Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(52)

“She made sangria for the party,” I said. “But I don’t know.”

Agent Locke let the silence stretch between us until the discomfort became something physical, like the tension between me and Ruby in this house, growing until one of us had to break it.

“There was a lot of press around her release,” he said. “We’re trying to trace Ruby’s path since she’d been out, and since she’d been staying with you, we thought you might be able to help.”

But it was clear now how little Ruby had confided in me. “Ask her lawyer,” I said. “I think they’ve been in contact.”

“Blair Bowman, right. Thing is, she’s had a hard time keeping track of her. Said Ruby hadn’t been returning her calls. The last time they spoke was after some news program that she’d been on.”

I ran my hand across my neck, felt a wave of heat flush through me. Ruby had lied about needing my car to meet her. Of course she’d lied. Preston had seen my car on campus. And Chase believed she’d been here—that she’d tried to get into his house. What the hell had she been up to?

“Her lawyer didn’t even know where she was staying.” He stepped farther into the house. “Can I take a look at her things?”

“You can have them,” I said. They were already in a suitcase. I’d searched the room myself—there was nothing there.

Agent Locke followed me up the steps, through the loft, to Ruby’s room. I gestured to her suitcase on the other side of the room, but I remained at the entrance. The agent went in alone, moving slowly through the room, leaving large shoe prints in the carpet.

Koda leaped from the foot of the bed as the agent bent to look through the luggage. Agent Locke jolted as the cat darted from the room, giving me a wide berth as well.

“Jesus,” he said, hand to heart. Then, peering closer, “Is all of this new?”

“Yes,” I said. “She showed up without anything.”

He sighed, hands on his knees, pushing himself back to standing. He took one last glance around the room. “Looks like she wasn’t planning to stay long.”

I watched as he stepped to the side, peering into the bathroom. And I held my breath, willing him not to look up. The money, tucked out of sight.

“She didn’t tell me what she was planning,” I said as he exited her room. And that, at least, was the truth.

Back downstairs, he handed me his card before leaving, in case I thought of anything else. I closed the door behind him and retreated from the window just as he turned around to look back. I watched him from the laptop on my couch as he opened his car door with one long glance in each direction, up and down the street. As if calculating something. And then I watched him sit in his car, unmoving, for five minutes. Then ten. Until I thought my video feed had frozen. I was on my way back to the front window to check when I finally heard the sound of the engine pulling away.

And then I grabbed my keys, locking up behind me. I knew what they were doing from the last time. They were making a time line. Sliding us all into place. They wanted to know what Ruby had been up to since her release, wanted to piece together her movements—and so did I. They must’ve been wondering—like all of us in the neighborhood of Hollow’s Edge—why she’d come here at all. Why she’d come to me.

I knew why no one was going to say anything about the fight, and it wasn’t just because they were protecting me. It was because of what Ruby had implied with her thinly veiled accusations. A crime I didn’t commit, she’d said.

It had sounded like a defense at first, like she’d said to the police when they’d come to my door: Tell them, Harper, tell them I didn’t do it—

I’d thought she had come here for revenge, and maybe that was true. But twisted inside that motive was something else at the heart, fueling it.

She’d come here to prove her innocence.

That’s what she was implying as her eyes skated over all of us last night.

She’d come back to prove that someone else was guilty.





CHAPTER 17


RUBY HAD BEEN ON campus. With my car. With my keys.

Chase thought she’d been trying to get inside his house, too, in the days when we thought she’d been gone.

Which meant she was looking for something. And there was one place I could go to start tracing her path.

Campus remained eerily empty, the July Fourth holiday bleeding into the long weekend. At the staff entrance, I passed the security center building, the electric vehicles all lined up in a row, unused. Every lot I passed was empty, the wind whipping up the brittle leaves, scattered across the narrow road.

When I pulled into the lot behind my building, I half expected to see the white car again under the oak tree, but mine was the only car here. Maybe even on the entire campus, judging from the drive in.

Before entering the building, I peered through the glass panel beside the back door, but the motion lights remained off. I paused at the entrance when I stepped inside, taking it all in—trying to see things as Ruby might. This place where she once gave student tours, and joined me for lunch, and asked for advice, and smiled when Aidan stopped by to say hi.

Everything about her, a deception.

The lights flicked on one by one as I moved deeper inside. I moved fast, using my key for my office, imagining Ruby doing the same days earlier. How compliant I must’ve seemed to her. How easily manipulated. Ruby in my house; Ruby in my car; Ruby in my place of work—