I almost tell Bailey about the life I walked away from, about the article I found and how it means that you knew about me before I told you. I nearly reveal my secret identity as Dear Birdie.
Why would I do that? Reveal myself to this man I barely know.
Of course, I don’t. It’s not relevant to this, to his hunt for Mia Thorpe, for you.
Are you sure about that? asks Robin.
Stop being a brat, I think. She shoots me a look.
I never told you about Dear Birdie, Adam. I would have eventually, I suppose. But I just hadn’t pulled back that particular curtain yet. There are so many layers to me. But maybe not as many as there are to you. Are you a killer? A predator?
What would you have taken from me if you hadn’t run from Bailey Kirk?
Because that’s what you did, right? Somehow you discovered that Bailey Kirk had caught up with you. You ran. You had to.
“It’s possible she walked away. It’s possible he hurt her,” says Bailey into the silence that has grown between us. “But there’s no evidence—no blood, no body, no trace of either of them. All Mia’s money is gone. She had quite a bit. Enough to live somewhere cheap for a while if that’s what she wanted.”
Where would you go? South America, I suppose. Mexico? Where could one live cheaply and anonymously? There’s a man I know. He wrote a book about how to disappear completely and never be found. He’s been on the show. There are all kinds of reasons people choose to leave their lives behind, he said. Some of them are understandable—debt, affairs, unhappy marriages, escape from justice. Others are personal. You may never know why.
“You said there were others,” I say.
Outside a siren wails up the street. It’s loud since we’re at street level. He waits to reply. Then, “Other women missing after meeting a man on Torch, yes. Two others that I know of since starting the investigation into Mia Thorpe, from my contact at the dating site.”
“Him? Adam?”
“The pictures are not the same, unless the photos are very old, unless he’s changed his appearance dramatically, or he used other images from his profile, but there were similarities in the information. Rilke poetry, a kind of ironic, anti-dating-site vibe, bookish, dark.”
“Do you have the profile pictures?”
He takes his phone from his pocket and I see that there are five missed calls and eleven unread texts. How can he stand it?
He opens the photo app and shows me. The pictures are grainy, lots of movement and blurred lines. In one, a thin young man stands by a lake, turns away smiling. It could be you—as a teenager, thinner, happier. In the other, a young man with floppy brown hair, mirrored sunglasses perched on a large nose, and a full beard stands on a subway platform. I see the shade of you, though either photo could easily be someone else. But I might have picked either of them from a Torch lineup. I feel the same electric jolt I felt when I first saw your image on the app.
“Where were the other women?”
“Mia Thorpe was from Philadelphia. Bonnie Cartwright was from Chicago. Melissa Farrow was from a town in upstate New York called The Hollows.”
A finger traces down my spine. The Hollows. A place I know too well.
“Do you know it? The Hollows?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
I shake my head, not trusting my voice. I feel the heat of his gaze. When I look at him, his slight smile unnerves. How much does he know about me?
He doesn’t press, just goes on.
“All of them with troubled pasts—Bonnie the survivor of a school shooting, Melissa orphaned after a fire killed both her parents, raised by her grandparents. Mia lost her mother, struggled with addiction. They were all young women of some means. Bonnie received a big payout from a lawsuit. Mia had a trust from her mother’s family. Melissa inherited her parents’ life insurance policies. All struggled in the aftermath of extreme trauma—PTSD, addiction, psychotic breaks. When they disappeared, their money went, too.”
He’s watching me, carefully now.
“So, what about you?” he asks. “Is there something dark in your past?”
I bristle. “I don’t fit your profile, Detective.”
“No?”
“I’m still here.”
A shrug, a nod. “True enough.”
We sit a moment, engage in a brief staring contest where I lower my eyes first. He takes a card from his pocket and puts it on the table in front of us. I shift away from him on the couch. A little more of that tattoo reveals itself through the cuff of his long sleeve tee. It looks like a vine with thorns, but I’m not wearing my glasses.