Lock Every Door(34)

Greta lifts her hand, places her palm to her cheek, and spends a good ten seconds sizing me up. Caught in her stare, I freeze, embarrassed that I’ve said too much.

“You strike me as a gentle soul,” she says.

I’ve never thought of myself as gentle. Fragile is more like it. Prone to bruising.

“I don’t know. I guess I am.”

“Then you need to be careful,” she says. “This place isn’t kind to gentle souls. It chews them up and spits them out.”

“Do you mean New York or the Bartholomew?”

Greta keeps staring. “Both,” she says.





15


Greta’s words stay with me as I climb the stairs from the tenth floor to the twelfth. Not just the part about being chewed up and spit out but the reason Ingrid came to see her. Why would Ingrid be asking about the Bartholomew and its past? Or allegedly sordid past, as Greta had deemed it.

It . . . it scares me.

That’s what Ingrid had said about the Bartholomew. And I believed her. That little stutter seemed to me like a confession on the verge of being released. As if Ingrid was trying to tell me something she wasn’t sure could be said out loud. I dismissed it only because she did, chalking it up to loneliness and her free spirit chafing against the Bartholomew’s many rules.

Now I suspect she was more frightened than she let on.

Because departing without warning in the middle of the night isn’t how people leave a place when they don’t think they’re in danger.

It’s how they leave when they’re terrified.

Stop.

Think.

Assess the situation.

Which is that it doesn’t really matter why Ingrid left the Bartholomew. Right now, my concern is finding out where she is and knowing that she’s safe. Because I have a worrisome feeling she’s not. Call it a post-Jane hunch.

I pause on the eleventh-floor landing to check my phone. Ingrid still hasn’t read my texts. Which means she also likely hasn’t listened to the voicemail I left. I was hoping she would have responded by now, even if it was just to tell me to stop bothering her. That would be better than nothing.

I shove the phone back into my pocket and am about to continue up the steps when Dylan, the Bartholomew’s other apartment sitter, leaves 11B. He’s dressed similarly to yesterday. Same baggy jeans. Same black discs in his ears. The only thing that’s changed is his T-shirt. Today it’s Nirvana.

My presence on his floor clearly surprises him. His eyes widen behind a veil of floppy black hair.

“Hey,” he says. “You lost?”

“Trying to find someone, actually,” I say. “Did you know Ingrid at all?”

“Not really.”

I find that surprising, considering how outgoing Ingrid seems to be. The likely scenario is that Ingrid didn’t think Dylan was worth the effort. He’s clearly not a fan of small talk. Waiting for the elevator, he stands with his right leg bent at the knee, flexing slightly, like a runner preparing to sprint.

“Not at all? You were neighbors. You never hung out?”

“If saying hi to each other in the elevator means hanging out, then, sure, we hung out. Otherwise, no. Why do you want to know?”

“Because she moved out and I’m trying to reach her.”

Dylan’s eyes go even wider.

“Ingrid’s gone? Since when?”

“Sometime last night,” I say. “I was hoping she might have told you she was planning to leave.”

“Like I said, we didn’t talk that much. She was basically a stranger.”

“Then why do you seem so surprised?”

“Because she just got here. I thought she’d have stayed longer.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Two months,” Dylan says. “Are we about done with the questions? There’s somewhere I need to be.”

Rather than wait for the elevator, which is in use several floors below, Dylan opts for the stairs. He’s either very late for something or extremely eager to be rid of me.

I call after him. “Just one more thing.”

Dylan pauses on the landing between the tenth and eleventh floors, looking up at me with his head askance.

“Did you hear any strange noises last night?” I say. “From Ingrid’s apartment?”

“Last night?” he says. “No, sorry. Can’t help you there.”

Then he’s off again, speeding around the landing and down more steps before I can ask him another question. I use the stairs as well, slower than Dylan, going up instead of down.

A few floors below me, the elevator grate slides shut with a clang. The sound rockets up the stairwell, startling me. To my right, the cables in the center of the stairwell tighten and the elevator begins to rise. When it comes into view, I see Nick inside, a stethoscope draped around his neck. Seeing me through the elevator window, he gives a friendly wave. I wave back and hurry up the remaining steps to the twelfth floor, which we reach in unison.

“Hey there, neighbor,” Nick says as he leaves the elevator. “How’s the arm?”

“It’s great. Thanks for, you know, fixing it.”

I cringe at my tone. Could I be any more awkward? I blame Nick’s whole handsome-doctor vibe, which is intimidating. I suspect the wine I had at Greta’s is also at fault. It’s caught up to me now, making me a little dizzy.