by Mason Cross
I looked up from the printout and across at the library, wondering why that ad had set off some kind of synaptic spark. It could have been the coincidence that I was sitting right across the road from the library, but I didn’t think that was it.
And then I had it.
Lying in bed next to Carol, that last night. She had been talking about college. How she had worked in the library to subsidize living costs. A good gig: she had always been a big reader, and she liked the orderly nature of the job: a stark contrast to what she ended up doing for a living, managing the chaos of a senator’s day-to-day life.
I put the printout down on the table and took the time to really look at the library building. It wasn’t anything grand or ornate, just another single-story unit like the others along Main Street. It had big picture windows at the front, but you couldn’t really see inside because bookshelves were lined in front of them.
Sarah and I had considered various ways of picking up Carol’s trail, but I couldn’t recall us thinking about job ads. Carol and Freel had left Summerlin in a hurry, before they had expected to. Maybe they were unprepared. Maybe it would be useful for one or both of them to find a low-key job to bring in some ready cash. It would help with blending in, too. I could picture Carol scanning the newspaper, seeing this ad, remembering how she liked the order. Different from how her career had turned out six and a half years ago, and in all probability very different from the way her life was today.
The papers and the coffee and everything else were forgotten. I kept my eyes on the library as I thought about all this. I could see someone moving around inside, behind the books.
It couldn’t be this easy, could it? But then, the library was just across the road. It wouldn’t take long to check it out.
I gathered up the printouts and stuffed them back into the bag. I left money for the coffee and exited the diner. I waited for a gap in the traffic and crossed the road.
I pushed open the glass door of the library and stepped inside. It was an open-plan space with a green carpet and a dozen or so freestanding bookcases arranged across the floor, as well as along the walls. Neat signs advertising the content of each section: mystery, children’s, audiobooks, non-fiction, romance. The back wall was lined with shelves, but at the far end there was gap for a noticeboard and a door marked “Private.” An elderly woman with rounded glasses was sitting behind a desk in the center of the room, tapping away at a computer. She looked up when I had made no move away from the door.
“Can I help you?”
I didn’t have anything planned to say, but before I knew it I was speaking as though I had been given a script. My voice sounded a little far away as I spoke. “Is Rebecca here today?”
She stared at me for a moment and suddenly I was certain that I was mistaken, or that Carol had picked another new name. But then she smiled and pointed toward the back of the room. “Oh, you mean Becky? She’s in the office, just about to finish up. You can go on back there if you like?”
With an effort, I kept my voice casual, nonchalant. “Thanks.”
The woman looked back at her screen as I started walking toward the door in the back wall, passing war and horror and history. As I reached it, I could hear somebody moving about inside, moving papers around. I took a deep breath and knocked.
“Come in.”
I turned the handle and the door swung open. She was there, leaning over a desk and scribbling something in a log book of some kind. She had changed a lot in some ways: the shoulder-length blonde hair I had known was long gone, replaced with the red color from the photograph, but cut again since then into a short bob. She wore blue jeans and a gray sleeveless shirt. She was just close enough so I could see the tiny scar on her upper left arm. I remembered tracing my finger over it, asking where she had gotten it. Crashing her bike in seventh grade. Wet leaves on the road. Eight stitches.
I didn’t say anything, just stood in the doorway and waited for her to look up. She flinched and took a sharp breath when she saw me. It took her a second to process what she was seeing, and then her shoulders relaxed a little, and her eyes narrowed.
“Hi,” I said.
30
QUARTER, ARIZONA THURSDAY, 12:58
Sarah parked Blake’s Ford in the small lot outside the office of the Quarter Observer. It was just a small unit in a two-story stucco-fronted office building. A minuscule space compared to the giant big-city newsrooms Sarah had seen over her career. But then, most of those newsrooms had downsized, some of them had closed down entirely, and this little local was still going.
There was a woman in a pink t-shirt and rimless glasses standing outside the door smoking a cigarette. Sarah recognized Diane Marshall from her LinkedIn picture, although her frizzy blonde hair was a little less tidy and she had gained a few pounds. Diane’s eyes regarded her as she parked, taking a moment to note the out-of-state license plate. As Sarah got out of the car, the woman dropped her half-smoked cigarette, ground the butt out with a heel and extended her hand.
“Sarah?” she asked, blowing the last of the smoke through her nostrils. “I’m Diane.”
Sarah smiled and took her hand. “Thanks for taking the time to meet me.”
Diane waved it away. “Time is not a problem. Lot of it about, not much interesting to do with it.”
She beckoned Sarah inside the door. It opened onto a narrow corridor. Diane made for the third door on the left and held it open for Sarah. There was about a square yard of floor space at the entrance, in front of an unmanned reception desk that joined with a low wooden partition to divide the room in two. Diane opened the little gate in the partition and held it open for Sarah to walk into the back area. There was another desk and a photocopier. Every wall was lined with shelves stacked with ring binders and books and document wallets and magazine folders crammed with folded copies of the Quarter Observer. A wastebasket beside the desk was overflowing with balled-up printouts and junk mail. Sarah smiled. Over the years she had trained herself to keep a tidy workspace, but there was still a part of her that felt you weren’t doing it right if there weren’t a hundred projects on the go. The chaos of the small-town newsroom felt a little like coming home.
“Okay, where were we,” Diane was saying to herself. She stared at her overflowing desk. She lifted a couple of items before remembering something and opening the bottom drawer and closing it again.
“So you were at the Tribune, huh?” she said, without looking up.
“For thirteen years,” Sarah confirmed.
“You miss it?”
“Sometimes,” she said truthfully.
Diane abandoned the desk and looked purposefully across the room at one of the steel shelving units, crammed full of box files.
“Yeah, I looked up your books on Amazon. That’s going pretty well?”
“Pretty well.”
Diane had done her research, as Sarah had known she would. It was the main reason she and Blake had decided that she should come alone. If she had shown up with Blake, Diane would have known in a heartbeat that there was more to this than Sarah’s cover story of trying to locate a missing school friend. Blake doing his tall dark and mysterious thing would introduce a whole raft of new questions for a person who was curious by profession.
Sarah knew that if Diane thought for a second she might be helping a questionable ex-boyfriend or some kind of debt collector track down an unsuspecting woman, she would be less forthcoming.
But calling as one journalist to another and asking for a favor? That stood a much better chance. Diane could look her up and ascertain that she was on the level about her background. Just as importantly, she would know a comrade-in-arms when she met one. So she would trust Sarah, go a little above and beyond for someone who was not only a former bigshot reporter, but an honest-to-God published author. Sarah thought about what Diane had said a minute ago: “Lot of time about,” and realized with mild embarrassment that she was basically what would pass for a celebrity around here.
“Got it.” Diane pulled a well-used spiral-bound notebook out from where it was jammed between one of the box files and the shelf, and leafed through to the most recently used pages.
“I made some calls. Quarter is a pretty small town. This wouldn’t usually be a difficult ask.”
Implication: it was on this occasion. Sarah said nothing, waited for her to continue.
“So your neighbor is ...” she glanced down at the pad. “Rebecca Freel, right? Rebecca and Dominic Freel.”
Sarah told her that was correct. She had thought about giving her some of the other names in the notebook too, just in case, but had decided against it.
“Nothing on anyone by those names. So I followed your suggestion. The one thing you knew is that they were headed here, so I called around the hotels. Easy to narrow down because nobody has much reason to stay more than a couple of nights here. Ricky over at the Sunset Motel had a couple of the age you’re looking for take a room for two weeks, but their names weren’t Rebecca or Dominic ...”
“They might have—”
“Their names were Chai Son and Apsara,” she cut in. “They’re here from Thailand, seeing the States on honeymoon. I figured that rules them out unless ...?”
“Yeah.” Sarah smiled. “Sorry.”
Diane continued. “I called my friendly local mailman after that. Terry McCain—Terry is usually the only person I need to ask when I’m looking for somebody. No new mail to people called Freel, but I asked him to keep an eye out for new Rebeccas or Dominies. Nothing yet. So, I called around some of the local realtors. Again, nothing within the timeframe you’re looking at. So, just to make sure, I checked cached versions of the local websites going back a few weeks. I found a house over on Sycamore Street that was taken off the website six weeks ago. I hadn’t seen that one before, so I called up the agent and asked about it, and got a very confused receptionist. Seems it came off the listings, but she doesn’t have a corresponding let in her database. She assumed it was an oversight and said she would get back to me. Ten minutes later, she calls back, apologizing that it really is off the market. The rent is being paid, but weirdly, there’s no customer details.”
“Nice,” Sarah said approvingly.
“I know, right? Curiouser and curiouser. So I said that’s great, thanks anyway, hung up, and headed straight over to Sycamore.”
She paused again, grinning like the Cheshire cat in the story she had just referenced.
“And?” Sarah prompted.
She said nothing. Walked back to her desk and picked up her handbag. She rummaged in it and pulled out her phone. She tapped on it a couple of times and held the screen up to face Sarah. It showed a woman with short red hair and sunglasses exiting a grey car parked on the street outside a modest suburban home. It was Carol.
“This your girl?”
Sarah grinned. “Very nice work.”
“Not too shabby for a small town reporter, huh?”
“Not too bad for any reporter. Diane, I really appreciate this. This is so much better than I could have wished for, thank you.”
“Stop it, I had fun. I’m glad I could help.”
She slid the notebook with the address toward Sarah, then seemed to change her mind and kept her hand on it. “I have one condition though.”
Sarah was wary. This had been almost too good to be true. She braced herself. “Yes?”
“Name a character after me in the next Farrah Fairchild book?”
She smiled. “I think that can be arranged.”
31
Carol looked beyond me, as though she was expecting somebody else to be behind me outside the doorway. Then she looked back at me. When she spoke, her voice was calm and controlled. She didn’t want the woman outside on the desk to hear her.
“Get the hell out of here.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Carol. How have you been?”
“I’m not kidding.” She spoke calmly and deliberately, but her voice was burning with controlled fury. “What are you doing here?”
I hesitated, unsure of what the least-worst thing to say would be. I felt like a bomb-disposal tech considering which wire to cut to avoid the whole thing blowing up in his face.
“I’m here to warn you about—”
“Warn me?”
“Wait a second. All I meant was we’re worried that there could be some trouble on the way for you and your husband.”
Unconsciously, I hesitated a split second before saying that last word. She caught it, her expression becoming pained for a second.
“Well I know you’re right about that,” she said. “Only trouble isn’t on the way. Trouble’s standing right in front of me.”
I took a step forward into the office and raised my hands in supplication. “Can I ...”
She held a palm up to ward me off. “Stay right there.”
I stopped and dropped my hands to my side. “Look, I never got a chance to say I was sorry.”
She pursed her lips and the glare she was fixing me with seemed to burn hotter in intensity. She didn’t want to talk about the past. Didn’t want to talk to me at all. And somewhere deep under the layers of trepidation and remorse, something about that irritated me. My brain counseled diplomacy, but my mouth couldn’t help itself.
“But then, you didn’t exactly give me the chance, did you?”
She opened her mouth and shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe what I had just said. “I thought I was very clear. Did you get my letter?”
“I got it. It was ... concise.”
“And yet, here you are. How long did it take you to find me?”
“Carol, it’s been six years ...”
“Exactly. Do you know—” she stopped and turned away from me, looking out of the small window. It looked out across a kids’ playground. A couple of pre-school age children were climbing around the equipment while their moms chatted to each other.
“I assumed you were dead for a long time,” Carol said. “Maybe that was just wishful thinking.”
I opened my mouth a couple of times to start to say something; reconsidered both times. It wasn’t often I was lost for words. What I had said was true. It had been years. Long enough for both of us to have moved on. But here she was: a little different, a little older ... but in so many ways the same. I had wondered occasionally what it would feel like to see her again, but I hadn’t expected it to hit me like an express train.
Don’t look for me. Good advice.
She brushed her hand across the bridge of her nose and turned around. “What do you mean ‘we’?”
“‘We?’” I repeated, momentarily lost.
“‘We’re worried there could be trouble on the way,’” she said. “As in, not just you. We. Who are you here with?”
I lunged at the chance to salvage the conversation like a drowning man striking out for a piece of driftwood. “Sarah, your neighbor from Summerlin. She got in touch with me.”
Why the hell hadn’t I opened with that? I realized I had made a big mistake coming without Sarah. I could have waited for her, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind. Maybe I had just wanted to see Carol by myself first. I had expected it to go a little smoother than this. I don’t make a habit of decisions based purely on emotion, and, well, I guess this is why.
“Sarah Blackwell?” for a second the anger vanished from Carol’s face. That felt like a minor win. “From Summerlin?”
“She was worried about you. The way you just ... vanished.”
She shot me a look that dared me to draw a comparison with the way she had left things with me. I kept my face impassive.
“Wait a minute,” she said, sitting down in the chair behind her desk. “How did Sarah Blackwell know about ...” she stopped and sighed. “The notebook.”
“The notebook,” I said.
She shook her head. “I didn’t realize it was missing until we were five hundred miles away. Did you read it?”
“I had to. It was all we had.”
> She sighed. “Break glass in case of emergency.” I thought her tone of voice had warmed a little, as she realized my being here wasn’t entirely my fault.
I thought about a couple of different replies. Silence seemed to be safer.
“Where is she?” Carol asked. “Sarah.”
“She’s here in town.”
“Well that was really sweet of her to worry about me, I guess. But I’m fine, really. We’re fine,” she corrected, staring at me pointedly as she said “we.” She added a perfunctory smile that was about as convincing as a three-dollar bill.
“In my experience, people don’t skip out in the middle of the night when everything’s fine.”
The smile evaporated. “It’s been wonderful to catch up, but I have to go now.”
“I know Freel is running from somebody. That’s his business. I just don’t want you to get in the way.”
“And how is that your business?”
“How much do you know about the people Freel’s running from? We think it has something to with the Ellison heist. He had something to do with it, didn’t he?”
“The Ellison—” she stopped, the expression on her face looking like I had just accused her husband of being an alien spy sent to pave the way for invasion. “You’re crazy, you know that? Not that it’s any of your business, but Dominic is a casino consultant. Some shady people work in that business. A deal went bad, no fault of his, but some of his rivals were upset. He thought it was best if we didn’t stick around. It’s inconvenient, isn’t it, when you have to just leave?”
I ignored that. “Then he was right. The night I arrived in Summerlin, somebody named Trenton Gage showed up at Sarah’s house with a gun. He was looking for your law-abiding husband.”
She put a hand over her mouth. “Was she ...”
“She’s fine. No thanks to you.”