Last Girl Ghosted(88)

“I know it,” said Bailey. “When you fail at this job, it hurts—and not just you. People get hurt.”

Cooper flashed him some kind of look, an acknowledgment of the truth, an acceptance.

Bailey tried Wren’s phone again. Where was she going?

He’d called multiple times. No answer, straight to voice mail. Wren Greenwood, what the hell are you doing?

The dot came to an abrupt halt, kept flashing.

“She’s stopped,” he told Cooper. The other man nodded as if this didn’t surprise him.

“There’s a gas station up ahead if I remember correctly,” Cooper said.

But the road was dark and empty—they hadn’t seen a house or a business or another car in an hour of driving. Bailey always lived in cities, where everything was a crush and you were never really alone. He craved the buzz of people and culture, food and energy, architecture. Say what you want about the modern world and all its evils. But the emptiness of the area was starting to press on him. He couldn’t imagine anything appearing out of this darkness.

But there—just up ahead on the right, a glow, a distant lit sign.

Bailey felt a rush of relief. Everyone had to stop for gas sometime. Gas stations and toll booth security cameras were the best things to ever happen to law enforcement and private detectives. Though it hadn’t helped him with Mia. Once she’d left her apartment, her image wasn’t captured anywhere within a three hundred mile radius—not a toll road, not at a pump, not at a motel. She’d made no charges on her credit card. Her phone was left behind. She’d slipped off that electronic grid that existed now to keep people findable.

Lost stays lost, when it wants to stay lost.

There were still holes. You could still slip through with a little effort.

Not this time. This time Bailey had thought ahead by placing that tracker in Wren’s wheel well.

They closed in on the dot, tires crunching as the road turned gravelly on the shoulder.

“Just up here on the right.”

Cooper slowed the truck and pulled into the gas station. It was closed, the little market shuttered and dark. The lights still shone over the pump island, the metal gleaming.

A single vehicle was parked over by the pay phone, an old Mustang that had seen better days, its paint job just black primer.

“That’s not her car,” said Cooper.

“No,” said Bailey.

Cooper pulled up close and climbed out. Bailey sat, staring at the dot. She was here. She had to be. But where? He scanned the property, the surrounding trees. He climbed out of Cooper’s car and approached the old black Mustang. Cooper had his hand on the hood.

“It’s still warm.”

They peered inside, tried the door, and found it open. It was empty, clean.

“Pop the trunk.”

Bailey walked around and took a breath before pressing the latch and lifting it. Mercifully, it was empty except for a spare tire. His body tingled with relief.

Bailey walked around the perimeter of the gas station, heading for the restroom, looking for the black Range Rover to be parked somewhere they hadn’t seen right away.

Maybe the ghost followed her here in that Mustang—had Bailey seen that vehicle somewhere before? At the motel? On the street in front of Rick Javits’s house? His head was swimming, his shoulder and arm a wildfire of pain. He wasn’t sharp. He wasn’t strong. And he shouldn’t be here. He knew that.

When he rounded the building, he leaned over and threw up again—quietly so that Cooper wouldn’t hear. Never ideal to show weakness in front of a hard-ass like Cooper, and he’d already thrown up once. He rested against the cool concrete of the building for a moment, then kept going, circling the entire property.

Her car. The big, shiny, outrageously expensive Range Rover was not here.

The restroom door was locked. See Attendant for Key, read a faded sign. It was a solid, heavy door. He banged on it pointlessly. Silence echoed back. Frustration was a taste in his mouth.

Where are you?

When he returned to the Mustang, Cooper was inspecting the wheel wells. He came back from the rear right with something in his hand.

“Is this your tracker?”

Bailey took it from the other man and held the small black device in his hand. It was his tracker, obviously taken from Wren’s car and placed on this one. It rested dark against his palm.

“She’s gone,” he said, a rush of anger, pain had the world around him pulsing again.

Jones Cooper looked down the road that seemed to lead to nowhere.

“Goddammit,” he said softly.

“I lost her.”



forty-three


How long have I been driving? The drive has started to feel like a dream. And Robin has abandoned me to this insane errand.

Finally, the long driveway ends at a tall, chain-link fence. A faded sign hangs, tilted, unreadable in the glare of my headlights. But clearly—with its red border and exclamation points—it’s a warning to stay away.

I sit, engine idling, wondering what to do next.

Another good moment to turn around and head back to the world, look for some help, get far away from you. Just as I’ve decided that’s what I’ll do, the gate slides open, rattling and squealing, obviously by remote control.

The night expands. Instead of leaving, I drive through the open gate and it rattles closed behind me.