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But no, it doesn’t seem that way. He’s with someone, a woman with dark red hair, and they each have a beer in front of them. I watch as he reaches across the table, takes the woman’s hand, and runs his thumb back and forth over her skin in a clearly romantic way. She says something to him—I can see her lips move even in profile—and Deacon pulls her hand to his mouth, kissing her palm.
In that moment, my gut tells me everything I need to know. He’s not the intruder. I’m hardly an expert on the behavior of fucked-up men, but it seems clear that a guy who’s obsessed enough with a woman to break into her apartment wouldn’t be nearly slobbering over someone else a few days later. Deacon obviously got his venom toward me out of his system and probably hasn’t thought of me since.
It’s a relief in some way, until I realize this doesn’t change the bottom line. Some guy broke into my apartment, then tried to get into my studio. And I haven’t a single clue who he is—or why he’s after me.
21
Then
WE HAVE TO CHECK THE POOL,” I SHOUTED AT JAMIE AND ROB,feeling my panic swell even more. “Chloe might have fallen in.”
Rob shook his head emphatically. “No, I was out there yesterday, and I would have noticed.”
I exhaled a long, ragged breath, but my relief didn’t last. “Let’s look around the second floor now,” I said. I was thinking of the girl descending the main staircase and that toad of a guy surprising me in the corridor outside the bedrooms. People had definitely been roaming around up there Friday night.
“We should probably check the basement first,” Jamie said.
My heart skipped. “What’s there?”
“Well, for one thing, a game room. We didn’t want anyone using it the other night, but given how the party turned out, people might have ended up down there.”
As she led the way, dread seeped through my pores, making my legs heavy. Once we reached the kitchen, Jamie swung open a dark wooden door in one corner and flipped on a light to reveal a set of descending stairs. We were still traveling as a pack, and I was aboutto suggest that we split up and search the house separately to save time, but I quickly nixed the thought. It just seemed better to stick together so that I made sure no space was overlooked.
Jamie’s instinct turned out to be right. As soon as we stepped into the game room, I picked up the scent of stale beer and spotted several red cups on the rim of the pool table, a few half full and one with a cigarette butt floating in the middle of it. The floor was sticky as we walked, suggesting beer had spilled in spots. When I pushed open a door into a half bathroom, I saw a couple of red cups resting on the small sink, as well. But there was no specific sign that Chloe had been one of the guests who had set foot in this part of the house.
“Shit, Jamie, we’re gonna have to get out the mop down here, too,” Rob said, surveying the scene with disgust.
That’s what you’re worried about??I wanted to scream but ignored him and asked Jamie what else was on this level.
“The wine cellar,” she said. “And the laundry room.”
She took the lead again, down a long, narrow corridor. My trepidation built with each step, but each of the other rooms we checked was empty, and it looked like partygoers hadn’t ventured this far. Finally, we encountered a door to what Jamie called “the utility room.” When Jamie swung open the door and I saw that there was nothing in the space but a furnace, I let out a small moan of relief.
“I understand you’re worried,” I heard Rob say from behind me. “But I just don’t think she’s here. We’ve been in the house the whole weekend and we would have known.”
“Can we look in the bedrooms now?” I asked Jamie, ignoring him again.
“Okay,” she said, but she was starting to look somewhat dubious, too, as if she was running out of patience with me, just as her brother seemed to be doing. “Rob and I have been inourrooms, so we know she’s not there, and I had to go in my parents’ bedroom Saturday morning. But there are a couple of guest rooms.”
We ascended to the kitchen and, after making our way back to the front of the house, climbed the wide staircase to the second-floor hallway, which was covered in white-and-gold-striped wallpaper. There was only one window at the very end, and none of the sconces had been turned on, so the space was eerily dim and quiet.
What were my mother and David doing right now? I wondered, gazing down the hall. Had they spoken to the police? They were waiting desperately to hear from me, I knew, but it seemed better not to contact them again until I’d completed the search of the house.
Jamie pointed to the second door on the left. “This is the first of the guest rooms,” she said. “We never come in here.”
She tugged open the door, and I followed her inside. It was empty, but the pale yellow spread on the bed was badly rumpled, as if someone had been rolling around on it.
“God, what asshole would do that?” Jamie asked. While she pulled the bedspread back, obviously checking to see if the sheets had been dirtied, I glanced into the en suite bathroom, even behind the door to the tub. Empty. We returned to the hall.
“The other guest room is down there,” Jamie said, cocking her chin toward the end of the corridor. I started in that direction, moving at a clip.
“Hey, hold on,” Rob shouted from behind me.
Maybe his impatience was snowballing, and he wanted to call the whole search off, but there was no way I was stopping. I reached the last door on the right, and as I pushed it open, I heard Rob call out again in protest.
This bed was rumpled, too, but the duvet had been kicked onto the floor and the sheets were in a tangle. A beer bottle sat on each of the bedside tables. Had someone spent Friday night in this guest room? Did this have something to do with Chloe?
And then, as I stood there surveying the space and feeling overwhelmed with despair, a tall young guy stepped out from the en suitebathroom. He was Asian American and wearing only jeans, without a shirt or shoes. I gasped in shock. At the same moment, I felt a presence behind me and spun around to find Rob inches away, his face pinched in displeasure.
