Last Girl Ghosted(32)

Sounds a little too familiar. Do you have a type, Adam Harper? Adam Grove? Or is it Raife Mannes? How many names do you have?

“Then a friend encouraged her to try Torch. She started dating here and there. Nothing serious. Hookups, really, according to her father. Which he didn’t love, but she was a grown woman.”

He leans forward, picks up the pen, turns it this way and that, then places it carefully back on the coffee table.

“Not much Thorpe could do, really. And then there was Raife—or Adam. Or whatever his name is. Her father said that she changed almost overnight. He thought she might be using again. She abandoned her writing, dropped out of school. And then, she was just gone. And Raife Mannes, he turned out to be a ghost—all his profiles disappeared, his cell phone disconnected, his address a fake. My client hasn’t heard from his daughter in nine months.”

Bailey leans back in his seat, rubs at his temples. “This was my first lead in a while. I hate to have to tell him that the trail is cold again.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

He shrugs, drains the last of his coffee. “Do you know that people just walk away from their lives all the time? I mean like thousands of people, usually men, walk out on jobs, on families. They cash out accounts, and shift off their life like an old skin.”

I know all about that, yes, I think. But say instead, “Did she do that? Cash out accounts?”

“Her accounts were cleared. By her? By someone else? I don’t know.”

He lifts and replaces the notebook, the watch.

“What about you? Did he take anything from you?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I checked.”

“Keep checking.”

I nod my agreement.

“What about her phone? Her blog? Her social media? Her credit cards?” I press.

I know a thing or two about finding the lost—those people who walk away. Dear Birdie hears about them all the time. From the children looking for parents, the wives looking for their husbands, the lonely hearts who give their money and their love away. More people walk away than are taken, I think. That’s what Jason, our consulting PI, has told me. More people abandon the life they built than are wrested from it. It’s not a crime.

You should know, says Robin. She’s over by the fireplace now, squatting, poking a stick into the flames. I ignore her.

“We found her phone, her purse, and her wallet in her apartment,” Bailey goes on. “She hasn’t used a credit card, or posted on social media, or on her blog since she disappeared.”

“Do you think she walked away? Or do you think he...hurt her?”

You were gentle with me, Adam. Respectful. Loving. Kind. You wouldn’t hurt anyone, would you? Not like that. You’re not a monster.

But now that you’re gone, it’s as if you were never really here. You could have been anyone, I knew so little about you.

But no. Our last hours together, as we wrapped around each other in the dark. Wasn’t there a knowledge there, an intimacy that went beyond your name, your job, your address? I’m sure there was. At least for me.

I almost tell Bailey about the life I walked away from, about the article I found and how it means that you knew about me before I told you. I nearly reveal my secret identity as Dear Birdie.

Why would I do that? Reveal myself to this man I barely know.

Of course, I don’t. It’s not relevant to this, to his hunt for Mia Thorpe, for you.

Are you sure about that? asks Robin.

Stop being a brat, I think. She shoots me a look.

I never told you about Dear Birdie, Adam. I would have eventually, I suppose. But I just hadn’t pulled back that particular curtain yet. There are so many layers to me. But maybe not as many as there are to you. Are you a killer? A predator?

What would you have taken from me if you hadn’t run from Bailey Kirk?

Because that’s what you did, right? Somehow you discovered that Bailey Kirk had caught up with you. You ran. You had to.

“It’s possible she walked away. It’s possible he hurt her,” says Bailey into the silence that has grown between us. “But there’s no evidence—no blood, no body, no trace of either of them. All Mia’s money is gone. She had quite a bit. Enough to live somewhere cheap for a while if that’s what she wanted.”

Where would you go? South America, I suppose. Mexico? Where could one live cheaply and anonymously? There’s a man I know. He wrote a book about how to disappear completely and never be found. He’s been on the show. There are all kinds of reasons people choose to leave their lives behind, he said. Some of them are understandable—debt, affairs, unhappy marriages, escape from justice. Others are personal. You may never know why.

“You said there were others,” I say.

Outside a siren wails up the street. It’s loud since we’re at street level. He waits to reply. Then, “Other women missing after meeting a man on Torch, yes. Two others that I know of since starting the investigation into Mia Thorpe, from my contact at the dating site.”

“Him? Adam?”

“The pictures are not the same, unless the photos are very old, unless he’s changed his appearance dramatically, or he used other images from his profile, but there were similarities in the information. Rilke poetry, a kind of ironic, anti-dating-site vibe, bookish, dark.”