The Watcher Girl(53)

“My friend who owns this place,” Campbell says between drinks of water. A rivulet drips down her chin, and she swipes it away with the back of her hand. “She and her husband are coming to pick us up sometime tomorrow.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“I’ve spoken to my aunt in Denver,” she says. “We’re going to stay with her for a while. Until we can get on our feet.”

“What about Sutton?” I ask. “What are you going to do when he finds you?”

She steps toward the window, peeking out from behind a gingham curtain. “If—and when—he finds me, I’m hopeful he’ll be in a reasonable place so we can have a discussion on where to go from here.”

“So you’re not leaving him?” I ask. “What, did he threaten you? Did he say he’d take Gigi? Help me understand . . .”

Campbell lifts a shoulder, gaze pointed at the linoleum floor. “I’m doing what I have to do. There are things in our marriage that aren’t working for me. This is the only way I can get his attention.”

I squint. “You don’t think all of this will make him worse?”

I can’t imagine a scenario where a woman kidnapping a man’s child would help him “cool off.”

“He’ll be livid when he wakes up and realizes what I’ve done. No question.” Her voice is an uncertain whisper, almost as if she’s speaking to no one but herself. “But once he calms down, we can talk. This is for the best. For him. For me. For our daughter. When it’s all over, he’ll realize that.”

Yawning, I peek at the time again, only to be met with a black-and-white message across my screen: LIMITED CELL SERVICE.

“If you’re all settled, I should probably take off,” I say. “I’ve got a flight tomorrow . . .”

Campbell paces toward me, placing her hand on my arm. “It’s so late. You sure you want to head back now? There’s a spare bedroom you can have if you’d rather drive home in the morning?”

With no cell service and no GPS in the rental, I wouldn’t begin to know how to get to Monarch Falls from here. It’d be easier to leave in the morning. I’d be more awake, too. Less likely to fall asleep behind the wheel and make all of this ten times worse.

“Here.” She takes my hand and leads me down a short hall until we end up in a bedroom the size of a large closet. A double bed with a sunken middle and a vintage quilt anchors the space, accessorized with a blue painted nightstand with a frilly white lamp, the kinds of things you’d find at a secondhand store or in a grandmother’s attic.

Releasing my hand, she heads for the window, propping it open to let the tepid summer breeze mix with the stuffy, humid air to make the room breathable.

Nothing about the bed screams comfort, but the alternative is an eighty-mile drive with blaring music and rolled-down windows and gas station coffee—and that’s if I can find my way out of here in the dark.

Campbell moves for the bedside lamp. One soft click later, an inviting glow floods the space like a visual lullaby, beckoning me to settle in for the night.

“I’d feel so much better about all of this if you stayed.” Campbell pleads with her eyes. “For your safety.” She steps closer. “Please, Grace. Stay.”

The weight of the day blankets me in exhaustion. She’s right—it’s safest to stay here tonight and leave in the morning.

“All right,” I say, already imagining peeling out of my jeans and climbing beneath the covers.

“Sorry for falling asleep earlier, by the way.” She winces. “That cappuccino was . . . questionable . . . and I was worried it would upset my stomach even more than it already was.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s crazy . . . I was so tired earlier, but now I’m wide awake.” Campbell examines me. “You up for talking? Just a little bit? Before you nod off?”

“Oh . . .” I don’t want to talk. I want to sleep. I need to sleep.

But I also have more questions.

“I saw a bottle of sauv blanc in the fridge,” she says. “I doubt they’d care if we tapped into it. And I wouldn’t mind a little toast to this new chapter . . .”

Can she call it a chapter when it’s nothing more than coercing her husband into being a better man?

The light in her eyes is infectious, and her smile stretches wide. She’s unbraced for disappointment or rejection.

“One drink,” I say. I could use a nightcap to give me that final shove into a hard sleep.

I ask her to point me to the bathroom to get washed up. When I come out, she’s perched on the side of the guest bed, a glass of white wine in her hand.

“Yours is on the nightstand.” She points, gathering her legs onto the bed and settling in. “It’s delicious, by the way. Don’t judge, but I’m already on my second glass.”

I didn’t think I was in the bathroom that long. She had to have chugged it.

Anxiety hits us all differently.

I take a sip, letting the sweet notes linger on my tongue before swallowing, and then I slide in beside her. Outside the window, crickets chirp and the moon peers in.

“You know, I’ve thought about you every single day for years,” she confesses, a slow, sheepish smile drawing across her mouth. Whatever her father told her, she believes him with all her heart. It’s painted sweetly in her eyes when she looks at me. “Probably to the point of being obsessed.” She laughs under her breath. “So when you showed up in my neighborhood . . . I thought I was dreaming. You’d become such a fictional character in my head, and then you were there. In the flesh.”