“Get off my porch.”
“Why can’t you just talk to me?” I ask. “What are you hiding?”
“GO!” he screams, charging at me a bit. It isn’t threatening, more of a little lunge, and suddenly, despite how badly I want to lunge back—despite the fact that every muscle in my body is screaming at me to push past him and run inside—I think again of Dozier’s warning.
“I would advise you not to do anything impulsive.”
I think of that man at the grocery store, the way things had escalated so quickly the second I lost my cool. I can feel the adrenaline in my arms, my legs, twitching at the thought of finally finding the answers I’m looking for—finding Mason—but my mind is telling me that if I do this, and if I’m wrong, I won’t be able to do anything to find Mason from inside a jail cell.
“Fine,” I say at last, my fingers curling into fists. I can feel my nails digging into my palms as I retreat down the steps. “I’m leaving.”
I make my way back home, my heart racing by the time I step inside. I immediately walk into my dining room, my eyes tracing the map. I’m almost positive I won’t find a pin there—if either of those men were on the registry, this close to my home, I’d already know—but still, I look at the neighborhood, the area clear where his house would be. I skim the spreadsheet next, anyway, looking for 1742 Catty Lane: the numbers I had seen bolted to the porch columns when I had approached the house. I flip through the first page, then the second. The third, fourth, fifth—just in case I somehow missed it. Only once I look at them all—every name, every address—do I deflate a little.
He’s not there.
I grab my phone and navigate to my email, refreshing my Inbox. Still no response from Dozier. Then I click over to his contact information and make a call, listening as the line rings and groaning when his voice mail picks up instead.
“Hi, Detective, this is Isabelle Drake,” I say once the line beeps. “I sent you an email on Wednesday, and I just wanted to make sure you got it.” I drum my fingers against the table, trying to decide how much to reveal. “I also had a question about one of my neighbors at 1742 Catty Lane. I had an encounter with him this morning that was … unsettling.”
I decide that’s good for now. Enough detail to maybe pique his interest, prompt him to get back to me—I asked him a question, after all, which requires a response—but not too much.
“Okay, thanks,” I say. “Talk to you soon.”
I drop my arms, exhaling slowly as I crane my neck back, staring at the ceiling. Just as my eyes close, I feel my phone start to vibrate in my hand, and I snap them back open, hoping to see Dozier’s name on the screen.
Instead, it’s a text from Kasey.
“Good to see you the other night,” it reads. “Offer still stands.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Grit always threw extravagant holiday parties—or, rather, Ben always threw extravagant holiday parties—and my first year, almost two months into my employment, we went to Sky High, one of Savannah’s nicer rooftop restaurants, with string lights illuminating the dining area and a perfect view of the riverboats as they slid beneath the bridge.
I’ve been thinking about that night ever since I ran into Kasey at the vigil: the two of us adorned in sequins and sipping champagne while overlooking the bridge, its two cable peaks swathed in lights resembling oversized Christmas trees in the dark. We were standing beneath a heater together, a faux fur shawl wrapped around my shoulders, when Ben walked in with a woman on his arm.
“That’s Allison,” Kasey had said, swirling the champagne in her flute and watching the little bubbles rise to the surface. “Ben’s wife.”
That was the first time I had heard her name: Allison. Allison Drake. I had seen pictures of her in Ben’s office, of course, on that very first day when I had stepped inside. Pictures of the two of them, together, intertwined on the hull of a sailboat or sprawled out lazily in a field of lush, green grass. But in those pictures, despite the fact that I knew she was real—logically, of course, I knew she was real—she was still only two-dimensional to me. I knew she existed in the same way I knew rare, exotic animals existed from the pages of National Geographic—she was a concept, a curiosity, nothing more than colorful ink slathered across glossy paper. Everything I thought about her had been imagined, concocted in my own mind rather than based on any truth or fact. I couldn’t hear the chirpy hum of her laugh or smell the floral perfume that seemed to swirl beneath my nostrils the second she stepped out onto the roof. She didn’t have a name, Allison, or hair that bounced or hips that swayed or any of the other human things about her that suddenly seemed to hit me so hard.