Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(86)

CHAPTER 61


Amelia couldn’t sleep. She was too excited about her father’s return and what it meant, what it could mean, so at eleven she went out to where people gathered and lights were bright. The grocery store she ended up in fit the bill, though there weren’t that many late-night shoppers in the place. Restless and unable to order herself, she wandered the aisles. She didn’t crave crowds normally, but tonight she needed something, something she couldn’t name, but she’d know it when she saw it. What had he said? Singularly engaged. One goal.

She picked up a bag of rice, tossed it into her basket alongside a bottle of cheap wine, a prepared salad, and a half gallon of vanilla ice cream. It was activity, mindless, robotic. Amelia noticed the young woman pushing a cart ahead of her in the aisle. She was on her cell phone, a Bluetooth in her ear. Her side of the conversation sounded lively. Amelia followed her out of the aisle, into the next. Canned goods. The young woman hadn’t noticed. Why was she shopping so late? Why was she in the canned-goods aisle when her cart held greens, oat milk, a loaf of whole-grain bread, and a pack of chia seeds? Amelia pretended to search the shelf for something in a can while the young woman talked to Seth. They were planning to meet. Maybe a club? A rave? That was what young people did, wasn’t it?

Amelia picked up a can of baked beans she would never eat and put it in her cart, watching. Next aisle. Careful not to get too close. Seth and the pretty woman. Around frozen foods, the call ended, and Amelia watched as the woman grabbed a bag of broccoli from the freezer and made her way toward the front of the store, ending up in the fifteen-items-or-less line. Amelia eased in behind her, bumping her cart on purpose.

“Sorry,” Amelia was quick to say in a deeply apologetic voice. “I’m a total menace with these things.”

The woman smiled back. “Don’t worry about it.” Blue eyes. “I see you’re a late shopper too, huh?”

“Best time to get in and out,” Amelia replied. She looked at the woman’s items as they hit the belt. “You eat really healthy.”

“Have to. You eat good, you feel good, right?” As she said it, she clocked the half gallon of ice cream in Amelia’s basket, along with the wine and the rice and the beans she never ate.

“Guess you’re right. The ice cream is for a friend, by the way.” The woman laughed. Amelia laughed too.

That was it. The cashier rang the woman up, and then she waved goodbye, heading for the exit as Amelia tracked her every step.

“Twenty-eight fifty,” the bored cashier said.

Amelia slid her card into the reader, waited for the approval and receipt, then grabbed her bag and followed the woman out. She found her standing at the curb, texting. Amelia squared her shoulders, preparing to make another attempt at small talk, but before she could approach, a green compact rolled up. A grungy man got out, pecked the woman on the cheek, took her bag, and put it in the trunk while she got in the car. Seth?

Amelia watched the car pull away and stood there with the bag of things she had no use for, feeling the miss. As she swiped for an Uber, she went over how she’d played the encounter, the bump, the apology. Not too much. Not enough for it to be weird or to raise alarm bells. Just enough. There was no accounting for Seth or the pickup. Not a miscalculation on her part, just factors she couldn’t foresee.

She waited eight minutes for the white Prius driven by Tammy. When Amelia got in, the woman turned around to greet her, wide smile, dirty blonde hair kissing her shoulders.

Amelia eased back, the evening saved, good fortune returned. “Nice night, isn’t it, Tammy?”





CHAPTER 62


Foster looked out her back door at the bowl of food she had set out for Lost earlier, only it remained untouched; he was nowhere around. It wasn’t like him, but she wasn’t overly worried. He’d likely found another supplier along the chain of houses on the block. She would have let it go, turned off the lights, and gone to bed were it not for a sinking feeling that something was about to come to a head. She stepped off the back porch to stand in the yard and glanced up at the moon. Was Lost lost? Why the hell was she worried about a feral cat who only gave her the time of day because she fed him? She was sure Lost held no great affection for her. Given half a chance, he would likely walk over her dead body if he found it in the street, yet here she was, worried he’d gotten run over by a truck or mauled by that crazy dog down the street.

She turned to watch her house. It didn’t spark joy. The house looked just as sad and lifeless out here as it felt inside. That was a problem, but even recognizing it as such was a huge step forward for her. She lived in a sad house. She led a sad life. These were hard-fought-for declarations, emerging from a well of pain that hadn’t diminished but that had been tempered some with perspective and time. Progress.

In the center of her yard, she took a moment just to breathe, eyes up, arms out. She was here, alive, damaged, but coming back. She slid her hands into her pockets and looked around the postage stamp of a yard, its scraggly grass littered with leaves from the one crooked tree planted at the foot of it. The snow would come in a month or so, but next spring, maybe she’d do something with the grass. Sod it or whatever. Life. Full of maybes.

A shiver swept over her, and she flipped her collar up. The night felt different. This was the second time she’d had the feeling that someone was watching her, and she turned three sixty, slowly peering into the shadows, watching for unexpected movement, but finding nothing. Paranoia. It was the case getting inside her bones.