Nice Girls(54)

But Dwayne had very few texts outside of his coworkers. I saw no messages from old football teammates or high school friends or college buddies. He hadn’t texted his parents in two weeks. His phone seemed inactive, like he rarely talked to anyone outside of work. But Dwayne wasn’t someone cut out for loneliness.

I felt dirty, then, thinking about it. I was digging through Dwayne’s personal life, seeing it naked in the open. No one liked to show that they were lonely.

I nearly shut off the phone, but then I stopped. There was a name peeking out at the bottom of the screen.

Olivia.

My stomach lurched.

My thumb grazed the screen.

The text message loaded.

I was looking at Olivia. She was naked and seductively staring into the screen, with only a purple bra on her body. It was the same picture that Dad, me, and everyone else at Littlewood Park Reserve had received.

Beneath it, Dwayne had sent a reply: That’s hot babe . . . you’re making it hard to focus at work right now. You’re gonna get me fired haha

The message was dated October 18. The day Olivia had gone missing.

The phone slipped out of my hands, clattering onto the kitchen floor. I was struggling to breathe, my hands clamping themselves over my mouth. My heart was beating so fast that I could hear the blood pumping in my ears.

“Mary?” There was rustling from the bed.

I squatted down, grabbing the phone. I closed out of his text messages, my fingers slick. They were sweaty when I turned off the power button.

“What are you doing?”

I turned around just as the kitchen lights flickered on.

Dwayne stood a few feet away, shirtless in his boxer briefs. His eyes flickered from me to the jeans on the floor, the cell phone clumsily stowed away somewhere inside.

My heart was in my throat.

“What are you doing?” he asked faintly.

“I—I was looking at the time.”

“On my phone?”

“I don’t know where mine is,” I said truthfully.

“Yours is on the counter,” he said, pointing to my left. My stomach dropped when I saw it lying clearly in the open.

“Thanks,” I stammered. “I—I just needed to peek at the time.”

“Yeah?” Dwayne asked tersely, his gaze looking past me. “You find anything good while you’re at it?”

I swallowed, shook my head no.

The studio suddenly seemed so small. And I realized that Dwayne was tall and large and muscular, taking up most of the space around me.

I was a speck compared to him.

And unlike my time with Kevin in the woods, I didn’t have the safety of other people nearby to watch us. It was just Dwayne and me.

I was trapped.

The air was thin. My body was pulsing with dread, the panic not far away.

But Dwayne didn’t move. He stayed put, staring at me.

“Mary, I think you should leave,” Dwayne said stiffly. His voice was so measured that it put me on edge. “I don’t think I feel comfortable with you here.”

I nodded quickly.

When Dwayne said nothing else, I took my chance. I clawed at my clothes on the floor. In my other arm, I grappled for my phone and my purse. I kept my back to the wall, my eyes focused on Dwayne. I was afraid that he’d suddenly rush forward.

But Dwayne didn’t move. He seemed glued to the floor, watching me carefully, as if he thought I was about to steal something.

I finally opened the front door. I swiveled back, made sure that Dwayne hadn’t moved.

Half-naked, I walked faster down the hallway, my heart pounding in my ears. I turned around, expecting to be grabbed.

But the door to Dwayne’s apartment closed. I heard the loud click of his lock, the rattle of the door handle as he checked it from inside.

I stopped just outside the elevators. I slipped on my pants and my jacket. There was no security guard downstairs. By the time I hurried to the car outside, I was shaking. And it wasn’t from the cold.





26




I got home just after four in the morning. The streets were empty and quiet on the ride back. Most of the city was still asleep. But I heard the blood pumping in my ears.

In the shower, I turned on the water as hot as I could bear it. I let it drench me, a blanket of steam around my throat and my lungs. I was still shivering.

When I closed my eyes, I saw the picture of Olivia. She’d sent it to Dwayne. And she never imagined that it would fall into other hands, into other places. The image of her now burned forever on the Internet. Even when I scrubbed myself raw, I felt grimy, as if whatever malice at Dwayne’s place had soaked itself inside of me.

Dwayne hadn’t been at the Halloween search. He said he’d been with family, but I suspected that was a lie. From the texts, it was clear that even Jayden hadn’t seen his own cousin since the morning at the beach. On Halloween, Dwayne had the perfect opportunity to leak the photo. I didn’t know how he’d planned it nor how he’d gotten the contact information to do it. But he’d had Olivia’s photo before the leak.

Things were sexual between the two of them—they’d still been talking to each other recently. Dwayne could have harbored feelings for her, the high school friend who had become Internet famous. But there was no reason to leak her photo. There was no reason to kill her.