Callie leaves the woman from the halfway house—Dawn—her card and tells her to call, day or night, if she hears from Jenna or she remembers anything else that might be relevant.
The word she used sticks in Callie’s mind all day.Hunted.
As she getsready for her second date with Adrian, Jane sends her a link to a TikTok video that she watches to the end, realizing that all the young women remind her of Rebecca Nixon. That ladylike, perfectly polished makeup, and underneath their eyeliner and mascara that same bright-eyed eagerness for gore—considered okay in a woman so long as it is packaged right. Headbands and pearls and lipstick. Shiny hair and Pilates-toned arms.
I’m supposedly going on a date tonight. Don’t fill my head with this shit.
The creeper from the woods???
The scientist. Yes.
He must be hot. Have fun. And tell me everything!!!
I’m this close to canceling. My head isn’t in this. Too much going on.
Don’t you dare! You need this, Calliope Hauser.
Callie sighs. Jane’s right. And what Jane isn’t saying, but she’s surely thinking, is that this might be the rest of Callie’s life: Jenna gone. Already the images on the missing posters are weather faded, the ink gray. There has to be some part of her that moves forward. Some kind of relief. Something that is hers.
She and Adrianhave agreed to meet at the bar. Callie is glad they chose somewhere a little further afield than the tavern where the guys drink, even if it means a forty-minute ride each way. The last thing she needs is anyone from the squad listening over her shoulder as she struggles through second-date banter. In the car she puts on lipstick, wipes it off, puts it on again. It’s different, going somewhere where they’ll sit close to one another, without the water between them. She wonders if it will feel the same as it did the last time, both the conversation and the silence—easy, natural. The churn in her head, her thoughts of her mother, going still for just a little while.
He’s there first, even though she’s five minutes early, sitting on the wooden bench out front, head bent toward a book.
“Work or pleasure?”
He holds up the cover so she can see it.The Left Hand of Darkness.“I’m a big science fiction nerd.”
“I gather. Shall we?”
They enter the bar and it’s the same as any of the others in the Pines: stained glass chandeliers slung over the pool tables, a taxidermy deer head near the entry, a jukebox against the back wall. Men in hunting caps, men in leather biker vests. Heavy pours of dark liquor and cheap beer on cork coasters crumbling to bits.
“I hope you aren’t a martini kind of gal.”
“I mean, I can be. But I’m also a beer in a plastic pitcher kind of girl.”
“That’s very good news.”
He orders for them and she watches him from the small table they’ve chosen. She likes the way he moves, an unhurried ease to his gait, all long legs and slim hips.
“Scare any other unsuspecting ladies this week?”
“Not this week, no. Not quite that lucky.”
They’re talking and things are going well, so well that she forgets her nerves, that she doesn’t mind when he tells her about the plot of the book he’s reading, that she feels herself smiling so much when he talks about his students and feels the tug of muscles she hasn’t used in a while. Or she feels that way until he starts to go a little quiet, and she notices him looking over her shoulder, longer pauses between their exchanges. Maybe she misread the moment. Is he eyeing the door?
“Hey, so do you know those guys over there? They keep looking this way.”
She turns and sees Collins and Reynolds, who raise their drinks from the bar.
“Oh god. Those are two of my esteemed colleagues. I’ll go over and say hi. And by say hi, I mean, tell them to stop being creeps.”
She crosses the bar and they watch her approach, grinning like a pair of tweens who have caught a glimpse of a teacher outside school.
“What are you two doing here? I thought the guys all favored the Pine Tavern close to the station.”
“Mac is a dick,” Reynolds says.
Collins rolls his eyes. “They got into a fight. Some hunting thing. I don’t know.”
