

She nodded, because yes, she’d said that much.

“And that would answer your question, wouldn’t it?” he asked Brandon. “What’s going on with the two of them. Why they’re not telling.”

“Okay, it would, but …” Brandon took a breath and turned to look at Adam. “You’re not here because you think Nell’s a murderer. You’re here … what, because you think Art’s right? The author somehow …?”

“Nell, we really should talk in private,” Adam nearly muttered.

“All the paperwork I’ve ever seen tells me she’s Penelope Harris, age twenty-two,” Art pointed out mildly, like it wasn’t actually an argument. “Social security, driver’s license … if I started claiming it wasn’t her real name, that would be slander, wouldn’t it?”

God, he was talking like Kent’s dad had after Heidi’s murder. Soon he’d point out that he wasn’t asking for any favors.

“Brandon?” he prompted.

The librarian shook his head. “I don’t deal with paperwork. Klara did all that.”

“Was there a boyfriend mentioned in the articles you read?”

“Uh.” He blinked and shook his head like it was an Etch-a-Sketch. “If the surviving girl had a boyfriend?”

“Lida-Rose Dawson, yeah.”

“No. There wasn’t any mention of that. The roommate, though—Hailey’s real name?”

“Heidi?” Nell answered automatically, but her frown was back on again. Heidi didn’t have a boyfriend. There were times Nell thought her roommate would’ve had a girlfriend if she’d had anyone, but no one had ever come forward to say they thought Heidi had a boyfriend.

Art shrugged, still looking at Brandon. “I headcanon it, though. I think Rosie had a boyfriend.”

The door chimed, making Nell jump, but it was Kent. Before he could open his mouth, Art turned to him. “Kent. We’re discussing whether Rosie”—he tapped the book again—“could’ve had a boyfriend. Making fanfiction, you know. I say she does, but I’m having trouble figuring out the details.”

“Uh.” Kent stopped, one hand on the strap of his backpack, and looked first to Nell, then Adam. “You’re writing fanfiction for a book that’s not even out yet?”

“A lonely man fills his hours as he can.”

Kent looked at Nell again, then shrugged. “I think,” he said slowly, taking off the backpack as he approached their table, “he’d be a year ahead of her, so he’s not in the book because he graduated and he’s off at his job. Plus Cal wouldn’t want to see him, anyway.”

“A year, huh?” Art mused. “Does he look a lot older than she does?”

Nell laughed. “Only after he grew the beard.”

Art turned to Adam. “Did that give you enough time to get your thoughts in order?”

Aw, shit. This part. Nell came out from behind the counter and went to Kent, who hadn’t sat down. “He said two agents picked up O’Connell, whatever his real name is, and questioned him, and gave him …” God, how was she supposed to word it?” “The boyfriend’s dad’s name.”

Kent’s head snapped up as his gaze homed in on Adam. “What?”

“I can explain.”

He leveled a pointed finger at the agent. “Then get started.”

---

This is the end of Part Three.

Chapter Twenty-Six

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.

---

Chapter Twenty-Four

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Nell was pretty sure Pending was open seven days a week purely because of the pending food wall. True, the people who came in with money and tips at the ready liked having a place to go between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day, so they could meet their blind dates or do their studying or work on their laptops, but they’d never really been Art’s focus. Those staying at the shelter had to be in before Pending closed, but he wanted to make sure they always had a place to pick up something outside of the shelter times.

She also thought that it was nice because he didn’t expect them to remember what day of the week it was, so they didn’t have to plan ahead for a Sunday. How many Sunday nights in Italy had she eaten a weird collection of leftovers because she’d forgotten that most things were closed? Sure, there was the supermarket option, but that just didn’t feel worth it for a single meal when she could get the good stuff and feel more authentic in the morning.

Here it meant she didn’t have a regular schedule and did have to keep track of the days of the week, but Nell wrote them on the calendar at the apartment and turned alarms on and off on her phone depending on the week. The wall calendar always made her think of Heidi, but of course it was worse right now.

Colton didn’t work on the weekends, so usually the place was dark when Nell used her key, but there was a light on in the office. If there wasn’t, she’d flick it on and glance around before turning it off again, repeating the process with the back room before returning to the lit front. This was all ingrained for reasons she really tried not to remember, thanks, but Heidi was everywhere today.

Art looked up and waved at her when she stopped in the doorway. “Morning. Wasn’t sure you’d want to be alone.”

“I’ve been reassured that it’s incredibly unlikely, nigh on impossible, that anyone’s actually going to show up.” Except of course she didn’t trust Adam’s blasé attitude. This wasn’t witness protection, so Adam wasn’t actually trained for it. He just passed on letters—which she was pretty sure wouldn’t happen if it were witness protection—and checked in on them casually, but mostly they were left to go about their new lives. “I’ve got this for you, though,” she added, pulling out Since You Went Away. “Brandon really, really wants to borrow it. And if you sell tickets to the event, you’d better make sure he gets one before you run out.”

“We’ll probably have to do tickets,” he agreed, taking the book back. “For the reading, at least. We can have a line out the door for signatures, but …” Art pondered the cover and looked back up at her. “What did you think of the book?”

“Well …”

He almost smiled. “I read a bunch of the reviews. Was it truly a passionate and tender exploration of a deep emotional connection?”

“Did anybody call it an obsession?” She leaned against the door frame, arms crossed.

“No. Apparently it’s sweet and I should take notes on how to woo the fairer sex.”

Nell wrinkled her nose. “But he doesn’t actually get the girl. He never comes out and tells her how he feels. He’s just … a friend in everything but his mind.”

“There’s something wrong with a man wanting to be friends with a woman?”

She shook her head, even though that wasn’t actually her answer to the question. “He doesn’t want to be friends with her. He wants a full romantic relationship. He just acts like a friend around her and assumes that she’ll notice and the music will swell and he won’t actually have to take that step of saying something, so it’s a fake friendship. He friendzones himself in the hopes that she’ll fall in love with him back and be the one to take the risk of saying something.”

“The risk.”

“Yeah, sure. If you’re the one to say something, then the other person can reject you. Put you back in your friend place, which isn’t what he ever wanted.”

Art raised an eyebrow. “And which one of you took that risk?”

The true answer was Kent, but since they were supposed to be a decade apart … “We did start out as friends. And then I kissed him. So.” That was tricky, because Art would be thinking a seventeen-year-old kissed a twenty-seven-year-old, and the twenty-seven-year-old was okay with that.

“So—and you don’t have to tell me this, because it’s personal and I’m still your boss—that’s not weird? Being, I don’t know …”

The fact that he was blushing and not quite able to meet her eyes made it easier. “Yeah, it was kind of weird. Like, all my friends were jealous. They all had crushes on him, too. And his friends … I don’t know. They kind of teased him, but they were all single, so just … him getting any attention …”

“And your parents?”

Nell nodded without knowing what she was nodding about. “They’re not the ones trying to find me. They wanted to … you know. But I was seventeen, so there wasn’t anything legal they could do”—shoot, that still meant she could’ve come from a lot of states, right?—“and I was eighteen when I left.”

“Can’t they still report an adult missing?”

Yeah, probably. “Nobody did.” That was the truth. Gran knew why she was gone, if not where, and she didn’t think it occurred to anyone else that they could’ve actually pursued that.

Including O’Connell. Whoever he was.

Art nodded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bring up the painful stuff. It’s obvious Kent’s really good for you.”

Nell realized she was chewing on her lip. “Being here’s been good for us. Away from … ugh, I don’t know.”

“The zone of familial expectations?”

“Yeah. Those, and … I don’t know. Your past weighs you down sometimes. The person you were before, or thought you were before, even outside of …”

“Parents and school?” he suggested.

She nodded.

“I always thought that was the best part of college. Meeting new people, being a blank slate …” Art tilted his head as his eyes drifted. “Going home for breaks was a problem, though. Mom still wanted me to be her little Arty, but I was out there changing, without her … growing up and away …” He refocused and smiled at Nell. “There’s a reason we’re still a few hours apart. It’s just better that way.”

Right, except his distance from his mom was a choice that either of them could change at any time, and they could still communicate with each other along all of the usual channels without an Adam to mediate and delay and who knew what else.

“Sorry,” Art added. “You’ve got stuff to do.”

She nodded, but at least she wasn’t feeling as thrown off as last week. Scanning the walls was enough, since the information actually stuck in her head, and she started the coffee going before getting the chairs down for maximum efficiency, and even if the urns weren’t all full when she flipped the sign, they opened on time.

This wasn’t the sort of job you were supposed to really want as a career, much less as a career after you got a college degree. Nell hadn’t gone back to class after Heidi’s murder, so she hadn’t completed her final exams. She figured she didn’t have the degree, even if they added up all the credits leading up to that last quarter.

She hadn’t asked about whether students in real life got an automatic 4.0 during a semester if their roommate died, the way they did in television shows, because having a diploma in her old name wasn’t going to help her in this new life, especially when everyone thought she was eighteen when she showed up. Eighteen, newly wed to a twenty-eight-year-old, and no, Kent had never protested the whole idea that made him look like a pedophile, because it protected her. It protected them. Even if O’Connell realized she’d had a boyfriend, he wouldn’t be looking for a couple with their backstory.

Even if he’d actually recognize her. It couldn’t have been someone she saw on a regular basis, much less every day, because you recognized faces both on campus and in the apartment building. Maybe you didn’t know names, but you nodded. If you ran into someone in Meijer or something you blinked a couple times because the face wasn’t in the right location, but then you laughed and nodded because yeah, that was another K student, or someone from the second floor, or just the whole Midwest nice thing.

It didn’t bother Adam that the O’Connell author headshot was a stranger, but it bothered her. Was she supposed to just be overly suspicious of any man with brown hair, just in case? And what if he bleached it or shaved his head? He was such a nobody, such a nondescript face, that if he changed his hair or his beard at all …

Nell put her customer service smile on when the door opened and the bell jingled, but the woman coming in wasn’t paying any attention to how friendly the barista was this morning. “Hi, I can’t figure out how to get to the lake?”

Right. Okay. “You’re in the town of Colchester. Lake Colchester’s almost three hours from here.”

“Three …? Well, fuck.” Without looking up from her phone, she turned, opened the door, and snapped, “It’s three fucking hours away!” There was a pause, and then “I asked you before booking the hotel!” There was a longer pause, and then the woman sighed and let go of the door, finally looking up and frowning. “Huh?”

Nell held up a large to-go cup. “Seems like you need it. On the house.” Because that was easier than explaining she’d just take the proper tag off the wall once the woman left.

She hesitated, maybe running through everything she’d said and the tone in which she’d said it, then shrugged. “Thanks. This is not how today was supposed to go.

Nell just smiled so she didn’t say something like Join the club.

---

Chapter Twenty-Three

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Sometimes fate smiled on you, even if you didn’t believe in fate. Ben was driving slowly along Hillier’s street, checking house numbers, when he noticed someone in front of the right number—Hillier’s number—working on the flower beds.

An older gentleman type of someone. The man didn’t have his back entirely to the road, although he could have, and he straightened up and shaded his eyes with one gloved hand. It wasn’t the best defensive position—Hillier still knelt on some sort of pad—and he wasn’t going to do anything too rash out here, but he stopped the van all the same, parking it by the curb across from the amateur gardener, and got out with a rueful grin. “Hey, sorry to bother you, but maybe you can help?” he asked, tucking the keys in his jeans pocket as he pulled the small spiral-bound notebook from his breast pocket.

Hillier got up nimbly enough. He had steel-gray hair almost the same color as his eyes, and those were surrounded by wrinkles that said he divided his time between squinting skeptically—which he was doing now—and smiling. “Are you lost?” he asked, not offering a hand, but maybe because it was both gloved and dirty.

Ben nodded. “My phone charger broke. I’m looking for …” He paged through the little notebook, apparently focused on his handwriting and not anything else around them. His peripheral vision showed a quiet street with no one else about. “The 5000 block of Blue Spruce.”

That made Hillier chuckle. “Well, you’re not too far off, son, but that’s as the crow flies. Here, come on in. I don’t think we’ve got a map, but I can print you something.”

He grinned because the other option was letting his mouth drop open in complete shock at how damn easy it was. “Thank you. That would be great. I’m not late yet, but …”

“To be early is to be on time,” Hillier agreed easily, stripping his gloves off and preceding Ben up the porch steps. The door wasn’t locked, and Hillier held the screen door open for him to take before opening the inside door. Hillier stepped to one side and slipped out of his gardening shoes, which weren’t quite crocs but were pretty darn close. “She’ll yell at me if she comes home and there’s a trail,” he explained offhandedly.

So his wife wasn’t home. “Do you want me to take mine off? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Nah. Unless you’re coming from a crime scene,” he added with a smile. “That’s your main thing, right?”

“That’s part of it,” Ben agreed, and this was an argument against using the van and the shirt. “But I’m on my way to deep-clean a house between owners, so … dust, maybe, but nothing extreme.”

Hillier chuckled like that was actually clever. “Come on, this way.”

And—bingo—it was down a hall that held family photos. Old family photos along with recent ones, so maybe … if Ben was quick … There were a lot of people in the recent family photo, so he couldn’t match things up perfectly, but the oldest boy in the older photos, when the children were all still children, had dark hair. It wasn’t much, but it was more than he had before.

“Blue Spruce?” Hillier asked, sitting down in front of an old desktop computer and shaking the mouse to wake it up.

“Yeah, 5000 something. Uh …” Seriously, Hillier had his back to Ben and everything. He pulled out the notebook again, quickly scanning the room instead of the page and absently reading off the number. There was an odd painting on the wall. The sort of thing people put over safes, as though it actually made things less conspicuous.

“All right, let’s see …” Hillier was the kind of man who leaned closer—maybe he needed glasses—and pecked away with both index fingers.

Ben looked around the office more slowly, and this time it was easier. There was a studio shot of a family, parents—yes, that could be a younger Hillier—and five kids, and next to it a likely professional photo of a lot more people spread out on a rolling green lawn. Keeping Hillier in his peripheral vision, he tried counting up the adults. The young adults, in the proper generation, and …

Eight. Enough for four children and their spouses. Or, fine, three married children with spouses and two unmarried, but … with the dispersal of the kids …

“Did you go to school with any of them?” Hillier asked, making Ben jump.

Of course he’d be sheepish if he got caught staring at a stranger’s family. Ben pointed to one of the young men. “He looks familiar.”

“Darrin? He’s my son-in-law. He teaches up at the high school. Do you clean there?”

He shook his head: the honest answer. “They have their own staff. Looks like a nice family.”

“Yeah.” Hillier glanced back, and was there something wistful in his smile? The sort of thing that meant five kids had indeed become four? “You got a family?”

“No. No, I …” Ben waited out a calculated pause. “We were planning on it, but … I lost her.”

“I’m sorry.” And damned if he didn’t look it, too. “That’s rough, at your age.”

Ben tamped down a snort. “I’d guess it’s rough at any age.”

“True, but …” Hillier carefully moved the mouse and deliberately clicked on the print icon. “There we go. Directions to Blue Spruce.”

He half-expected to see a dot matrix printer, but it was a sleek model much newer than the laptop. “Where’s your oldest son these days?” He hadn’t meant to ask it so bluntly, but apparently he couldn’t pass up the chance.

“My …?” Hillier turned in the chair—old, but on wheels—and looked up at him. It was not a position of power.

He stepped closer. “Your oldest son. And his girlfriend. I assume they’re still together?” Another step. “They disappeared at the same time.”

“They …?” But his eyes darted to the photos again.

Ben grabbed the front of Hillier’s t-shirt, twisting the fabric tight and forcing him to stay against the back of the chair so he couldn’t get up. “Where are they?”

Even breathing hard and forced to lean at this angle, Hillier pressed his mouth into a thin line as his eyes flashed. “I’m not telling you.”

That very statement admitted there was indeed something to tell. “Oh, I think you will.”

This was how it went: Ben wanted something, and he ended up getting it. The part in between was … inconsequential. The details of what happened certainly didn’t matter, and maybe it was better for him this way. If he didn’t remember what he did, then perhaps he didn’t do it, after all. If he’d actually done anything.

The important thing was that Hillier’s wife hadn’t come home. That would have been unfortunate. He would have dealt with it in the same nebulous way he dealt with all threats, but things were already complicated enough.

When he got back to his van, he stripped off Hillier’s gardening gloves—now bloodied as well as dirty, and his knuckles were raw and swollen, but at least he hadn’t transferred his own DNA to Hillier—and stuck them in a plastic shopping bag he pulled from the collection he kept in the van. It wasn’t sealable, like a Ziploc, but it would do for now. Then he started the van, checked his mirrors, and pulled away from the curb, carefully following all the traffic laws.

The printed map told Ben to turn left at the stop sign, but he turned right, instead. He was going back home, and packing up, and then heading out as soon as possible. Somewhere in the back of his mind he must have planned for this—or maybe the part of him that took over when the rest of him fogged out planned for it—because there wasn’t much he absolutely had to take from his house. He could even leave the laptop and all his notes, because he’d already burned the things that couldn’t be found. He’d grab the cash, his go-bag, and pause just long enough to change the license plate on his car. A car that looked like so many other cars on the road.

Ben wouldn’t shave at home and leave that evidence, but there was equipment in the go-bag. There wasn’t a list of the kinds of hotels he’d be seeking, but he had some burner phones, and his maps, and his wits.

And an address. He hadn’t memorized it yet, but it gave him a direction to start driving.

Iowa. Ben was going to Iowa.

---

Interview, Lida-Rose Elizabeth Dawson with Officer Melissa Jacobson, May 26, 2019

MJ: You can’t tell us anyone else Heidi hung out with?

LD: I can’t tell you anyone else she had over to the apartment, and she rarely left it for anything but class. Check with her advisor, and her classmates, and just … no, she wasn’t a social person. Her study group came over, but she never had, like … there weren’t just friends. Heidi didn’t … she didn’t act like she wanted friends.

MJ: What do you mean by that?

LD: I mean she only invited people over with a specific purpose. They were there to study, or tutor her, and they kind of made a joke of it. How she’d tell them to stop wasting time and just buckle down. That cross-stitch sampler in the living room? Danielle made it for her. As a joke, but I don’t think Heidi knew it was a joke.

MJ: Why did people keep coming over if Heidi was just a joke?

LD: Heidi wasn’t a joke—the sampler was a joke. Heidi knew how to run study groups. She would keep everyone on task, and God, between the senioritis and the classes, we really needed someone to keep us on task. She’d organize it, including snacks, and you actually learned stuff. It made more sense after. But she never just hung out with anyone, except the weekends she spent with her friends from back home. The names I’ve already given you.

MJ: We checked with those people, and none of them were planning on picking Heidi up on Friday night.

LD: But … that doesn’t make any sense.

MJ: None of them had seen her at all this year.

LD: But … no. You can go back through my texts. She didn’t spend a ton of weekends with them, but there were times … she’d be gone, and that’s where she told me she was. With one of them, or all of them, or …

MJ: We have looked at your texts. We’ve also done what we can to track Heidi’s phone. She didn’t go home those weekends.

LD: What?

MJ: Her phone didn’t ping the towers by your apartment, but she stayed in Kalamazoo.

LD: She …?

MJ: So, again: is there anyone else you can think of? Any names she mentioned?

LD: Can …? No, I … you’re saying she lied to me?

MJ: It certainly looks that way.

LD: But … she … fuck.

MJ: What were you going to say?

LD: I was going to say that’s not like her, but … what the fuck do I know? She was a freaking martinet about chores and checked off every single one every single week, and she’s the one who insisted we always tell each other where we were and who we were with and when we were going to be back, and that doesn’t make any freaking sense.

MJ: You weren’t friends before you moved in?

LD: No, I already told you that part. She was supposed to room with Sierra, but Sierra decided to stay in Belize.

MJ: And who were you going to room with?

LD: I was going to be on campus. Maybe Ashley, but then Heidi asked if I’d take the other bedroom because she needed someone, so … I said yeah, sure. I thought … I thought I was helping her out.

MJ: So she knew you well enough to ask you.

LD: I think she was working her way down the list of classics majors, just trying to find someone to float the other half of the rent.

MJ: And you were just the first one to say yes?

LD: I guess so. Or else she wouldn’t have needed to ask me.

---

This is the end of Part Two.

Chapter Twenty-One

Catch up on the previous chapters here

FBI agents who lived in normal neighborhoods probably didn’t have much in the way of extra security, because otherwise they would’ve moved into some sort of gated community, or bought a house behind a high wall, but Hillier’s house was normal, according to Google maps. He accessed that on a library computer that someone left signed in, because even though he didn’t believe in fate, he believed in seizing the moment.

It was a Craftsman house, which meant it looked like every other Craftsman house, and Hillier hadn’t painted it anything interesting, either. Beige and white. Maybe two shades of beige, which was a waste of paint, really. If you couldn’t tell the difference from the end of the block, what was the point?

He didn’t know the neighborhood. It wasn’t a cul-de-sac, so at least it was believable that he could drive past it without completely standing out, but what he really needed was to scope it out almost continuously. Before he got in—he already figured he’d need to get in—he’d have to know the habits of the people who lived there.

Most people were predictable. Predictable, and oblivious. You could follow them—say, back to their dorms—at night, and they just saw some guy out jogging or whatever. They didn’t look for your face, especially if it was the face of a guy who usually went jogging through campus. They just assumed you belonged there as long as you acted like you did.

Private homes were another matter. He could pull up in his van and wear his shirt with the logo and greet whoever opened the door with the wrong name, but then they’d see the logo on his pocket and on the van. Neighbors might notice. Their doorbell cameras would certainly notice. Then Ben would have to keep up the charade long enough to supposedly realize he’d been given the wrong address, and maybe he’d be able to sit in the van on the phone for a while, but all that would get him was the face of the person who answered. It might even be Mrs. Hillier, or what if they still had kids at home?

Okay, back up. Think. He sat in a corner of the library, books spread out around him, and turned a page every so often, but his mind wasn’t on any of this. He just didn’t want to leave without knowing where he was going next, because having an epiphany on the road and needing to pull a U-turn or do anything that would make people stop and notice him was a bad idea. Where to go from here?

After nearly half an hour of flipping pages, Ben saw someone return today’s paper. It wasn’t anything special, but this just proved his line of thinking: movement draws the eye. And then his gaze drifted further to the table with the real estate insert. It was a long shot, but he often pulled into driveways of empty houses, and sometimes the agents forgot, or the new owners weren’t on time. Really, he should’ve looked while he had the computer under someone else’s data, but you couldn’t think of everything at once. He got up and grabbed the insert, hating the feel of the cheap paper and the ink that would come off on his fingers, but this was explicable enough: it was just the deep-clean guy, with too much time on his hands, trying to drum up new business.

A deep-clean guy who’d taught himself how to pick locks for those instances where the new homeowners completely forgot their keys and were just so grateful you were able to get inside and do your thing without having to reschedule or charge extra. But those between-people homes didn’t have all the security he was sure an FBI agent would. Hell, if Ben had bugged his own house …

Especially an FBI agent willing to go rogue for his son and—shit, he’d almost thought daughter-in-law. She couldn’t be, deep in his heart he knew she couldn’t be, but if that was the way she had to get along … to preserve herself … Weren’t FBI agents supposed to fight sex trafficking?

He pulled the little notebook from his pocket and jotted down a couple addresses. They weren’t exactly in the area, but they were close enough he could’ve taken a wrong turn or attempted a shortcut. He’d only be able to go pass the Hillier’s once today, but if anyone ever went back to track his phone—which he’d take with him while he went in the van—they’d be able to trace a wandering route between houses for sale, and stops if they were empty so he could note down the realtor’s number and maybe even actually call them later.

Checking his watch, Ben realized this wouldn’t happen today. He’d have to go home, plan out his drive, and set up one of his button cameras on the proper side of the van to catch a better view of the house than he was liable to get. Of course the best thing would be getting into a house across the street and leaving a camera trained on Hillier’s, so he could start tracking people in and out, but he had to take what he could get. Could he stage an incident and, say, run down the mailbox across the street? In his sedan, maybe. Leave a note, come back later, and replace the post … with a small camera already installed …

Someone would notice. The owner or the mailman would have to notice. A lens in a post would be far too obvious, and he’d have to manage some sort of fancy carpentry to get the battery and the rest inside. At least houses and apartments had places you could hide things—in lamps, behind socket plates, above the panels in dropped ceilings, just to name a few—but the mailbox idea wouldn’t work. And he couldn’t just buy an old used car, wire it up, and park it across the street until it got towed.

Ben gathered up his books and let his thoughts keep chipping away at it. He didn’t mind the bad ideas, because at least they were ideas. You had to encourage your brain to keep working, to keep sending up possibilities, instead of criticizing yourself for being unhelpful. If you did that, the process shut down, and you were left with nothing. Better to let the ideas flow and sort them gently, without scolding yourself, so they kept coming.

And he’d have all night now to let that process unfold. He’d go home, get out his map—his paper book of maps—and start finding locations and planning routes. He’d be his own MapQuest and write things out turn by turn on a piece of paper he could burn later. This wasn’t unusual. Ben didn’t like using his phone for directions, because that meant killing his own personal sense of direction. The more you relied on your gadgets to do things for you—remember things, or know things—the less your brain actually worked.

It was nice to have technology as a backup, but that’s not how people used it these days. They decided their brains didn’t have to work because their phone would know it for them, and that meant they left trails for anyone with the know-how to follow. Ben didn’t particularly like cop shows, but he knew enough to recognize that. So yeah, someone would be able to track his work phone on the cell towers to show that he’d gone from the region with the library to the one where his house was, but … that was it.

If you stuck with your brain most of the time, and pen and paper when it was necessary, you could always burn the paper afterward, and the only one with full access to your brain was yourself. He’d even skimmed some chapters about interrogation back at the library, before putting the books on the return cart, to refresh himself on how to make sure that stayed true.

Of course, you could be your own worst enemy there. You could, for example, decide to turn your diary entries and real-life experiences into a novel, and send that novel out for lots of agents to read—or at least the first 10 pages of that novel—and then revise the whole thing into the version that so many advance readers had read already and the rest of the world would read soon, and realize that some FBI agents had already read it, and that they’d come to some very wrong conclusions that were going to foil your whole plan.

You could do that, and then you ended up back in your den again, pen and paper in hand, as you tried to come up with a way out of it.

---

Initial interview, Lida-Rose Elizabeth Dawson with Officer Melissa Jacobson, May 24, 2019

LD: Mart’s contract says he has to be at school until 3:28, so he was, but then he already had his bag in the car, so he texted me and drove over.

MJ: Okay. And he got to your apartment when?

LD: Like 5:20. Traffic … I was keeping an eye on the time and everything, so it was a little later than I thought, but … Heidi …

MJ: Please continue.

LD: We … she was out in the living room, you know, teasing me. She really likes all the talk shows, so that’s what she had on: Maury, that kind of thing. Which I usually don’t watch, so she’s teasing me, you know? Oh, is this what it takes? But … I mean, I was dressed, and I had my purse and everything, so when he texted me from the parking lot I just … left.

MJ: You left her there in your apartment, on the couch, watching television?

LD: Yeah. She said something like “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” which … it’s classic Heidi. Because she wouldn’t do anything, but she was trying to be funny. Trying to … make a connection.

MJ: So the last time you saw her was approximately 5:20pm this afternoon.

LD: Yeah. Hang on, it’s—yeah, his text was 5:21.

MJ: Right, thank you. So what did you and Martin do then?

LD: Uh. I kissed him, but … Heidi wasn’t supposed to be gone until later, you know? So we got into his car, but we had to figure out where we wanted to go for dinner. Someplace we could hang out long enough, you know? So she’d be gone by the time we got back, and we didn’t have to …

MJ: Sexile Heidi?

LD: Well. She was already leaving. So. Yeah, that was … that was the plan.

MJ: Where did you go?

LD: TGIFriday’s. We kind of—he said he was in the mood for a burger, and we didn’t want to go someplace fancier, you know? Where it’s more expensive and you feel bad about drawing it out, because it’s smaller, and busier, so … TGIFriday’s.

MJ: Did either of you pay with a credit card?

LD: Did …? Yeah, I did. And—here, yeah. The receipt.

MJ: Do you mind if I get a picture of this? Thank you. So now … you went directly back to the apartment after you left the restaurant?

LD: Yes. It was late enough. She should’ve been picked up and on her way. But …

MJ: But?

LD: Well, we usually texted each other about that kind of thing. If we were going somewhere, who we’d be with. You know … just in case …

MJ: Sounds like you were looking out for each other.

LD: I mean.

MJ: Take your time.

LD: We tried. But … she didn’t text me about leaving. I figured maybe she was just happy to be going off with her friends, you know? Hey, have you talked to them?

MJ: I’d like to focus on getting your statement just now.

LD: Right, but … I mean, you have to have a code to get into the building, and I didn’t see anybody hanging around out front or anything.

MJ: Tell me about what happened when you got back to the apartment.

LD: We, uh … we were in a hurry to get inside. We were … making out, and … there wasn’t anyone at the front door, or anyone in the hallway, because we weren’t paying attention and would’ve run into them, so … uh … I opened the apartment door, and there was that nightlight on in the kitchen, because we always just left that plugged in, but that was it, except …

MJ: You’re doing just fine.

LD: I’m not, actually, but okay. I stumbled over something, and I think I swore, and Mart laughed and said he’d better turn the light on before I broke my neck, so he went back to the door, and …

MJ: He turned on the light?

LD: Yeah. It’s right there, and the kitchen light was bright enough for him to see that, and …

MJ: What was it you’d tripped over?

LD: Heidi’s arm. The hand and forearm, together. Still attached to … each other.

MJ: How did you know it was Heidi’s?

LD: She’s got that tattoo. She just got that tattoo. It’s basic. That’s what she calls it: basic. The whole “I am greater than my highs and lows” thing. Like, she calls it basic, but it means something to her.

MJ: What did you do then?

LD: Um. I think I screamed. Mart grabbed me and pulled me back, I think so I wouldn’t throw up on it. The arm. And with the light on … the doors were open into her bedroom and the bathroom. Mine was still shut, my bedroom door, but the other two … there was blood. And … something sticking up out of the tub.

MJ: Who called the police?

LD: Mart did. He pulled me out into the hall, and shut the apartment door so nobody else would see, and he’s the one who called. I just … I was shaking too hard. I collapsed against the wall, across from the door, and just … went down. I don’t think I fainted, but … other people came out, though. To see. Because they’d heard me.

MJ: Did any of them go into the apartment?

LD: No. I think a couple of them tried the door, but it was locked. And my keys were inside. I still had my purse, but my keys were inside.

MJ: Did you stay in the hallway, within sight of your apartment door, until the police showed up?

LD: Yes.

MJ: Did Heidi have a boyfriend?

LD: No. I’ve never known her to date anyone.

MJ: And what about her friends?

LD: The ones picking her up? She said she knew them from high school. I’ve got their names in a text.

MJ: Yes, that’s good, but what about her other friends? People we can ask about her?

LD: Her other …? It’s me, Kelsey, and Ashley. And the other two are dead. God, they’re all dead.

---

Chapter Twenty

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Thom was apologetic about how Ben’s name got out, at least to the FBI, but practically gleeful that they seemed to think he’d cracked a cold case. Everyone’s going to read it and read it again to figure out if you actually wrote a thriller. I’ll pass it on, but I’m sure they’re going to leak that part. Let the feds decide whether to say anything or stay mum. We’ll work up some more responses for the tour.

Okay so now, wherever she was, she was going to have to read that he’d written a book that made her out to be the killer. That was not at all how this was supposed to go. He was still thinking about her, yes. He put all this time into showing her that he understood her, yes. He thought she was a murderer? God, no.

Thom had always been about riding the publicity, but he also hadn’t actually expected anyone to make the connection. It was a small college, anyway, so the chances of an alum from the proper year picking it up and realizing was slim, but now … now Ben didn’t know what to do.

He’d made his peace with the unknowns of the original plan, or at least he’d told himself he’d made his peace with it. She was probably out there somewhere in a small Midwestern town, but she might not hear about the book in time to make it to one of his events. She might know in time but not be able to travel to an event. She might not hear about him until after it came out, and maybe only after the Netflix deal went through—if they actually made it and didn’t just secure the rights—and it might take a second book. Or she might contact him through his new author website sometime down the road, only after she’d learned about and then read the book. But this? She couldn’t even show up and throw eggs at him at one of his events and scream at him for calling her a murderer without outing herself as said suspected murderer. This … was not good.

Ben wanted to write back to Thom immediately and make sure that, whatever got leaked, it was clear that he didn’t actually think she was a murderer. Except that didn’t make sense, because Rosie and Cal were only characters. It didn’t matter if he, the human author, didn’t intend for his book to be read this way, because you had to let go of your creation when it escaped into the world. What people thought about your book was a reflection of them, not you, and you had to let them see what they saw in the mirror, even if you didn’t see it. That was part of Thom’s lecture to all debut authors.

And, since Rosie was fictional, it didn’t matter if she was the murderer or not. Since all of the characters were fictional, nobody was actually killed. It wasn’t a real crime. Ben shouldn’t worry about it the way he was worrying about it, because instead of helping—or making—him find her, the feds had just ensured he never would.

He was sitting down, so his knees didn’t give out, but he froze. The feds had just ensured he’d never find her. Writing it down would make it feel too true, so he ran it through his head again, giving the words their own specific weight. Trying to figure out if it was true.

Should he have done anything differently? No matter what, he would’ve told someone about his weird interview, because he was a commodity they were selling along with his book. Various lawyers would want to keep their fingers on the pulse, just in case he became a liability. And the average person would reach out and tell someone if something like this happened, just because it was so strange and unique. It was the sort of thing you’d text a friend about—You’ll never freaking guess what just happened—if you had friends.

He didn’t have friends, so he emailed his agent. Thom at least didn’t seem upset that he hadn’t tried contacting him earlier and, say, brought a lawyer to the interview, but he only repeated the same explanation he was helping Ben peddle: sure, the book was vaguely inspired by the events of that year, but the newspaper clippings were just seeds. Everything that grew was his author’s imagination.

Maybe Thom agreed with the idea that Lida-Rose Dawson could’ve been a murderer. Or maybe he just didn’t care, because it was far enough removed from reality that they wouldn’t get hit with libel. It wasn’t Thom’s fault. That much was clear, at least. Thom worked with what he was given, and really, Thom was the reason Ben’s plan had any chance of working in the first place. Thom didn’t reject the query. He asked for more, and then he made the offer, and then he managed to sell it. The plan could’ve failed at any of those points, but Ben had a box full of hardcover copies and the tour schedule. It was happening. It was happening, but now …

The feds were so pissed at one of their own for hiding her that they were going to warn her to have nothing to do with him and his book. Maybe she’d even think that he’d planned it this way and always meant to trap her—for them—after all. Hillier. Goddamned Hillier.

A different stillness settled over him. Earlier it was ice, but now … was it calm?

He couldn’t Google Hillier without leaving a trail, and he didn’t have a phone book—what house still had phone books these days?—but he thought he knew where he could find one. It wouldn’t even be weird for him to go to the library. If he used one of their computers he’d have to sign in with his card number, but if any place had a paper phone book, he’d find one there. He’d look up a couple numbers and write down some of the others, and memorize Hillier’s address, and then …

The thing was, he’d only ever planted his bugs at places where he’d been invited in and left alone. When people paid you to clean, they didn’t usually stick around to watch you do it. There was a record of your presence, sure, but D&L promised background checks, and now Ben had his own business and all the various reassurances that yes, he was who he said he was, and he wasn’t going to steal or destroy property or whatever. Plus he had the van with his business name, logo, and contact information on the side, so he clearly wasn’t sneaking in.  Word of mouth got around, and he even worked clean-up on crime scenes, so he was trustworthy.

Ben had never attempted breaking and entering before. He wasn’t even the kind of guy who loitered. When he parked, it was never at a yellow curb and he always paid the meter or moved before time was up. He didn’t even like going five miles over the speed limit or running yellow lights, which would have made him blend in with everyone else so much better. There was nothing in his past to aid him, no experience with this kind of thing, and yet …

Yet he was planning on stalking an FBI agent. Maybe doing more than stalking. Probably doing more than stalking.

It was unlikely that he’d confront Hillier and get an address out of him just like that. Didn’t they train agents in counter-interrogation techniques alongside interrogation techniques? At the very least Hillier would know everything they told them about being on the question side of the table, and how to control the situation, and what not to let a suspect get away with.

Maybe the library had a book about interrogation for dummies. Ben sure as hell wasn’t going to check one out, but after he consulted the phone book, he could take a stack to a table, page through some things, and then put them on the cart they left so you wouldn’t just reshelve things. They’d be counted as being used, but he didn’t think anyone would be able to tell he was the one who’d pulled them. Okay, he’d wipe them down surreptitiously before he returned them.

At this point, he had to be careful. He figured—hell, he knew—he was willing to do more in this quest than the agents were, because he wasn’t worried about having to keep working for the man. Or holding on to a government job. He’d been fingerprinted, sure, so he had to be wary of that, but they didn’t have his mug shot or anything. Plus he could change his looks fairly easily—he’d had his beard this way for years, but shave it, and cut his hair, or straighten it … all before he even got around to dyeing it … and he wouldn’t be easily recognizable.

Goodwill. He could go to Goodwill and get some different clothes. Some shoes, definitely: used shoes with a wear pattern that didn’t match anything else he owned. God, he was really planning this. Maybe the library was something that could be considered a whim, since it was just information, but once you started playing out counter-forensic measures …

They brought it on themselves. Hillier and any of the feds who got in his way. They all did their part in keeping him away from her.

Ben took another breath, giving himself a chance to see if he really meant to do this, and then nodded and got up to grab his keys.

---

To: MathyMart
From: LidaRoseElizabeth
Sent: May 23, 2019 10:32PM

I am so. Freaking. Glad. You’re coming down tomorrow. Heidi’s not being picked up until after dinner, but the apartment’s ours all weekend, and thank God. I don’t care if the neighbors hear us, but I don’t need her being all judgmental and denying it. She always says it’s just her face, but I’m pretty sure her face reflects her internal monologue.

Less than two weeks and we’re not roommates anymore. Did I tell you she’s actually counting it down? On the calendar in the kitchen, too. She says she made a mistake about which day’s graduation, but I think we all know better. Those numbers don’t really go down to zero—they go down to when she gets to be one again, in an apartment for two, because apparently now she’s figured out how she can afford it.

Whatever. Let her be excited about it. She’s so rarely happy about anything, so I can be gracious and glad she’s excited about me leaving. I mean, we both know I’m looking forward to it, too, but that’s because it’ll be you and me in your tiny apartment and we won’t be able to get away from each other, oh no.

Heidi and I were never going to be best buds, but first winter break was so freaking long and then Kelsey and Ashleigh … the problem, I think, is that Heidi’s not close with anyone, so when her only friends are gone, but they were closer with me, anyway, and when everyone tries to talk to or comfort me instead of her … she feels slighted. Like nobody even saw her relationship with them, except they didn’t, because she plays everything so close to her vest and doesn’t go out. When they hung out with her, it’s because they were over here, where nobody but me saw them, and now she’s upset …

It’s fine. We’re almost done. You’re almost here, and then I’ll officially be there, and Heidi can do what she thinks will make her happy. Do you think it’s possible for some people to just … never be able to be happy? Like, ever. Take her anywhere, give her anything, and it won’t be enough. Dissatisfied is her default setting, except I’m not sure it’s possible to install an after-market happiness button. Maybe she’s just doomed to always be nothing more than okay, usually rating things a two out of five, for the rest of her life.

It’s exhausting living with someone like that. Maybe Sierra didn’t actually find herself in Belize. Maybe she just found something better than spending another minute with Heidi.

God, that makes me sound awful, but some people … they just refuse to see the light, so you’re mad if you try to point it out. And then you basically give up and stop trying, and maybe you even start trying not to see it, so you don’t have to keep ignoring it …

Point is, I think I annoy Heidi as much as she annoys me, and we’ll both be glad to be rid of each other, and then I get to have you, all the time, every night, even if you smell like fast food. I’m sure you’ll find something other than fast food, but if that’s the option, I’ll take it. Do you think that would make good wedding vows? For better or for worse, smelling of cologne or fast food …

Tomorrow can’t come soon enough. XXX. Both kinds.

---

Chapter Nineteen

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Ben thanked God he’d been alone on the job today. These whole house deals were annoying, but it could’ve been worse. It was between owners, so there wasn’t any furniture to negotiate, and nobody living there. Just him and his thoughts, and boy, did he have thoughts. Now that he was home, he figured he should try to get them in some sort of order.

Hillier was Nathan J. Hillier, 56, which meant he’d had his kids in his twenties. Late twenties, maybe, and maybe the boyfriend was his oldest kid, but the boyfriend couldn’t be much older than she was. Right? And this year she’d turn 27. So the math …

He was focused on the math because he couldn’t crack the rest of it.

Nathan J. Hillier didn’t have social media. He supposed that made sense, if you were connected to the FBI and maybe had a special in front of your agent. That wasn’t confirmed. There was just a listing on the website of the people who worked at the Portage location, and Nathan J. Hillier was on it.

Facebook showed him plenty of Hilliers, but even if they were in the area, there was nothing to say they were the right bunch. He couldn’t even be sure that any photos Google pulled for him were the right guy, or related to the right guy, and buying someone’s records could be traced. If Hillier’s own underlings were afraid of him, then Ben couldn’t leave a trail that showed he was trying to track down the names of Hillier’s children. The son—the boyfriend—wouldn’t be on any recent records, anyway, but Ben could at least get a freaking name for the guy and stop calling him the boyfriend like it was an honorable title.

How long had they been together? Maybe it was nothing, and walking in on the dead roommate instigated a trauma bond, which might be ironic but certainly wasn’t funny. Why was she living in an apartment with another woman if she had a boyfriend? That certainly looked like it couldn’t actually be serious, so maybe it was okay.

Except Jack was highly pissed off at Hillier, because Hillier was the reason she was missing and they couldn’t find her. Maybe Hillier was the reason she was dead, but hadn’t they said something about his son being gone, too? So that didn’t make much sense. If Hillier smuggled her away, then she was still alive, and still with his son. The boyfriend.

There couldn’t be a boyfriend. That wasn’t how this worked. Had he ever caught a man’s voice on tape? The problem was he’d never had a chance to go and put a bug in the bedroom—either bedroom—and the one in the main room only recorded when it caught something. She couldn’t have a boyfriend.

It was such a humongous thing to miss. That was why Cal made sense as a character: there was a gap. Who the hell dated someone who didn’t even live in the same city?

He couldn’t have, even if his dad was local. She just hadn’t been gone enough. Most times, if there was something social, it was having friends over for study groups and distraction. She went home—a couple hours away—for breaks, sure, and maybe she saw him then, but looking for a Hillier who used to live back there in 2018-2019 was also likely fruitless. The Internet, after a couple less than useful searches, told Ben that there were maybe 2,500 Hilliers in the United States, so it could have been a lot worse. Plus searching her hometown, or at least a 50-mile radius around it, in that timeline would mean it was still the guy’s last name. If he tried searching right now …

God, he’d never considered this sort of FBI connection. He knew her parents were dead and her only family was the grandmother who’d raised her after the accident. Only child of only children, just her and the grandma against the world, the way it was just him and his mom for most of his childhood. It was something he thought they’d bonded over, but … a boyfriend.

If he made up a new Gmail account and used the free two weeks on Ancestry.com, would it be worth it? Would it give him anything useful? Even a list of possible names for the boyfriend. It was more than nothing, and even if it wasn’t a helpful something …

He swept the notebook off his desk in disgust, unable to look at the sex scene now.

Ben didn’t consider himself unrealistic. He didn’t think she was a virgin, or that she’d never even kissed anyone. He just hadn’t known about the boyfriend.

Standing straight up, he took a deep breath, expanding his chest and holding it for a slow count of five before letting it out again. Then he did it twice more, and it seemed to help. A little. Enough for him to pick up the notebook, close it with all the pages more or less flat, and stick it properly in the drawer. Then he sat down in the chair and took another breath, because brains needed oxygen. He’d think better if he took this time, and maybe it would help get his heart rate back down, too.

Maybe they’d lied.

Okay, good. That was a thought he could get a grip on. Something he could put on his desk and unpack. Maybe they’d lied. Right. About what?

He opened up the desk drawer again and pulled out one of the legal tablets and his favorite pen. It was gel ink and made thick, bold lines that meant he didn’t have to press down too hard and cramp his hand. It also didn’t bleed through the page the way some of the felt-tip pens did, which was a problem if you were eco-conscious and wanted to use both sides of the paper. It was time to make a list, to draw those thoughts out of his head and put them in writing so he could pin them down.

All right, go: the things they told him.

She’s a suspected murderer. He paused, then added a caret and the word serial. Still his pen hesitated, because it wasn’t just her three classmates, was it? He didn’t want to, but he made himself add 5 in parentheses, because they’d latched onto that, too: the bus driver and the annoying neighbor. What had they said? That he was an undiscovered profiler? Shit.

Her boyfriend’s dad’s in the FBI and maybe helped them disappear. That neatly got around the issue of having to write She had a boyfriend while still conveying that information. And it helped, because he could add more: He didn’t do it legally, and the other agents at the office are pissed about it. Good. Oh, and His name’s Nathan J. Hillier.

Hmmm. That was imprecise. Technically they’d only told Ben the man’s last name, so he crossed off Nathan J. It was good to be accurate so he didn’t accidentally introduce falsehoods into his personal narrative.

Okay, what else? Just the facts.

Tyler thinks it’s like Gatsby. Maybe that wasn’t as helpful, because it wasn’t really about her, but it was something to ponder. Dart board/points. It made him think yes, Tyler had a wife—or someone in his life—who was an English teacher, because who thought like that usually? He had to have gotten it somewhere. Cal = Nick, Rosie = Gatsby, unless Cal = Gatsby. So clearly Tyler wasn’t a professional literary critic. After a moment Ben even added Fight Club, because that’s how Tyler explained his own first name, and it had to mean something. Guys didn’t just mention Fight Club unless they felt a certain way about it. Mostly it meant they missed Palahniuk’s point completely.

Jack = most visibly angry at Hillier. Ben was rather proud of that visibly. All of it could be an act, sure, but he figured they were approaching him the same way. Even—especially—if it was an act, there was a purpose behind it. An intention. They wanted him to … what, exactly? That was the point of this list. He needed to figure out what they expected him to do next and then decide whether he was going to do it or not.

The obvious thing was that he was supposed to track down Hillier’s son and get from him to her, but how was he supposed to do that if the freaking FBI agents couldn’t? He wasn’t going to be able to break a closed-court name change, so he carefully set the pen down and controlled his breathing.

They told him she had a boyfriend. That was the big thing. There wasn’t a boyfriend in the book, and they at least suspected he wasn’t telling the entire truth about never having met her and not knowing her. But they figured he hadn’t known enough, and maybe they were right.

They wanted him mad, haring off and …

And.

They thought he could find her. They assumed a connection, and that they could manipulate him into going to her.

Leading them to her.

They wanted her because they thought she was the answer to the unsolved murders. Two of them were known unsolved murders, and one looked like a car crash, but they wanted her for all of them and two more besides. Plus they were mad at Hillier for taking her away and protecting her, so they’d throw everything they could at her. It wouldn’t be fair.

Maybe they’d kill her. She’d disappeared already, and who better than the FBI to get rid of a body? If Ben took off, if he even knew where she was … God, what if they stuck on him through the tour? He wouldn’t be able to tell her not to signal him. She wouldn’t be obvious about it, anyway, but if they were there … watching …

Ben couldn’t go to her—least of all because he didn’t actually know where she was, and now he knew whom to blame for that—but he had to leave. Didn’t he? They’d just given him this information, and he couldn’t literally sit on it. Could he?

Wait, back up. They assume I’m invested in her as a real person. It didn’t matter that it was the truth, but if he was just C. J. O’Connell, then she wouldn’t actually matter. She was just a name and a newspaper photograph, and …

Well. C. J. O’Connell would pull his laptop closer, open it, find his email, and send a quick message to Thom. Something about how hey, just so you know, the FBI seems to think I’ve uncovered a serial killer—isn’t that wild? And also: can we use this? Leak the fact that Rosie might be a serial killer, and …

This deep breath was different because it wasn’t to calm down. It was preparatory so he could pull the laptop closer and go about composing the message.

Let them follow him and track him. It might hamper how he had to proceed, but that was fine. He wasn’t going to do their work for them.

He wasn’t going to lead them to her.

---

To: LidaRoseElizabeth
From: MathyMart
Sent: May 14, 2019 9:17PM

I had a long talk with Erin and Liza today and I’m taking a page out of your book: writing it down to get my thoughts in order. I think the TL;DR here is that I’m going to have to get a new email address.

They stressed the same things they’ve been stressing: the first year is hard. It’s not like student teaching, you’re on your own, everything’s new … and if I quit in June, then all that lesson planning and all the rest goes to waste. All my schooling, too. The guilt approach.

I think I had a deal with myself: if either of them told me I needed to stay another year because I’m a good teacher, then I would. Even these kids need you might’ve been enough. But neither of them said I’m a good teacher. They didn’t say anything good, actually. It was all guilt. (Please don’t punch either of them in the nose.)

The problem’s all the mixed messages, you know? Is teaching a job or a calling? If it’s a job, then man, I can find a less-stressful, more personally rewarding one, thanks. I’ll flip burgers happily and not have to take any work home with me. And if it’s a calling, then they missed the mark with all the money talk. The sunk costs.

My family’s going to go after the sunk costs, too. Not college loans, because you know I don’t have any, but all that time going to school to become a math teacher. The goal of my adolescence. I never even thought about anything else and just assumed it would all work out because … well. You pointed it out. Because most of my life just does work out.

Remember our first time? I mean, of course you do. But before, when you gave me that look and told me to stop trying to plan and make it perfect because then I’d just be disappointed? (I wasn’t disappointed, by the way. In case you needed to hear that.) But I keep thinking about it and wondering if I’m doing the same thing. If I thought teaching would be perfect. Challenging, yes, but not … God, not this soul-sucking everyday battle with freaking teenagers who don’t give a shit about me, so why am I letting them get to me?

Liza won’t even change my classes next year. That would defeat the purpose of the sunk costs argument because I’d need new lesson plans if I switched grades, or moved all the way up to high school. Not that I want this group again, so it’s not like I want to go up a single year, but … They didn’t give me any other options. Or any options, really. Just come back next year and do it again and it won’t be this bad.

This is how you get teachers kids hate. And teachers who end up hating kids. And kids who hate math.

I don’t actually have to commit one way or the other until August, but as of right now, I’m officially looking for other jobs. And trying to figure out how to tell my family. They haven’t see it the way you have, so …

I love you. I’ll call you tomorrow.

---

Chapter Eighteen