Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(55)

When she went out, it was to cleanse her palate, to invigorate her mind, to stimulate her so that she could paint and, by painting, move the world around. Despite what Bodie had told her, she knew that peace and quiet were not what brought him out at night. Bodie didn’t get things right. He was like a pair of mismatched shoes or a wrong-way driver on the interstate. Odd. Out of sync.

Amelia parked across the street and waited without a single guarantee that Bodie would venture out. She could just go up and ring his bell, and they could talk, but she knew Bodie would lie, and she knew she would let him because Bodie needed those lies to live.

Eleven thirty p.m. That was when he walked out of the building and turned east toward Lincoln Park. It would be empty this time of night, Amelia knew, which she supposed was why Bodie chose it. She slipped out of the car and followed at a distance, across the street, head down, collar up, with an itch of eagerness and a fair share of apprehension coursing through her.

She’d followed Bodie before. Bodie had been her job for as long as she could remember, even when he ventured far away and bounced back again, and now, after the girls, the roof, and Westhaven. After the death of that young woman on the Riverwalk.

He always headed toward the park. Some nights he stayed in, but there weren’t too many of those. Bodie was a creature of habit. He liked routine, predictability, structure, which she’d always thought made him a prime candidate for institutionalization, though once there, he rebelled against the confinement. Odd. He was like a restless cat, always caught on the wrong side of a door. Amelia chalked it up to a wide streak of Morgan disquiet, inherited from their father, a complicated man—an unsolved puzzle, she suspected, even to himself. And as far as inheritances were concerned, well, disquiet was the lesser of evils.

She lasered in on Bodie’s back as he turned onto Cannon Drive and passed under the stone arch of the Grant Monument, good old Ulysses sitting atop his horse, the moon shining down on the weathered bronze. A few late-night dog walkers passed, pulling scrawny rescues along behind them, their phones in hand, texting or watching videos, oblivious to everyone around them.

The monument was as far as she knew she could safely go. If she followed him onto the pedestrian path, he’d surely look back and see her. But she knew his route and knew he’d be back this way, so she picked a bench off the path, behind a tree, and she waited, burrowed into her jacket. The temperature was dropping, and the lake nearby smelled like a wet dog, but the gentle whoosh of the water, a dark, undulating void from where she sat, lulled her into an almost Zen-like state. Forty minutes. That was how long Bodie would take. It wasn’t the walk that worried her so much; it was what came after.

She drew back when she heard footsteps approaching from the path. It was Bodie, and it was too soon, barely a half hour since he’d disappeared down the path. She watched from behind the tree as he moved past her, then watched as he stopped in his tracks a good distance from her and just stood there, his hands in his pockets, his chin up, face toward the moon. What was he doing? It wasn’t until he began walking again that she allowed herself to breathe. Discovered? Did he somehow know she was there?

She gave him an extra-long lead, then crossed the street and followed him back, tracking him all the way to the bars along Lincoln Avenue, watching as he slipped into one under blinking neon lights. He chose a different one each night. This one was just a block north of his apartment. This was how he had gotten into trouble before. Amelia knew that he would emerge near closing with a woman on his arm. A last-call consolation who’d walk back to his place on liquored-up legs. It shouldn’t have been her business, but it was. Amelia was in no position even to judge, seeing as she and Bodie shared the same predilection.

But her brother always took things too far.

She waited across the street, keeping an eye on the door of the bar for Bodie and his date, watching the street as hip bar hoppers in their messy twenties strolled the sidewalk or swayed at the curb waiting for Ubers. Why had Bodie stopped back there on the path? He’d never done that before.

She had an hour to think about it, tucked into the littered doorway of a closed shoe-repair shop, before Bodie reappeared with a young woman, far younger, she noted, than he was. Thin, tipsy, not drunk. She flitted around him like a firefly kissing the flames of a campfire. She appeared up for a good time. A pink feather boa fluttered in the night air as she pulled her coat tight and her floppy hat down, very Janis Joplin–esque.

They started walking toward Bodie’s place. Amelia followed. She followed them all the way back and waited until they went inside, then hung around until the lights flicked on in his apartment, then went out in the bedroom. A glance at her watch. Just a little after one.

She was cold, damp, and so she called it, confident that Bodie would stay put for a while. There was a bar she knew, one that was open until 4:00 a.m., so she headed there. She wasn’t seeking company, though she wouldn’t turn it away if she found it. Amelia needed inspiration to feed her artistic nature. She needed life.





CHAPTER 34


Dr. Mariana Silva couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t slept a single night through since Bodie Morgan had walked out of Westhaven and away from her three days ago. Truthfully, she hadn’t had an untortured night for years, her mind too busy to shut off, vengefulness and a sense of urgency feeding the fire in her belly. How dare they? She had been the best in her field, the leading authority. Years of study, years of sacrifice and dedication, and it was gone, important doors closed in her face, like she was no one.