This Story Might Save Your Life(17)

I bend down and kiss his head. “I wish you could talk.”

Mallory sighs.

When I stand, my eyes struggle to focus. I need food, and I need something for this headache. “Have you eaten?” I ask Mallory.

She holds out two shaking hands.

“Come on.” I lead her to the kitchen, where we both stop in our tracks.

“Bummer,” she says of the moonlit view outside my window.

I’d forgotten about the sideways tree. “Yeah.”

I pop some acetaminophen and feed the dogs as Mallory searches through my cupboards. “You eat like a child,” she says. I’m tempted to remind her that her wife owns a cupcake shop, but I bite my tongue. Mallory settles on a box of crackers, and I grab a block of cheese, and we take them to the sofa. The dogs join us as soon as they’re done with their kibble, waiting at our feet for crumbs to drop.

“I keep thinking we must be missing some obvious explanation,” Mallory says mid-chew. “Have you told me everything? What else happened last night?”

My jaw dislodges as I debate whether or not to come clean. I’d hoped for more intel before admitting the rest, but maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way. Maybe Mallory can help. I get up, return with the swag bag, and fish out the rose-gold computer.

“Did you take that from—is that—”

“Joy’s? Yes.”

Mallory raises her eyebrows.

“Don’t judge.” I open it up. “Joy wanted to record an episode, just the two of us.”

“An episode,” Mallory repeats.

“She wanted to issue a statement. That we were taking a break.” I hesitate, then add, “She wanted it done before Xander came home.”

“Because he would’ve talked her out of it,” she says. Not a question.

“I can’t say I’d blame him.” Joy and I have sat through our fair share of meetings with Apex Plus, but it’s Xander who’s put in the most time. Hundreds of hours, likely. Not to mention the extortionate capital we’ve dropped on attorneys. All that, and the deal is still only hanging by a thread. “I kind of tried to talk her out of it too. It came out of nowhere. Like, we haven’t even finished the whale episode, and all of a sudden she wants a break? I was confused.”

“And she really didn’t explain?”

“No. I asked if it had something to do with the stalker. She said no. I asked if it had to do with negotiations. No. Health? No. She just said it was complicated and that was it.”

Mallory snaps a cracker in half and offers the pieces to the dogs. “Then what happened?”

“I backed off. I said if that was what she needed, then okay.”

“And then?”

“And then we started recording.” I’m already cringing at what horrible things might be on there if Joy didn’t get around to editing the episode. If I could give up a kidney to do last night over, I would. “And then she kicked me out.”

“Did you have a fight?”

“No. Maybe?” I can’t bring myself to look at Mallory’s face. “She changed her mind so fast. One minute she was telling me to sit down, the next she was saying she wanted to do it alone.”

“So you just left?” Her words are infused with disbelief. “Why didn’t you say any of this to the cops?”

My pulse is racing. I close the computer. It was a mistake to involve her.

“Hand it over.” She does the grabby motion with her fingers. When I don’t move, she does it again. “You want to find it before someone else does, right?”

I bite my lip. It’s like I’m staring straight at Xander when I meet her eyes. My shoulders drop. Joy isn’t the only one who’s missing. “But don’t go online,” I say. “In case—”

“They track it and realize you stole evidence?” She zips her lips with her fingers.

“I’ll give it back after,” I say, relinquishing the laptop.

She opens it, and we stare at the lock screen photo of Potsie’s squishy puppy face. I told Joy a few weeks ago that her password was too easy to guess, and she looked at me like I was missing the point. “It’s cute. I like to imagine Potsie and Richie and Fonzie all squished together holding hands on the Happy Days couch.” When I returned a look that said she was obviously missing the point, she shook her head at me. “It’s not like anyone can steal my computer anyway. I’m always home.”

The heavy irony of this exchange is not lost on me now as I key in potsierichiefonzie. Before I can take my next breath Mallory has already disconnected the Wi-Fi. She then turns off location services and hard restarts while I run to get my own computer. A minute later, both laptops are up and running.

Fingers hovering over the touch pad, Mallory says, “How many hours ago would that have been?”

It’s 10:12 p.m. I do the math. “Twenty-seven.”

We start in the most obvious places. Mallory pulls up Joy’s Finder application, looking for files saved in the past twenty-eight hours, just to be safe. She probes the hard drive, the trash, and everything else she can access offline. Beside her, I scan each and every TSMSYL folder Joy has access to in the cloud.

The search comes up empty.

“Maybe she didn’t finish it,” Mallory says.