All the Missing Girls(18)

He had grinned and stacked the papers back up. Reached under the table, at my legs resting on the chair beside him, and squeezed my calf. I ask every time. It’s a game at this point. He never tells. Truth is, I love that he doesn’t. That he is both good at what he does and good down to the core.

“Call me when you’re ready,” I said, squinting from the glare through the windshield.

He grabbed my elbow before opening his car door. “Make an appointment to see a doctor, Nicolette.”



* * *



SOMETIMES, WHEN I’M NOT focused, I’ll end up someplace I had no intention of going. Like muscle memory. Head to the store but end up at school. Walk to the bank, end up at the subway. Drive to Daniel’s but find myself in front of Corinne’s old place. Which must’ve been what just happened, and how I ended up parked on the corner by Kelly’s Pub even though I had every intention of heading home.

My eyes drifted over the storefront, over the awning, to the window a floor up with the air-conditioning unit hanging over the edge. The blinds were open.

I needed to talk to him about that key, anyway. And he wasn’t answering my calls—not that I really blamed him.

I pushed through the entrance into the vestibule area of Kelly’s Pub and cringed as the bell chimed overhead. At least at night, there was too much noise to notice. I could smell smoke and grease and something stale underneath as I passed the open doorway inside on the way to the narrow stairwell. “He’s not here!” someone called, and the sound of laughter drifted out from the darkened room.

I took the steps two at a time to the alcove with a door on either side, facing the one on the right. I knocked rapidly three times, waited, and tried again, pressing my ear to the door. Then I called from my cell, my ear still pressed to the door, and heard the periodic vibration of his phone from somewhere inside, until the voicemail picked up: Hey, this is Tyler. Leave a message. Maybe he was in the shower. I tried to listen for the sound of water in pipes or any movement inside. I called again—the vibration, the voicemail, and nothing else.

Another round of laughter from downstairs. I checked the time on my phone: one P.M. on a Sunday. The new five P.M. I used to find my dad here during summer break. But not this early. Never this early.

I turned to go, but the creeping feeling that I was being watched started at the back of my neck, worked its way down my spine. The stairwell was empty. The door at the bottom was closed. I listened for movement somewhere nearby. A shuffling in the walls. A breath in the vents. There was a shadow in the tiny strip of light escaping from the apartment door across the hall, but it hadn’t moved. I stepped closer, keeping my movement as quiet as possible.

Could be the angle—sunlight and furniture—but . . . I stared at the peephole, leaning closer, my own face distorting in the reflection. Like a fun-house mirror, too-big eyes and too-small mouth and everything elongated and sickly.

I knocked once, softly, but the shadow didn’t move. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I closed my eyes, counted to ten. This was what happened during an investigation. You felt eyes everywhere. You became suspicious of everyone. Everything fell apart if you didn’t hold yourself together. Hold it together.

I jogged back downstairs, my footsteps echoing in the hollow underneath the steps, and walked through the bar entrance. A crowd of faces I vaguely recognized glanced in my direction, and one man leaned over to say something to another. I watched his lips move—That’s Patrick Farrell’s daughter—and the other man tilted a bottle of beer to his lips.

I tried to catch the bartender’s eye, but either he didn’t see me or he didn’t care. Probably the latter. I knocked on the bar top. “Jackson,” I said, trying to keep my voice low.

He came closer, the muscles and sinew of his forearm straining as he cleaned and stacked the dishes behind the bar, before fixing his bloodshot green eyes on me. “Yes, Nic?”

“Who lives in the other apartment upstairs?” I asked. “Across from Tyler?”

The skin at the corners of his eyes tightened as he looked me over, and he rubbed a tan hand over the dark scruff on his face. “I do. Why?”

I shook my head. “No reason.” I had to get home. Had to check the laptop. Had to get it back inside Annaleise’s place before anyone went looking for it.

He narrowed his eyes as he gave my entire body a quick skim. “Sit down, Nic,” he said. “You look like you could use it.” Jackson poured a shot into a glass with lip smudge marks from the last customer visible on the rim. “Vodka, right? On the house.”

My stomach churned, and I pushed it back in his direction across the sticky surface. “I gotta go.”

He grabbed my wrist, tried to hide the grip under a playful smile. “There’s a blue car,” he said, facing away from everyone. “I’ve seen it pass three times in the last half hour. You’re not the only one looking for Tyler. He’s been gone all weekend.”

Gone all weekend. Except his phone was here. “I was just in the area,” I said.

“Sure you were.”

I wondered if Jackson knew anything more, but his face gave nothing away. He tilted his head, his fingers circling my wrist.

A man at the far end of the bar raised his glass—a friend of my dad’s, or at least someone he used to drink here with. He had a sprinkling of gray hair and cheeks that burned bright red like apples. “Regards to your father, hon. Are you okay?” His eyes slid to Jackson’s hand, then back to me.