Detective Valdez doesn’t look like a woman who needs a man to give her an alibi. I bet she doesn’t have kids at home or a pet. She looks completely sure of who she is. Sitting across the table from her makes me feel small and pale. Impatiently she swats a lock of red hair away from her face. “Is there anything else you want to tell me now?”
Now? That sounds like we’ll go over everything again, and she’ll poke holes in my story and tear it all apart. If she looks for proof I’m guilty, I know what she’ll find. I pull out my phone. “Someone hacked my email, my old email. I haven’t used it in years, but someone sent hate mail to Ava from it. And I got texts here.” I set my phone on the table, happy now to have it out of my hands. I can’t help feeling like it’s been infected and just holding it made me vulnerable.
“Can you trace them?” Andrew asks.
“And I got a call from my friend’s phone, but it wasn’t her. It was a threat. Someone told me to run. They knew my real name. I mean, my old one.”
Detective Valdez pulls out a pair of thin plastic gloves and puts them on before examining the phone. “Was the voice a man or a woman?” she asks.
That harsh whisper sounds in my memory. “I couldn’t tell.”
She nods. “Okay. We can certainly examine this, but I’ll need you to fill out some paperwork to give us permission.”
Doubt floods me again. I’m being stupid. What if handing over my phone seals my doom? If there are weird text messages on there, what else will they find?
And how soon before they pin Ava’s disappearance on me?
CHAPTER
5
SO, DETECTIVE VALDEZ and the lead investigator decide I need to travel back to Virginia. I never intended to go back to my old life with my new identity, and I worry I’ll be carried back in time, away from Andrew and Emma. Law enforcement has coordinated with my parents, and all my worst nightmares—my mom and dad, Glenn, and my past as Zoe—are waiting for me in the Arlington Police Department.
We decided that I would go ahead on Andrew’s extra air miles, and that he and Emma might follow on Friday for a long weekend. “We can meet your parents,” Andrew said. Maybe that means he does want to stay with me. Maybe that means he’s checking my story.
I can’t forget the whispered conversation he and I had at the police station. “What is it with your parents? Are they the reason you disappeared? Did they hurt you?”
“No!” Maybe my denial was a little too loud, because the deputy at the reception desk glanced up at us. “No,” I repeated more softly. “Like I told you, it was Ava. She stole my life. I just didn’t want her to know about you and Emma, how happy we are. She’d want to wreck it.”
“Let’s compromise,” he offered. “You go first, we’ll follow for a long weekend; then if you don’t need us, we’ll stop by my dad’s place on the way back.”
“What about work?”
He gave me a look that said Are you kidding me? It was true. He had about a million years of vacation saved up. And about two million air miles.
Now he and Detective Valdez have taken me to the airport, right up to the security checkpoint. She’s going to escort me all the way to the gate. I wish Andrew didn’t have to leave me alone with her.
Andrew hugs me fiercely, but kisses the top of my head. “We’ll sort it all out.” I can’t tell which of us he’s trying to convince. The problem with a good guy who specializes in logistics is that sometimes he pushes his feelings way, way down to deal with a situation in progress, and only later do you find out what was really going on in his heart. Maybe after I’ve left, he’ll realize he can get by without me. That life would be easier, Emma would be safer. What if absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder? What if it makes the heart forget?
Detective Valdez goes around security in the fast track, but I’m stuck in a line of people pulling laptops out of bags and tossing water bottles in the trash. My “overhead approved” wheelie suitcase and everyday shoulder bag are easy to maneuver, but the process is still tedious. We’re fed through the massive scanner, and as I stand there in my socked feet with my hands raised over my head, I wish this machine could see all the way through me. See that I am innocent.
Once I have my shoes back on, my suitcase in hand, and my bag on my shoulder, Detective Valdez and I head for the gate. We pass a bookstore, the kind disappearing everywhere except in airports. There, right in the front display, is Ava’s newest book, Bloody Heart, Wild Woods, the one the book club is discussing without me tonight. Provided they’re not just discussing me.
Am I in this novel too?
Someone clearly knows where I have been living, who I have become. Maybe Ava staged her own disappearance; maybe she is trying to draw me into a game. Maybe I need to read this book for myself.
Detective Valdez says, “You want to get a bottle of water or something? Go ahead.” She pulls out her phone and waits by the entrance of the store.
Hoping no one will recognize me, I sidle up to the display. The cover features a tangle of glossy dark-green leaves overlaid with deep-red letters in a gothic script. Bloody Heart, Wild Woods.
Quickly I pluck one from the middle rack and scurry to the register, sandwiching the book between a Vanity Fair with Colin Firth on the cover and a Better Homes and Gardens special edition on organization. I wait impatiently behind a man in a tweed sport coat who keeps patting his pockets, looking for change.
Finally, it’s my turn.
As the woman behind the register asks, “Anything else, hon?” I add a pack of gum to the pile. She doesn’t raise her head as she rings it up. “Need a bag?”
Mutely, I nod. As I make my escape, I feel like everyone in the little store is hyperaware of me, knows who I am. It doesn’t help that I’m meeting up with a detective. Even in plain clothes, she’s striking, and I feel like her posture and the slight bulge of her gun under her blazer scream law enforcement guarding dangerous criminal.
When we reach the gate—ten minutes before boarding—the only empty seats directly face the television tuned to CNN. A reporter describes dangerous avalanches in Nevada, oblivious to the news crawl beneath her announcing “mystery writer still missing” and “authorities report her sister has been located and will be assisting the investigation.”
I slump down, my face hot. At least there are no pictures this time. And I’ve been changed from a “person of interest” to “assisting the investigation.” Probably they just want to make sure I don’t run away again.
Then I realize my cell phone is still back at the sheriff’s office. My first instinct is to text Andrew and ask him to pick it up. Dumbass. It’s like flipping the light switch over and over when the power goes out. I glance at Detective Valdez, her long legs stretched out in front of her while she watches the news.
I should buy a new one from the electronics kiosk, but an announcement is blaring overhead. My flight is boarding.
On the plane, I slip my suitcase into the overhead bin and settle in the relative privacy of a window seat with the gracious luxury of an empty seat beside me. Once my shoulder bag’s under the seat in front of me, I open the book. If I had my cell phone, I would text Felicia to tell her I’ve caved, I’m reading it after all. Then I realize that creepy stalker either took her phone or spoofed her number when he contacted me in the parking lot. She might not even know I couldn’t watch Sam. Shit. Nooo. One more person I let down.