Now he’s inside. He takes the stairs. Rowan lives on the third floor.
Another green light, another red light. I call Rowan again—and again it goes to voice mail.
Wade is up one flight. I drive. Another flight. I call.
“Hey, partner. What’s going on?”
The sound of his voice takes over every sense, and I don’t see the road. I don’t see the light. I don’t see the car coming through the intersection.
“Rowan!”
A horn blares, and I slam on my brakes. The other car swerves, missing me by mere feet. It stops, and a woman yells at me through an open window. She has a teenage girl with her. A daughter maybe. Her right arm stretches across her in the passenger seat.
“You almost killed us!” She catches her breath, then drives away, and I think,Yes, I did. I almost ran right into you. I could have killed you, both of you.
What am I doing? This has to stop. It has to stop!
I stare at the car as it disappears. Behind me are skid marks. The smell of burning rubber seeps through the vents.
More horns blare because I’m blocking traffic, but I can’t move. I can’t even answer as Rowan asks me what’s happening. “Are you in your car?”
I look at the feed and see Wade back outside now, walking away from the building.
If he’s speaking, I can’t hear because I’m on the call with Rowan. But the feed ends, and a new message appears. A simple text.Guess what comes next?And then a still shot. It looks like an empty cafeteria.
“Elise? Are you there?”
I manage an answer. “Yeah. Hold on.”
I pull over to the curb and put on my hazard lights. I expand the photo with my fingers until it grows larger, and then I see the small chairs and the gray speckled tables. It’s at the school. He’s been inside the girls’ school.
“Elise...”
“I’m here,” I say. I’m about to tell him what’s happened. I want to get out of my car and run to his building and see his face and know he’s all right. I want to see him look at me like I’m crazy and then fill with rage when I reveal what’s happened so I won’t be alone with mine. My rage and now a new fear because “what comes next” are the girls.
He’s been inside their school. In spite of the security. He’s worked his way in through the employees in the cafeteria, but now he’ll switch it up, won’t he? Employees come and go through all different entrances. There’s always a way around.Always.
I reach for the door, but something stops me. I can’t explain it, not even to myself. It’s instinct. This is what Wade wants. This is what he’s expecting me to do.
Of course he didn’t hurt Rowan. He would be on the security footage. The waning local media coverage we had now would escalate into national news. Every cop everywhere would be looking for him. He wouldn’t be able to stroll in and out of a Getaway Inn, rent cars and vans, buy food and cell phones. He would have to disappear, and then the fun would be over.
No, tonight was part of a larger plan. One move on the game board.
I’m supposed to tell Rowan. And Rowan is supposed to react. Wade has his profile, and he’ll have done his research. Yes, Rowan is smart and brave and skilled in combat. But he has demons that need tending with a few beers down the street and drama with women who come and go and keep him occupied on the phone even as his partner tries to call him a dozen times. We are all human. We all make mistakes. But Wade knows what mistakes Rowan is likely to make, and he’s calculated how to use them.
Rowan needs to be levelheaded. He needs to be careful and patient, so when we do come for Wade, he won’t see us. The more personal this case becomes, the more mistakes both of us will make.
“Elise!” Rowan sounds concerned now.
“Sorry. False alarm. I thought I had something, but I was wrong.” I ramble about a tip, someone who saw a blue truck and how I went out to find it. It wasn’t Wade’s, but that’s why he heard the sounds from the street.
“You went out alone? On a tip from the call line?”
Now Rowan is the one who rambles—about how careless that was and how I should have waited until morning, and I argue that the truck might have been gone by then and why didn’t he pick up? He says he had to finish his call and I always text him so he was waiting for that, for a text. He didn’t think a few minutes would matter. I was home with Mitch, and the detail was outside my house. How could he have known I ditched them?
We stop arguing, and I tell him I’m sorry and that I’m heading home now. I’ll have to deal with Mitch and the cops who stayed outside the house. They saw me leave and called and left messages and probably reported it back to the department. We get enough tips about blue trucks that I can cover myself there. No one will check. No one will ask which one and no one knows what street I was on or where I was heading.
I drive home slowly, thinking it all through. Rowan will never know, but Wade will assume he does. He will assume I’ve told him and that now my partner is filled with rage that will cloud his judgment. Make him volatile. Make him useless. Or perhaps vulnerable. This entire night was meant to compromise my backup, just like the stunt he pulled with Briana and Mitch had infiltrated my marriage. He is tearing down my life, one brick at a time.
