Inside, I grab some ice water and sit down at the kitchen table. I text both Jess and Wallace that I’m fine.Nothing to worry about.I tell Jess I’ll call her later.
I’m tired, but twitchy. Crepuscular, like a cat gearing up for the evening hours. None of the CA’s victims were attacked until their time was up, but the whole idea is unsettling enough that I can’t help it.
I go into the bathroom to throw some water on my face. When I peer in the mirror, I’m surprised to see small, faint flecks of red spotting the fabric of my T-shirt near my shoulder. I examine my thumb. It’s bleeding from my relentless picking, and I’ve managed to spot the fabric near my sleeve where I touched it when adjusting my backpack.
The last time I mutilated my own thumb until it bled was when I was being harassed on the force.
I cut the loose skin off, clip my nails, and find a Band-Aid to prevent any more picking. After I secure it, I stare in the mirror.
I still can’t fathom that I’m the person in the sketch—the next target—but the headline I saw runs through my head like a news ticker:Is everyone in the US who resembles this sketch potential prey?
I pull my hair back from my face and bind it into a tight ponytail like I used to wear it on the force. There. I cock my head. With my hair up, as Ross had maintained, I don’t resemble the sketch as much.
In the living room, I refocus on the earrings. I try to come up with the last place I wore them. It would have been with Wallace. I only wore them when I was with him. We broke up in February, so I’m positive I haven’t even had a reason to look for the earrings or think about them since then.
I’d chosen a lazy Sunday afternoon when we were hanging out at my house to spring it on him. I was in sweats. I’d moped around all morning with a sad nervousness. He sensed something was up.
I’d sat him down on the couch, in the exact spot I’m sitting now. I settled in next to him with my legs crisscrossed under me, faced him, grabbed one of his pale hands, and stared at it, at his long, smooth, piano-playing fingers. His nails were manicured and perfectly pink with a white horseshoe on each tip.
“What?” he said.
I angled my head this way and that like some junior high student, and came out with it, telling him I cared for him deeply but thought we were better as pals, that I missed the simplicity of our friendship. I explained that he’d done nothing wrong at all, that it was me, that Ineeded to be on my own, and that I needed to be there for Jess. I rolled on, said that I was sorry, that I was afraid I’d relied on him too much during my battles at the department and again as I struggled to switch to PI work and open my own business.
It all sounded horribly trite—the sophomoriclet’s just be friendsbreakup—and the way I’d phrased it all made me feel like a complete ass who’d used one of her best friends to get through some tough patches.
I left out a large part of the truth—that it was me buckling under the weight of my own conscience, of shoving yet another secret behind an already-splintered door.
He shifted away, took his hand back, and looked at me curiously. His fingers twitched like he was already composing it all in his head, working at how to translate the feeling of breaking up into sound. Something aching and mournful. Or maybe even a little ravenous.
I’d responded to that quality in his music, too—something beyond hollow sadness, a sense of the insatiable, of not holding back—but I could never figure out why it existed in his creations but not in his personality. And definitely not in the bedroom.
The music is how it began. I’d known Wallace since Sophie introduced me to him that first year at the University of Montana. Wallace was a year older, in the music school. We got closer after Sophie left us, but we were never anything but friends until years later, after he’d moved to Kalispell to conduct the local orchestra. He resided in Kalispell for several years, and we’d often simply check in or meet for coffee, but one time, when we met and I confided in him about the unpleasant atmosphere at the department, he said, “You know, right, that I don’t just conduct, that I still give piano performances.”
I did know, but for some reason, it never seemed like it was a good time to go. I was on shift or lined up to babysit Sam.
“I have one this Saturday,” he said. “Why don’t you come? It would be good to get your mind off things.”
This time, I didn’t have an excuse, so I went. I watched him up on that stage at the community college, and out of the blue, somethingstirred in me. I’d only been to one of his recitals before, with Sophie that freshman year, when Wallace was performing with the university’s music department.
Wallace had been a great source of pride for Sophie. She used to brag about what a renaissance man her brother was, how he was so in tune with his creative side. Back then, he seemed gangly and shy to me.
Older now, he was almost powerful up onstage. The tall, thin college student I knew had become more filled out and statuesque under the lights. His blond hair shone like gold. His serious face—his jawline—could have been cut from marble. How had I not noticed before? Did I only see this because he was up on the stage, as if the platform itself acted as a lens for me to look through, bringing him into focus?
I heard something in his piano playing that I hadn’t before. Joy. Something that awakened a part of me I’d buried long ago. Something that made me hungry for human connection and affection. Along with a sharp ache, an ecstasy rose from his music.
A week later, I asked him if he wanted to go on a hike with me in the Mission Mountains. We trekked up to Cedar Lake through sweet-smelling old-growth cedars. The dusty trail turned our hiking socks gray.
We picnicked beside the lake before returning to Wallace’s dusty Jeep. On the way home, we stopped at a roadside bar near Swan Lake, shaped like a tadpole nestled between the Swan and Mission Ranges. We ordered Pacificos and chicken wings and giggled over silly stuff. He made me laugh. It felt good to not think about the department and the tension around Hartley.
I found myself wanting him. In the bar, I nonchalantly placed my hand on his thigh. He looked at me curiously. I leaned over and kissed him. When I pulled away, his blue eyes stayed on mine, wide and flickering, asking,Is this for real, Cros?
It had taken me until that lazy afternoon seven months later to look into those eyes again and give him his answer.
Chapter 15
Two red-eyes and the night of no sleep in Dallas have caught up with me. I’m not sure when or for how long I dozed off, but when the doorbell rings, I stand so fast, I feel lightheaded and forget for a moment where I am. I look out the kitchen window to see the light diffusing into pale pastels above the mountains. Shades of gray tunnel through the forest on the edge of my yard.
Dismissing the thought of slipping into the bedroom for my gun—assassins aren’t likely to ring your doorbell, Cros—I go to the door, wondering if it’s a UPS or FedEx delivery.
