The Amateurs, Book 3

by Sara Shepard

  Seneca just rolled her eyes and kept picking lint off the arm of the couch. She was the only one who hadn’t reached for any of the vending machine goodies. Not even a soda. “They’re not going to find him. DNA’s only useful if you actually know where the criminal is.”

  Aerin looked chagrined. “Yeah, but…”

  “But we all saw him,” Maddox jumped in. “We can describe him to a sketch artist. His picture is going to go up on the news.”

  “So he’ll just change his appearance. And then the news will die down, and no one will be looking for him again, and in a few months, he’ll come back and hurt all of us because he believes we double-crossed him.”

  “Seneca!” Maddox warned. The last thing he wanted was Seneca scaring Aerin. Seneca had been in a dark mood ever since the fun house, though. At first, she’d been great—hugging Aerin, making sure she was okay, even acting levelheaded about Brett getting away. But once the cops went to arrest Candace, once Seneca searched the entire property and didn’t find Brett there, she’d begun to sink into despair.

  Seneca flicked another piece of lint, then turned to Aerin. “Didn’t Brett tell you he was returning to the house where he was holding you?”

  Aerin sipped a Diet Coke. “He said he might go back. But that was before Candace was found, so who knows.”

  “You really don’t remember anything about the place?”

  Aerin bit her lip and stared into the middle distance. “It was a house,” she said finally. “A house and not, like, a hotel or an apartment.”

  “You already told us that,” Seneca said.

  “Sorry.” Aerin’s eyes flashed. “I was in a room. There was no view of the outside. I got a glimpse of the hall at one point, which is how I knew we were in a house—a rather nice house. But that’s it. If we could find it, I snipped some of my fingernails and hid them under the bed. So there will be proof that I was there.”

  Seneca grumbled something under her breath Maddox could hear. He gave her a cautious look, and she shrugged, her gaze trained on Aerin again. “And when you drove here, how long did it take?”

  “A few hours, maybe? I tried to track the time, but he had me in the trunk. I couldn’t see a thing.”

  “Did it seem like you were on highways or back roads?”

  Maddox cleared his throat. “She just said she couldn’t see anything.”

  “Highways,” Aerin said, but then seemed doubtful. “Although this one road was kind of twisty…”

  Seneca checked something on her phone. “My last call with Brett was at about five p.m. Then he called Maddox at about seven thirty—when he found the Jeep in the parking lot. It took you two and a half hours to get to Breezy Sea from wherever you were.” She frowned. “How about when you were at his place? Did you smell anything? Hear anything? What about bugs or animals? Did you hear any weird animal sounds? Get any bug bites?” Aerin shook her head again and again. “Did you hear any strange sounds at night when you were in the room? Trucks? Airplanes? People? Music?”

  Aerin’s face lit up. “Actually, this one time I heard a truck. Like it was backing up. That beep, beep, beep sound, you know?”

  Seneca seized on this. “Like a garbage truck? Or a dump truck?”

  “I don’t know. I just heard beeps.”

  “The beeps are different.” Seneca scrambled to pull up two sound clips on her phone: one was a garbage truck, the second was a dump truck. She played them for Aerin. Aerin held her palms in the air. “Sorry, but they both sound the same.”

  “They’re not the same,” Seneca said forcefully. “It’s one or the other.”

  “Seneca,” Maddox warned. “They totally sound the same.”

  There were beads of sweat on Seneca’s forehead. The only sounds in the room for a few long beats were the dull murmur of the local news on the TV screen over their heads. The story was about a strange standoff in the boardwalk Fun House…which then led to Damien and Huntley being found.

  “Ugh,” Seneca said, her face twisting. She rose to her feet and stormed out of the station, pushing angrily through a side door that led to a small side parking lot.

  Maddox jumped up, too. “Wait! The cops could call us in any minute!”

  “Who cares?” Seneca called over her shoulder as the door almost banged shut in Maddox’s face. “It’s not going to make any difference.”

  “Seneca…” Maddox followed her along a row of squad cars. The pavement was still so hot, and the air smelled like fresh blacktop and homemade fudge from the shop down the street. “What’s wrong with you?”

  She was hugging her body so tightly her nails dug into her upper arms. Maddox glanced uneasily at the high fence that separated the two of them from the throngs of people. Even though he couldn’t see them, he could hear everyone talking, the reporters giving updates.

  “Look. It sucks we didn’t get Brett. I can’t stand that he’s still out there. But everything we said in there is true—we have DNA on him now. The cops believe us that he kidnapped Aerin. A guard saw Brett lose it with his own eyes. We have resources. We’ll find him.”

  “No we won’t,” Seneca mumbled.

  Maddox heaved his shoulders up and down, trying to swallow his frustration. How could she be so sure? Why was she being so pessimistic? “And also? We saved two kids today. We put a maniac in prison probably for the rest of her life. I’m proud of that, and I think you should feel proud, too. Don’t you think?”

  He waited for her reaction, but she didn’t move. Didn’t smile or nod. Suddenly, her shoulders started shaking. Maddox’s stomach twisted. Was she…crying?

  “Hey.” He slid closer to her. “I’m sorry. Talk to me. Please. I want to understand what’s going on with you. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  He touched her shoulder, but she shot away as though he’d burned her, her hip nearly knocking against the bumper of the nearest squad car. “Seneca,” Maddox begged. “Please!”

  It seemed like hours passed before she stubbornly wiped her eyes and looked up at him again. “Fine. You want to know what I’m thinking about? This.”

  She shoved her phone in his face. On the screen was a message to her CNC account. So sad you didn’t find me. But you will. You just have to put the pieces together. And I’ll be waiting when you do. It was from BMoney. Brett.

  Maddox’s heart dropped to his feet. “Wh-when did you get this?”

  “I saw it about fifteen minutes ago. But he sent it right around the time the cops were arresting Candace.”

  “You aren’t actually considering…” But when Maddox looked into her eyes, he knew for sure that she was considering. “Oh, Seneca,” he said. His mind tumbled. He felt a little sick. After all they’d gone through, after all the danger they’d put themselves in, she couldn’t go back for more, could she?

  “You can’t go after him,” he said, suddenly determined. “You have to show this to the police. They might be able to track him.”

  He reached for her phone, but Seneca pressed it to her chest. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

  She sounded so hateful, and he stared at her, shocked. He felt precarious, suddenly, like he was standing on a slippery cliff and even the tiniest movement might cause him to careen over the edge. “Please don’t keep playing his game,” he begged. “You’re going to get yourself killed.” His throat felt tight. “Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand there are people who want you to live?”

  “You really don’t get what he means to me.” Seneca’s voice was stony and empty. “You don’t get how devastated I am that he’s…out there. Free.”

  “I do get it. But it’s not your job to find him. It’s not your job to be obsessed.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “It’s not.” Maddox tried to touch Seneca’s arm again, but once more she pulled away. It stung. Well, more than stung. It was like she hated him.

  “You just don’t understand, okay?” she snapped.

  “I think I do. But—”

 
“No.” She cut him off. Her eyes were dark. Unyielding. “You don’t. You’re not like me, Maddox.”

  “Seneca.” The devastation sloshed inside him like heavy water. “This is no more personal for you than it is for Aerin or her family—he’s hurt all of you. And don’t you see the irony here? You’re making this personal in the same way Brett made the Candace search personal. And it’s going to ruin you the same way it ruined him.”

  Seneca’s mouth made an O. She blinked hard as though he’d kicked her in the sternum. Maddox watched as what he’d said seeped into her, and he wondered if he’d gone too far. Horror and hurt passed across her features, and she clenched her jaw even tighter, angling her body fully away from him toward the chain link fence. “Well, then,” she said in a small voice. “I guess Brett and I are exactly the same.”

  “Seneca, I didn’t…” Maddox started.

  But she held up her hand to stop him. “Maybe you should just leave me alone,” she said in a dull gray voice.

  He stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  Her eyes were trained on her feet. The cut on her arm had been bandaged, but some blood was starting to seep through the gauze. All Maddox wanted to do was fetch her a fresh bandage. Cradle her in his arms.

  “I want to do this alone,” she said. “I need to be alone.” Her jaw twitched, and she glanced at him for a millisecond, her eyes huge and dark and sure. “Really alone.”

  Maddox stepped back. A hot, messy mix of understanding and rejection and hurt churned in his gut. “Oh,” was all he could say. Did she mean what he thought she meant?

  Suddenly, all the frustration he’d felt this week—all the times she’d rejected his comforting touch, all the ups and downs they’d had, the little digs she’d made about his dedication, it all came banging down on his head. Maddox hadn’t even realized how beat up he felt about all of it until now. She didn’t want him. He’d pushed and pushed, trying to fit his way into her life, but she didn’t want him. God, he felt like a fool.

  He took a steadying breath. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

  Seneca twisted away, her arms wrapped tight. “I do.”

  He took a few angry steps back to the station, barely feeling the pavement beneath his feet. Once he reached the door, he swiveled back and gave her one last look.

  But Seneca didn’t look up. Just kept hugging herself. Didn’t even register he was there.

  THOUGH IT HAD been almost two weeks since Seneca had been in her bedroom, nothing had changed. Her space still smelled like Downy and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and that musty odor of the thrift shop where she bought most of her clothes. There was the same level of dust on her bookshelves, the same emo-rap song loaded next in her queue on Pandora. She felt, too, like she was coming back to the house the same person, even though she’d hoped to have monumentally changed.

  There was something else waiting patiently for her homecoming, too. Four days after Damien and Huntley had been found in that gray house by the ocean, Seneca opened her closet door, turned on the light, and stared at the massive Brett project she’d constructed over the past three months. There were index cards mapping every case he contributed to on Case Not Closed, cross-referenced with the location and timeline of the kidnapping or murder and if Brett could possibly have been there. More index cards asked critical questions: Does he have a plan? How does he finance all of this? What is his endgame? And, simply, Why?

  She knew more about those answers now. Months ago, it would have felt like a huge win. But it wasn’t enough anymore.

  So sad you didn’t find me. But you will. You just have to put the pieces together. And I’ll be waiting when you do.

  What did it mean?

  Seneca stared long and hard at the pictures of victims on the board until her eyes swam. She had been rereading all the cases Brett had contributed to on the CNC boards, and pored over psychology texts and papers about serial murderers and the lasting effects of brutal kidnapping. She’d called Viola Nevins so many times with so many questions that now Viola wasn’t even taking her calls. She tried to figure out the hint Brett had given her, about how he’d kept Aerin somewhere she’d been before. Could it have any connection to where Brett was now?

  She wandered over to her laptop and clicked on the Google search she’d kept permanently loaded on one of the browser tabs: Jackson Brett Jones. After a quick refresh, the site revealed that no new articles had surfaced. They hadn’t found Brett yet. Big shocker.

  She’d known those paltry clues the cops had on Brett wouldn’t be enough for them to track him down. No one had turned up to recover the Ford in the parking lot, and eventually the city towed it to an impound lot. Forensics had tested the hair of Brett’s Aerin had saved, but it didn’t link to any hints about where Brett and Aerin had been hiding. Aerin’s kidnapping story had blown up on the news, especially because her kidnapper might also be the person who murdered her sister. Chelsea also got to give her story, and the authorities issued her a formal apology for assuming that she was a narcissistic girl who made up a kidnapping. Both girls described Brett to sketch artists, but it hadn’t done any good—the images didn’t yield any tips.

  Seneca had gotten a few requests for interviews, too—even big ones like Good Morning America. Apparently, Maddox and Madison had taken the producers up on it, but she hadn’t. What was the point? Why would she want to admit how she’d let a serial killer escape? It wasn’t going to get them any closer to Brett. It certainly wasn’t going to bring her mom back.

  She turned back to the board. There had to be something right in front of her she wasn’t seeing. It was just a matter of putting the pieces together in the right way.

  It’s not your job to be obsessed, Maddox’s voice rang in her head. But Seneca flicked it away as though it were a mosquito, same as she deleted all the missed calls from him on her phone. He’d texted her again and again after that night at the police station—the night when, once the police finally called them in for questioning, she’d contributed little to the discussion, and then called a cab to drive her all the way back to Maryland, which had cost a small fortune.

  At first, Maddox was desperate to know if she was okay. Madison had texted, too. Though as the days went by, both had texted less and less. Good, she’d thought. Not because she wanted to be rid of them. She felt bad not reaching out to Madison, and it ached how she’d broken it off with Maddox at the police station…but both things were necessary. Since losing Brett yet again, her mind had snapped and splintered, turning into a house of horrors she didn’t want them to see. She could feel the darkness settling over her like a quickly growing head of hair, strangling her, obscuring her vision. She didn’t want to pull Madison or Maddox down into her abyss, too. They didn’t deserve that. She was like Brett, making personal what was probably randomness, twisting her ruined past into a vengeful present.

  But on the other hand, she couldn’t stop being this way. This wasn’t anyone else’s fight like it was hers. Brett’s atrocities hadn’t seeped into anyone else’s bones in the way it had penetrated her very skeleton, altering her posture, zooming through her blood. She needed to avenge her mother. She needed to find Brett. It was the only thought in her mind that got her out of bed in the day. It was like Brett’s existence had left a trail of slime inside her she could never wash away, coloring everything, charging everything, dulling her senses and happiness and ambition. She was never going to be normal until she got him. She was stuck in this dismal Brett world, spinning in the Brett spiral until the end of time.

  She still looked at Maddox’s Instagram, though. His posts had returned to images of sunrises on his morning runs, and a few of his buddies at what looked like a house party, and at this very moment, one of him standing next to a girl she didn’t recognize, a pretty, normal-looking redhead in a cold-shoulder blouse and dangling earrings. Maybe he’d moved on already. Good. Seneca’s finger hovered over his name on the contacts list on her phone, too…but no, no.

&n
bsp; She flopped onto the mattress, hugging her favorite lion-shaped pillow. At the foot of the bed was a stack of old photo albums she’d dug out from the bottom of the credenza in the living room. She eyed them warily; the pictures made her feel so sad, but they also made her feel close to her mom. She’d been listening to that answering machine message at her mom’s old law firm a lot, too. Over and over, her mom greeting the callers, telling them to press one for this and two for that—Seneca kept thinking that the next time she listened, her mom would say something in code, like where Brett was hiding. But the message was always the same.

  She chose a photo book at random and pulled it to her. The spine cracked as she opened to the first page. Her mother was lying in a hospital room with baby Seneca sprawled across her belly, fast asleep. There was a bright, ecstatic smile on Collette Frazier’s face. The next photo was almost the same pose, except this time Collette was looking down at Seneca in wonder. I have a baby, her expression said. This is the most wonderful thing in the whole world.

  Tears blurred Seneca’s vision. Damn it, she thought bitterly, a lump forming in her throat. The joy and love on her mom’s face got her every time.

  But she kept going. She turned page after page, watching the bond between her and her mother form tighter every day. Baby Seneca smiled, then sat up, then started to walk. Collette was always in the background, grinning, cheering, clapping. There were photos of a glittery Christmas morning, Collette and toddler Seneca asleep on the couch. There was a photo of Seneca like a tiny snowman in a snow parka and boots, out to brave a February blizzard. Seneca’s dark hair grew; Collette’s hair went from a pixie cut to a layered bob to her shoulders. There was a photo of mom and daughter walking down a path at Quiet Waters Park, which wasn’t very far from the bedroom Seneca was sitting in now. There was a picture of them having mussels—toddler Seneca scrunching up her eyes and wrinkling her nose in disgust—at McGarvey’s, an Irish bar in the town square. McGarvey’s was still in the town square, actually. They still served mussels. It wasn’t right that a stupid restaurant and its menu had outlasted a person. It didn’t seem fair that anything outlasted Collette.