Page 49 of You Know Why

“Do you have the unsanitized videos? Ones that aren’t clipped? There’s someone following Andrew in the airport.”

“Yeah, hold on.” A groan, the sheets shifting. Tapping. Her email dings. “There you go. Tell me what you’re seeing.”

She opens the file, giving it a moment to buffer. This screenshot is wider, and she lets out a sigh of relief. Matches up the first time stamp and drags the full video to that spot. Hits play. Now that she knows what to look for, the man in the ball cap is easy to find. “Okay, check at 1:12 into the video. See the guy with curly hair in the mask and baseball cap?”

“Yeah.”

“Just let the video play. He’s following Andrew.”

Drake is quiet, watching. “He could just be a guy who’s heading home, too.”

“He could. But he’s not. It’s almost like he’s . . . herding him out the door.”

“Is he in the arrivals terminal, too? Out by check-in? Or was he on a plane?”

“He’s definitely on the passenger side of security. He’s in the international terminal. Look at 45 seconds. He comes out of the bathroom just ahead of Trey—”

“I see him. Okay. We need the manifest for every flight that landed within the hour time frame of the Nashville-to-Atlanta flight.”

“I’d start with the flight they were on. Let’s get video from the arriving flight, see if he was on the plane from Nashville. And then, if he is, we can backtrack to BNA and check their manifests, too.”

“T-Lee, none of this makes sense. Them being bumped from the flight, being rerouted to Atlanta—if someone’s following him, how could they anticipate that?”

“It would take a level of sophistication that makes my teeth hurt, Drake. But if we’re right, Andrew Locke isn’t just running from his wife. Can you get a face ID on this guy?”

“We can try, but with the mask on, it’s going to be difficult. Still, hell of a catch, Theresa. I’m impressed.”

“Let’s just figure out who he is, and maybe we can start unraveling all of this.”

Theresa walks the darkened hallway to the kitchen. The moon spills silver through the kitchen windows. The restlessness is always worse when the moon is full. The night before, especially. It’s some strange internal witch she has, still tied to the women of old who curtseyed to the full moon out of respect, hoping for its blessings.

She flicks the switch on the kettle, grabs a mug, drops in a bag of chamomile.

A shadow at her kitchen table makes her heart rev at a frantic pace.

She lets out a string of curses, slapping her side for her weapon, which is, of course, in the bedside table. She doesn’t wander her house armed. The knives are closer, but before she can grab one, the shadow speaks.

“Hello, Theresa.”

The flash of metal in the moonlight halts her in her tracks. That voice. She knows the voice. But from where?

Her mind swims. She thinks of Drake, of the life they could have had. Thinks of all the people she’s disappointed, her sorrows, her blessings. She coils to fight, and he laughs.

“Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

“Then talk.”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play coy with me. You know exactly who I’m talking about. Our boy, Andrew.”

“I have no idea. He’s not here.” She doesn’t want to beg. But she doesn’t want to die, either. “I swear I don’t know where he is.”

He tsks. “And where were you tonight?”