You Owe Me a Murder(34)

Miriam nodded, her eyes watery with tears. “God, I’ve learned so much.”

I hugged her. We hadn’t been friends before, but now I felt connected to her after all of this. “Me too.” I glanced down at my phone. I knew I should go. I needed to meet up with Alex and the rest of the group. Miriam hugged me again and then practically skipped out of the room. I could see she was already feeling lighter. She’d wanted someone to tell her that she didn’t have to confess to the cops and I had given her that. She was free.

Then the answer of what to do next came to me in a whoosh and I almost fell back into my chair. I’d been so worried about how to find Nicki, but I’d been focusing on the wrong thing. It was like writing software. You can think the problem is one thing and spend hours trying to fix it, before you realize the real problem is several lines of code up. Fix that and everything else falls into place. I didn’t need to find Nicki—?she would find me. And I already had an idea on how to encourage her to do it sooner rather than later.

But I needed to figure out what I would do when she showed up.





Fifteen


August 22


9 Days Remaining


I snapped another shot of Trafalgar Square, trying to get the huge column in the center of the photo, and then glanced around. The place was thick with tourists despite the wind whipping around, swirling up tiny tornadoes of loose trash. I tapped the arm of a Japanese tourist and held my phone up, miming in an exaggerated fashion that I wanted him to take a picture of me.

“Sure—?where do you want to stand?” he asked in perfect English, making me feel instantly embarrassed. I wished I could have taken the picture myself, but I was there alone and needed enough background that you could easily tell where I was. That was my plan: upload the pic to Instagram and hit the location tag. The square was iconic and situated almost in the center of the city.

If Nicki wanted to find me, I couldn’t have made it any easier, short of holding up a giant sign with an arrow pointing directly to me. Especially since I’d taken every privacy setting off all my social media accounts. If my mom found out, she’d have a cow. She saw me as exactly the kind of person who would fall for some Internet catfish and end up in a teen sex slave ring. But it wasn’t some online fake Romeo I was trying to attract. If Nicki was looking for me, she’d have no trouble now.

“Can you get me with that?” I passed the tourist my phone and struck a pose in front of one of the four large metal lion statues that circled Nelson’s Column. I didn’t bother to clamber onto one of their backs the way other people did. This wasn’t about capturing the perfect vacation moment.

Once I had the picture, I posted it, not bothering to doctor it up with filters, and added the caption: loviN quICKIe visit to trafalgar :). Hopefully, the heading would draw Nicki to me. The capital letters spelled out her name, and I was counting on the idea that the smiley face would let her know I didn’t mean her any harm. It struck me that with her love of puzzles, she’d spot the clue right away, but it wouldn’t stand out to anyone else. It’s not as if social media posts are known for great spelling and grammar.

I jammed my hands into my pockets and paced the large square, scanning faces as I went. This had to work. I had no other way to reach her.



* * *





I walked around for more than two hours, checking my phone for the time every few minutes. Nothing. There was no way to know if she’d even seen my post, or been too busy to come, or felt like leaving me to hang a bit longer simply to prove that she was in control. I had to decide how much time I was going to give this plan before I acknowledged it hadn’t worked and I had wasted the whole day. I could tell that people in my Student Scholars group thought it was weird I didn’t want to hang out with them. I couldn’t keep slipping off to do my own thing.

A woman wandered around, offering to read people’s palms. Her teeth were stained—?they looked like antique piano keys—?and her hair hung in greasy strands. I watched her closely. I was pretty sure she was using the excuse of wanting to tell people’s fortunes to get close enough to pick their pockets. I wished she did have psychic abilities. Then I could ask her what to do about Nicki.

Eventually I plopped down onto the cement stairs that led to the National Gallery, sitting alone in the crowd of people who had also stopped to sip a coffee, relax, or wolf down a snack. I scrolled through my phone to look busy. I’d have to try something else. Maybe I’d put up a post about where I planned to visit tomorrow.

A text popped up from Alex: Want to grab some Thai?

I fidgeted. I didn’t know how long this quest to find Nicki would take. Busy now, maybe later?

I hit send and hoped he wouldn’t think I was blowing him off. I could tell he was worried. I’d caught him this morning at breakfast looking at how I’d picked at my fingernails.



Meet you at Thai place at 4. Everything okay?



Just checking some stuff out.



This isn’t about that girl, is it?





I chewed my lip. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t want to lie to him. At least not any more than I already had.

Did she contact you again? Then less than a second later: Kim? Tell me you’re not trying to find some weirdo stranger you met on a plane.