A Flicker in the Dark(76)

“So, what can I do for you, Detective?”

I walk behind my desk and set my bag on the ground, pulling out my chair and taking a seat. I hope he’ll follow my lead and do the same, but he remains standing.

“I wanted to let you know that I spent the week following up on your lead. Bert Rhodes.”

I raise my eyebrows; I forgot about Bert Rhodes. So many things have happened over the past week that have shifted my focus—the necklace in our closet and the revelation about Aubrey Gravino, the perfume on Daniel’s shirt and the lying about the conference and the scratch across his side. The visit with my mother, the things I had found in Daniel’s briefcase, now tucked into my own duffel bag. The evidence I had been looking for, and the evidence I’m traveling this weekend to find. The memory of Bert Rhodes in my home, holding that drill, his eyes boring into mine, feels so distant to me now. But I still remember that feeling of paralysis, of fear. Of my feet firmly planted on the ground despite the mounting sense of danger. But now danger has taken on a whole new meaning. At least I wasn’t living under the same roof as Bert Rhodes; at least he didn’t have a key to access the doors that I had locked behind me. I’m feeling almost nostalgic for last week, yearning for that moment—standing in my hallway, back against the door—when the line between good and bad was so clearly defined.

Detective Thomas shifts on his feet and suddenly, I feel guilt, too. Guilt for sending him down this rabbit hole. Yes, Bert Rhodes is a bad man. Yes, I felt unsafe in his presence. But the evidence I’ve uncovered in the past week doesn’t point in his direction—and I feel like I should say so. But still, I’m curious.

“Oh, really. What did you find?”

“Well, for starters, he wants to take out a restraining order. Against you.”

“What?” The shock of his statement sends me shooting up from my desk, the screech of my chair against the hardwood floor like jagged nails on a chalkboard. “What do you mean, a restraining order?”

“Please take a seat, Doctor Davis. He told me he felt threatened during his little visit to your house.”

“He felt threatened?” I’m raising my voice now; I’m sure Melissa can hear, but at this point, I don’t care. “How in the world did he feel threatened? I felt threatened. I was unarmed.”

“Doctor Davis, take a seat.”

I stare at him for a moment, blinking back my disbelief, before slowly lowering myself into my chair again.

“He claims that you lured him into your home under false pretenses,” he continues, taking a step closer to my desk. “That he arrived under the impression that he was completing a job, but once he stepped inside, he realized you had other intentions. That you were interrogating him, pushing his buttons. Trying to get him to admit to something incriminating.”

“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t call him to my house, my fiancé did.”

I feel a lurch in my chest at that word—fiancé—but force myself to push it down.

“And how did your fiancé get his number?”

“I imagine from the website.”

“And why were you looking at the website? It seems like a pretty big coincidence, considering your history.”

“Look,” I say, pushing my hands through my hair. I can already see where this is going. “I had his website pulled up, okay? I had just realized that Bert Rhodes lives in town and I was thinking about how coincidental it is, to your point. I was thinking about those girls and how desperately I wanted to figure out what was happening to them. My fiancé saw it pulled up on my laptop and called him without me knowing. It was just a stupid misunderstanding.”

Detective Thomas nods in my direction. He doesn’t believe me, I can tell.

“Is that all?” I ask, irritation dripping from my tongue.

“No, that’s not all,” he says. “We also discovered that this isn’t the first time this has happened with you. It sounds eerily familiar, actually. The stalking, the conspiracy theories. Even the restraining order. Does the name Ethan Walker ring a bell?”





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE




I first saw him at a house party, dipping a plastic cup into a cooler of neon-red liquid. He had a certain quality about him that I couldn’t quite define—ethereal, almost, like everyone else in the room had dimmed, and he stood there glowing, drawing all the light to his center.

I took a drink out of my own cup and winced; frat party liquor was never of the highest quality, but that wasn’t really the point. I was drinking just enough to feel a little tingly, a little numb. The Valium coursing through my veins had already helped to quiet my nerves, to cloak my mind in a sense of chemically induced calm. I looked down into my cup, at the last remaining finger of liquid, and knocked it back.

“His name’s Ethan.”

I looked over to my left; my roommate, Sarah, was standing next to me, nodding in the direction of the boy I had been staring at. Ethan.

“He’s cute,” she said. “You should go talk to him.”

“Maybe.”

“You’ve been staring at him all night.”

I shot a look in her direction as heat rose to my cheeks.

“No, I haven’t.”

She smirked, twirled the liquid in her own cup before taking a sip herself.