“Fifty-sevencalls to insurance agencies looking for a tall male employee. 241calls to courts, lawyers, and stations looking for a tall male stalker or abuser or con artist...” He finishes the thought with an exasperated sigh.
“I know,” I tell him.
I gaze out the window and try to mask my anticipation. It feels explosive. We’ve already made a positive ID from a photo in his employment file. The 404 is an actuary named Brett Emory.
Brett.No longer the 404 or Wade Austin. I try to replace him in my mind. Not just the name, but the entire image of him. The terrifying, terrified stalker. The ruthless tall man. The liar. The predator. And now, the insurance actuary.
Nearly two days have passed since he was in my house. Since he was in my bedroom while I took a shower. Since he left me a photo of a young man from under the bridge, a man I’ve now learned is named Billy Brannicks after calling the rehab where Clay Lucas had met a guy named Nix.
I’ve said nothing to Rowan about this. I’m too far down this road to turn back. I only told him about Mitch seeing Briana. I knew Mitch might talk to him, so I covered myself. I didn’t say how I knew, and he didn’t ask. That was a land mine, and he knew to tread carefully around it.
After I left the Lucases’ home, I raced down this secret road faster than before. Brett’s messages on the burner phone have a calm about them now—like he feels in control. He refers to the things he’s done and to whatever he has planned next.
Did you like thegift?
I have another surprise for you.
Are you back on thesofa?
Is Mitch worried about thewhore?
Are you?
The team monitoring my phone thinks he’s gone silent. Dormant. There is a lightness at the station, like maybe he’s moved on. Of course, we still need to find him after what he’s done to me and to Vera Pratt in that dressing room stall. He could be a danger to others now, so we don’t stop. But there is already talk about removing the detail from my house.
Their road leads in the opposite direction from mine.
Last night I sent the first reply.
Message received.
This pleased him. Excited him. He wrote back seconds later.
I’m glad you liked it!
He couldn’t help himself. The speed of the reply. The exclamation point. The interpretation of my ambiguous message. All of it gave away a clue about his state of mind and convinced me the road I was on had begun to yield results.
My words could have meant anything—that I knew he could get to me anywhere, that he could get past the cops on the street and hide in my house, that he left the pink towel on the floor, or that he stood there watching me, naked in the shower, but then left me unharmed. Or the one he chose to believe—that I accepted his gift. The picture of the man who likely put the gun in Clay Lucas’s hands.
He could have given me the name. But instead, he forced me to engage in my own investigation, one step behind him.
He revealed himself further.
It isn’t rocket science,Elise.
Yes, he’d found Billy Brannicks before me. Thinking backward, about why Clay went to the underpass in the first place. And he was right. We should have been smarter. I should have been smarter.
You win, I wrote back. He answered with a smile emoji.
The drive is almost two hours. Astor Life sells life insurance as the name implies. Brett Emory worked as an actuary, making models that predict life expectancies and try to value policies. A woman named Georgina explains it to us as we sit in a small back office with four desks. She’s our second stop, after HR.
“There are a lot of factors,” Georgina tells us. She seems genuinely excited by her work. “Age. Gender. Medical condition. Medical history. Family history. Married. Divorced. Widowed. Did you know that men live longer when they’re married, but for women it’s the opposite?”
Georgina is attractive, well dressed. Warmth radiates from her. She seems approachable. Honest. Kind. An empath. Rowan and I know the type and the psychology behind it. They are rarely suspects and often victims.
She continues, “I used to joke with Brett. When he asked me why I was still single, that was my response. You know, not wanting a husband to steal years from my life. It was a way of deflecting.”
Rowan leads our dance, getting the details from Georgina about the two years they worked together. Brett had been here longer—eleven years in total. He was hired right out of college, making himthirty-two. He went to the University of Hartford. Grew up nearby in Glastonbury. His parents are alive but in a nursing home, as far as she knows, although she reminds us that he could have been lying—men lie to her all the time about the oddest things on her dating apps, she says—and then she thinks a bit more and tells us she doubts it. He didn’t seem like the lying type.
