Headlights(59)

When I turn around, she hasn’t moved. She’s watching me. My phone’s on the coffee table on top of one of the folders. She sits, with her hand still over her nose. The nose plug is in beneath her hand, I can just see it between her fingers.

Hannah Lawrence, here, in my house.

“This is your home?” she asks.

“How did you find me?”

The flames come to life behind me. Silence, in the living room, between us.

“Talk,” I say, when she says nothing else.

“I went to get water from the stream, after you all left, and I walked for a while. I was gone maybe two hours in total. When I came back, that knife—I guess you’d call it that—was on my bed. I recognized it from the motel. It … Seeing it again…” She takes a shaky breath. “Someone broke into my cabin and left it. I don’t know if it’s a threat, or if they want to make it look like I did this, or both, but…” Her voice breaks a little. “I was scared.”

“But you didn’t see anyone.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t know what to do. I just felt like I needed to leave. If someone was up there, if they had waited. I mean, there’s no one else around for miles, no service. I ran.”

“With the knife.”

“I didn’t want it on my bed, and…”

“And?”

“And I thought you might need to see it.”

“Why me?”

“I…”

“How did you find me?” I ask. All the times. All the pieces of my past. How?

She looks around the room, her legs bouncing, brows knitted together in what looks like pain. Bruises still on her face. Just faint ones, but there. Her eyes catch on a shadow that’s drifted over by the bar and the record player, that seems to be watching us.

“Hey,” I say. “Look, if I’m going to believe anything you’re—”

“Yeah, um…” But she can’t look away. Another’s come in from the kitchen, and Hannah’s gone pale.

“They’re fine,” I say. “Just—”

Her attention snaps to me. Green eyes reflecting the flames behind me. “What did you say?” she asks.

“I need you to give me some answers. Give me something here.”

“You see them?” The way she asks it, desperation, shock.

I take a breath. “How did you find me? Why did you come here?”

She watches me a long moment, then leans back, exhales long and slow, her hands over her face. She says, to the ceiling, “Oh my god, I … no wonder.”

“Hey, I need you to talk to me, or we’re going to—”

She sits up, and there’s still that shine in her eyes, but this time it’s not only fear there. “When I saw you at the office,” she says. “When I felt you. It’s because…”

Then something else crosses her face, and her whole demeanor changes. Fear. Distrust. She sits up slowly.

“Did you put me in that motel room?” she asks. “Were you there?”

The fire pops. It takes a moment for her question to register.

“Did I—” I say. “Everett Brown put you in that room. I—”

“Why did I hear that song when I touched the photographs?” she asks. “That was you, who’d held them before me. Why did I hear that song? Why did I … feel you?”

Why have I been thinking about you every second?

I shake my head. “I wasn’t even in the state when he took you to the motel.” Why am I defending myself to her? How could I possibly— “Why did you come to me?” I ask. “Why not go to the FBI office? Why not try to find Frazier or Garcia? If you were really scared, if you really thought someone was trying to frame you? And what do you mean you felt me?”

This last question feels monumental. All of this … I try to feel my feet on the ground, focus in on the present. Her, here. But …

“You don’t…” she says. She pauses, tilts her head, brow furrowed now in confusion and pain and … she’s searching for something. “Oh.” Deep disappointment on her face. “Um.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Okay. I just…” She takes a breath, realizing something. Deciding something. “I ran down from my cabin,” she says, “and I didn’t stop running. Then walking. I came through Roxborough Park, through Chatfield to the High Line Canal. And I ended up where you were.”

“That’s like twenty miles. Twenty-five.”

“Yeah,” she says.

“You said I might want to see the knife. You meant to come to me.”

She stares at me a second. “Yeah, I just … get like, feelings, sometimes. It doesn’t matter. I just needed somewhere to go, and you … seemed like a safe place. When I saw you at the office, I just … felt like I knew you. I don’t know.”

My phone buzzes on the table. Lights up with a text, then another. My heart is thundering, and I can’t process any of what she’s saying. Felt like I knew you.

“Please,” she says, almost a whisper. “I can’t be locked up. Even here, in this room, I’m…” That panic look, her legs shaking. “I can’t be in a tight space, with other people. And even … even if I don’t go to jail because someone tried to … frame me? I guess? Someone was in my cabin. They could come back. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go, or—”