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Nate
As Rob drives us from Seattle to Port Townsend—he and I in one SUV, and Smith and Nelson in another—I try Shawna’s number a few times. It immediately goes to her voicemail. That, coupled with my texts not being delivered, tells me I’ve been blocked. I try calling her one last time so I can leave her a voicemail in hopes that she’ll actually get it. By the time we get to Port Townsend, it’ll be after nine o’clock, and I don’t want to make a surprise visit to her house so late. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll visit her at the bar and let her know Jarred is in town. However, I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I don’t know she’s okay at home. We’ll have to do a drive-by, which will be a little difficult to do since her house is down a long dirt road. I insisted on it, though.
It begins raining as we drive over the Narrows Bridge, which takes us across Puget Sound so we can head north up the peninsula toward Port Townsend, and it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve actually experienced rain while being here in Washington. The gloomy weather matches my mood. It seems appropriate and poetic in a way. When I first met Shawna, the weather was sunny and bright. Then it was cloudy when things started to fall apart with her, and now it’s dark and depressing.
My phone rings, and I see Smith’s name on the screen. “Hey,” I say as I answer and put it on speaker so Rob can hear the conversation as well.
“How much longer till we’re there?” Smith asks on the other line.
“About an hour and a half,” I reply, although in my head, I’m thinking, Not soon enough.
“Okay, so when we get there, we’re going to do a few drive-bys,” Rob says, going over the plan we discussed earlier during our flight. “You guys have the address to Jarred Feldman’s mom’s house, so you’ll head there to do surveillance overnight. Nate and I will go to Shawna’s house to make sure everything is okay, then we’re going to check into the hotel and get some sleep so we can trade off with you guys in the morning.”
“Roger that,” Smith replies. “We’re really driving out to the middle of nowhere, aren’t we?”
I chuckle, looking out the window and seeing nothing but darkness around us. “Kind of. We’ll drive through some towns, but Port Townsend is pretty much tucked up and away from a lot.”
“I noticed that on the map, but I just wanted to double-check. We’ll keep following you until we get to town,” Smith says.
“Sounds good. See ya,” I reply before ending the call.
The drive actually ends up taking longer because of the weather. Torrential downpours cause drivers to slow down. Since Shawna’s house is on the outskirts of town, we turn onto another road as Smith and Nelson continue. It’s late, and I’m not sure what to expect when we see her house, but I suppose it’ll be a good sign if her car and her mom’s car are both parked in the driveway, and the lights upstairs are on. I didn’t know Shawna very long, but I did know her long enough to know that by this time of night, Noah should already be in bed, and she and her mom are probably in their own rooms watching TV or reading. If anything looks suspicious, I’ll knock on the door, but I don’t want to startle anyone this late at night.
“Turn here,” I tell Rob as we approach her driveway. He turns onto the gravel road and follows it for nearly a fourth of a mile to the end, where her house is located. I see both cars parked in the driveway, and as expected, the house is dark downstairs, but a couple of windows upstairs are illuminated.
“Everything look kosher?” Rob asks as he stops the vehicle.
I look around the property through the windshield and passenger side window, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. I honestly don’t know what I’m looking for, just something unusual, I suppose. After deciding everything looks okay, I turn to him. “Yeah, I think so. I guess we can go check into the hotel and get some sleep so we can trade places with Smith and Nelson in the morning.”
Rob turns around and heads back toward the main road. As the gravel crunches under the tires, I wonder if I should’ve just knocked on her door? Sure, it would’ve startled them, but then I could’ve seen her and warned her about Jarred.
On the other hand, I don’t want to scare her or her mom, and I don’t want to wake Noah up either. I’m sure they’re fine, and I can wait until morning to tell her.
We made reservations at The Pioneer again, so Rob drives us to town, and we check in. This time, I’m assigned to the room named after Cordelia, and I instantly remember Shawna telling me that she’s related to this woman. What a coincidence.
I’m exhausted by the time I get to my room, so I unpack a few things and get ready for bed immediately. Sleep evades me, though. I can’t get Shawna out of my mind. Smith and Nelson contacted Rob and me when they first arrived at Alice Feldman’s house and said no one was on the property. They’ll let us know if anything changes.
I hear a tapping sound in the bathroom, and the memory of the supposed ghosts haunting this hotel comes to mind. Sure, some strange things happened the last time I was here, but are ghosts real? There must be another explanation for all the things that happened, as well as the tapping sound I just heard. If ghosts were real, wouldn’t Hannah have tried to contact me in some way? I’d like to believe she would, but I’ve never had a paranormal experience before coming here. It doesn’t make sense that some people who’ve passed on become ghosts while others don’t. Unless the theory that believes ghosts belong to souls who are unable to pass onto the other side is true. Then perhaps Hannah has already passed onto that other side.
Who the hell knows. I’ve never been big on religion, and I’m certainly not an expert on the paranormal. All I want is to find the man who’s been eluding us like a ghost and take him into custody before he hurts Shawna, Noah, or anyone else for that matter.
* * *
My alarm wakes me at six o’clock, and I drag myself out of bed. I only got a few hours of sleep. I was awake off and on all night. Not only did I keep hearing noises—either tapping in my bathroom or a scratching sound on the wall behind me—but I also couldn’t stop worrying about Shawna.
After showering and getting ready for the day, I meet Rob downstairs in the hotel lobby promptly at six thirty. We promised Smith and Nelson we would take over surveillance at seven, so we have just enough time to grab coffee before heading out there.
“Morning,” Rob says as he meets me at the bottom of the stairs. “Ready?”
“Sure am,” I reply, and we head outside.
We haven’t heard from Smith and Nelson at all, so it must’ve been a quiet night for them.
It’s still raining this morning, so we run across the street to the espresso stand to get our coffee, then we run back to get into our Chevy Tahoe and leave.
“All right, so we’ll do surveillance this morning for a couple of hours. Then if things are still quiet there, I’ll bring you back to town, drop you off at The Cellar so you can talk to Shawna, and I’ll head back out to the house. Text me when you’re ready for me to come back for you.”
“Perfect. You never know, she might know something.”
