All the Missing Girls(55)

He paused, shifted his feet in the loose dirt where the road met the grass. “I can hear his phone from inside his apartment. And . . . I don’t want to call the police. I don’t think that would be such a good idea. But I was wondering if . . . maybe you had a key? Just to check.”

My stomach turned hollow—I hadn’t seen Tyler in three days. Hadn’t heard from him at all. I’d thought of many possible reasons for him not showing up in the last few days, but until that moment, none of them had anything to do with his safety.

“I don’t have a key,” I said. I used to, and then he moved. I was already backing up to the house to get my car keys. “Let me just grab my purse.”

Jackson nodded. “Yeah,” he said.



* * *



AT NINE A.M. ON a Monday morning the bar was closed, which I was glad for. Jackson had implied that there were enough rumors already. “His truck is gone,” I said, standing in the gravel lot behind the bar. I looked up at the window—the blinds pulled shut.

“I know. It’s been gone all weekend. But the phone . . .”

“No, you’re right,” I said.

“I can call the landlord, but I don’t want to leave Tyler with a paper trail. Not with the cops already stopping by. Part of me thinks he’s just avoiding them—it’s what I would do. But . . .”

“The phone.” Ringing inside and no sign of Tyler.

“Right. The phone.”

Jackson unlocked the main door, and the vestibule area felt claustrophobic with the bar dark and locked to the side, and the narrow stairway, and the glass door streaked with dirt. He locked the door behind me and motioned for the stairs. “After you.”

Our steps echoed in time, and the hall smelled faintly of cigarettes, and his hand brushed mine once on the railing. The floorboards creaked at the landing, and Jackson stood behind me, fidgeting with his phone.

“Let me,” I said. I took out my cell and called Tyler, keeping the phone by my side, pressing my ear to the door.

“You hear it?” Jackson asked, leaning way too close.

“Yeah, I hear it.” I closed my eyes, straining to hear more. The slow and periodic drip of a faucet leak. The rattle of the air--conditioning unit as it stirred to life. But no footsteps. No rustling of bedsheets. No call for help. “I don’t hear him,” I said.

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

There’s something distinctly different about being told someone is missing over the phone, or seeing signs stapled to trees or a picture on the news, and confirming it in person, feeling the absence. It’s a pinprick of discomfort that grows into a hollow terror. It’s a void that gets filled with all the horrible possibilities existing all at once.

I knocked on the door again, in the same way I’d checked the same places for Corinne over and over—back to the caverns, wondering if there was a corner I’d forgotten, a room tucked out of sight. “Tyler, it’s me,” I called, my voice wavering with panic. “Tyler.” My fist was clenched when Jackson pulled it away from the door.

“Come on,” he said, heading back downstairs to the bar. He led me through the empty bar to a storage room and grabbed a ladder. He carried it effortlessly out the door and around back into the parking lot and situated it directly below Tyler’s window. “You’re my alibi and I’m yours. We weren’t breaking in. We were checking on him. Got it?” We nodded at each other, sealing a pact.

He checked the streets behind us, empty now. I put my hands on the rungs, but Jackson placed a hand on my shoulder. “Me. I look like maintenance. You look like a pretty girl on a ladder. People won’t question me.”

I hated that he was right, because I wanted in that room. Needed to be the one to see with certainty that Tyler wasn’t there—that the visions in my head of his lifeless body beside his ringing phone weren’t real. That he was okay somewhere. I needed to see the phone and know why he left it, look in his closet and know where he went.

I watched as Jackson maneuvered the air-conditioning unit and heaved himself inside along with it. I stared up, waiting, the glare of the sun off the top of the window making my eyes burn. The uncertainty making my breath hitch.

Jackson leaned out the window. “Empty,” he called. He spent way too long trying to get the air unit back in. When he eventually came down, he folded up the ladder and wordlessly walked back inside.

“What did you see? Where is he? Do you know?” I asked, trailing behind him. I followed him all the way to the storage closet before he answered.

“Nah, didn’t want to go through his shit. He’s not there. That’s all I know. Maybe he went camping or something.”

Useless Jackson Porter. It should’ve been me. I would’ve checked for his sleeping bag and canteens. I would’ve looked for his toothbrush. Scrolled through his phone. Logged on to his computer and checked the search history.

Or maybe Jackson did. Maybe he just didn’t want to tell me.

We stood in the middle of the empty bar, the stools on the counter, the panic in my chest slowly unraveling.

“Here,” he said, taking down a stool. “Let me make you breakfast. We can catch up.”

I slid onto the stool, felt the adrenaline burning through the last of my energy. The crash just beginning. “Coffee,” I said. “Strong.”