And Now She's Gone(14)
Another text, from an unknown number.
Gray read words—distinct elements as concrete as air—that stole breath from her chest. Words that screamed at her from the seven-inch screen.
PLEASE LET ME BE MISSING!
9
Please let me be missing!
Not typical for a missing woman to respond with text messages. One didn’t need to be a cop to know that missing women usually communicated via left-behind femurs or ragged fingernails crammed with the scraped skin of their murderers. Not Isabel Lincoln. She was one of a kind.
And now Gray had proof in her hands.
Isabel Lincoln was alive!
Excitement bounced around her chest—she was talking with her target! And doing it on the first day of the investigation!
The text message had been sent from a phone with a 702 area code. Las Vegas.
I promise I will let you stay missing but you have to help me first.
Day was dying in the west, and the dying sun had tinted the sky carnival pink. It was hot in the Camry, and it smelled of yesterday’s In-N-Out burger and cold French fries.
Gray saved the 702 number in the “Lincoln case” contacts list, then sent a message to Clarissa, her coworker at Rader Consulting: Please find out more re: this number ASAP origin, IP, whatever, thanks!
And how would Isabel Lincoln respond? The missing woman wasn’t Gray’s client—Isabel’s jerky boyfriend was. Also? How had Isabel found Gray’s unlisted number, created just hours ago on a Burner account? Had Tea given it to Isabel?
Kevin Tompkins had finished arranging the trash and recycle bins at the curb and was now picking up litter from the sidewalk. Was he currently on leave? Was he as interested in dating Isabel as his mother was interested in him dating Isabel?
Gray’s phone vibrated.
How will u help?
Isabel!
Easier to explain if I call you.
Gray would ask the three questions.
Isabel would answer them.
Her phone buzzed again.
It was a text and selfie from Hank Wexler, the hot bartender at Sam Jose’s. He was holding a strawberry margarita.
Your name is on this & something else.
His dazzling blue eyes looked silver, Nosferatic.
Gray’s stomach flip-flopped, and the Camry’s temperature rose to Jupiter levels.
Then Isabel texted:
Don’t want to call. Can be traced. U don’t understand!!! He will kill me if I come back. Please drop this!
“I do understand.” Gray could give TED Talks on “Ways That Life Sucks.”
She tapped the phone icon next to Isabel’s name. The line rang and rang. Don’t go. Please don’t go. And she’d barely caught her breath before the phone pulsed against her ear.
I’m not going to talk to u
OK, Gray texted, have Tea talk to me face to face.
No response.
Isabel Lincoln had ducked back into her bunker.
EIGHT YEARS AGO
THE FIRST
Mrs. Dixon had always been tiny. Malnourished as a baby, she always looked hungry, like food only passed her lips on bank holidays. Standing next to Sean—six three, two hundred ten pounds of college-ball muscle—she was the butterfly to his vulture.
She loved his hands. Loved those beautiful, long brown fingers, crooked from old breaks caused by catching flying pigs. Strong hands.
After checking into their Jacuzzi suite on the twelfth floor of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, after watching the famous water show from their living room window, Mr. and Mrs. Dixon shopped at Armani, Chanel, and Gucci down on Via Bellagio. At Cartier, he bought her a diamond for her nose.
“Damn.” Sean gazed at the stone he’d bought her. “You are fuckin’ fly, baby.”
A perfect first-year anniversary weekend already, a staycation that would’ve been the envy of her friends … had they known.
As the sun set over Sin City and they ate dinner at Le Cirque, he toasted her. He told her, “You are my life,” as the sky turned pink, red, and desert blue. His love was astonishing. White hot. Phosphorescent. His love made Mrs. Dixon close her eyes and look away.
You deserve this. After everything … You deserve this. This man. This joy. This two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine. This lobster risotto. Lift up your head. You deserve this.
Her happiness made her dizzy, Disneyland teacups dizzy—she now knew this feeling, since Sean had taken her to the Magic Kingdom for her very first time. She liked that feeling then—Disneyland would never make her sick sick; they loved her—and she liked that feeling now. In the last year, Sean’s love had exploded all around her. Like mink-lined shrapnel, his love had struck her in unexpected ways. But she didn’t fear it.
She had thought her diamond engagement ring—three carats, princess cut, smaller baguettes on each side, worth two paychecks, she’d been told—made sparks fly out of other girls’ eyes. But it had been her simple, sleek platinum band that had sent those bipedal, stiletto-wearing hyenas stampeding and frothing at the mouth. She’d caught the gold ring (well, platinum) and she’d sure as hell celebrate.
And celebrating—that was their (well, Sean’s) business. And he’d gone all out for her on their special weekend, even though living in Las Vegas had lost its glow. Too loud, this city. The world’s toilet, this city, where everybody came to take a dump and live their worst lives.