I heard the front door close and was about to return downstairs when a balled-up piece of paper caught my eye. It lay beside a metal trash can under the long table used as a shared desk. As if the paper had just missed.
But it was what I could see through the page that caught my eye. The bold black print. Something so familiar about it. I dropped to my hands and knees under the desk and gently unfurled the sheet of paper, flattening it against the beige carpet.
My hands began to shake as the three words stared back at me, a quick chill in the silence: I SEE YOU.
The same format as the warning I’d received with the photos tucked inside. As if other versions had been printed out here and decided against.
I balled it back up, dropped it in the trash can, stumbled down the staircase. I didn’t know if anyone saw me barreling through the front door. If any of the cameras caught me stumbling toward home. My flip-flops catching on a sidewalk square before I regained my footing.
I had to slow my breath, slow my heart rate. Get inside my house and regroup.
But my stomach churned over the thought of Mac. Of Mac, who had been in my house, whom I had let inside my life—
I threw open the front door, barely enough time to notice the square of paper wedged into the door. It flopped to the floor, the photo facedown.
Not again. Not this. I was still thinking of Mac, but I had just been with him the entire time.
Preston, though. Coming into the meeting late. Preston, who had ample time to leave this here.
Not Mac, then. But his brother.
The sheet of paper with that same bold print I’d seen beside the garbage can: HELLO THERE! Friendly and ominous at the same time. Like the mug behind my desk at work.
I picked up the photo, feeling nauseated. My hands shook. It was so clear. The trees and the lake and the dog-bone key chain. The Nike swoosh on the side of the sneaker, the ponytail, the face caught in profile. Looking to the side to make sure there was no one watching.
That first message: YOU MADE A MISTAKE.
The second: WE KNOW.
They were right, of course. I had made a mistake.
Anyone who saw this picture would know.
Anyone could see it was me.
CHAPTER 19
THEY WEREN’T MINE.
That was the defense I had worked through, sitting in my backyard patio, key ring in hand. What I’d tell the police. What I’d tell the neighbors.
They weren’t mine.
But they’d been in my house, and my fingerprints were all over them, and this wasn’t just the Truett key. Oh, no. If only it had been, maybe I would’ve called someone, turned them in.
But this was something more, and I heard the echo of Chase’s advice, his low words through the fence: Keep it simple.
Get them out of the house.
Away from you.
Now.
* * *
I’D FOUND THEM THREE months ago, in the spring, planting flowers in the mulch bed of my patio. Spade in the soil, digging beneath the mulch into the cool earth.
My shovel struck something hard six inches down—something I thought at first was an accumulation of small stones. But I reached my gloved hand into the soil, and my fingers hooked into a ring. A glint of metal in the sun as I pulled it out.
A large ring of keys, deliberately hidden in the corner of the garden.
That dog-bone key chain was the first thing I recognized, attached to a larger ring by a small loop. But the large ring was full of keys. Each labeled with a small black letter written in Sharpie.
I pieced through them one by one, wiping the dirt and grit from the surface of each key to reveal what was written below.
The T, the B, the S, the C… I was halfway through the key ring before the realization settled in: that these were the keys to other houses on the street. The T for Truett; the B for Brock; the S for Seaver; the C for Cora. On and on they went.
I didn’t know what this meant. Why Ruby had all of these keys. I assumed she’d hidden them during the investigation after denying she’d had the Truett key. Asking me to back her up, to tell the police: I don’t have their key anymore.
A bold-faced lie, while she buried the truth.
Not only did she have the Truetts’ key, she also had the keys of nearly everyone on the street. And they probably had no idea.
I could only imagine that this was an accumulation of keys she had amassed over the years, living here. From all her time walking dogs, or bringing in mail, or house-sitting. The keys that were left for her under doormats, or spares that were temporarily lent her way. Either she hadn’t returned the keys, or she’d copied them. My guess: copied them. So that no one knew she had them anymore.
But these were also more keys than I thought she’d had access to. There were plenty of people who had never trusted Ruby, wouldn’t have left her in possession of a key. But we were all connected here. Access to one house could grant her access to another—a neighbor’s spare key, for emergency, labeled and hung on a key hook on the wall or in a kitchen drawer.