Chapter 1
Nancy Kane stared up at the apartment building, her phone pressed to her ear. “I don’t know if you’re getting any of my messages or if I’m just talking to the void here, but I’m outside the place and… Look, just call me back, okay?”
She grimaced, feeling like an ass, and kind of wishing she had more than one friend to call up when she was about to do something potentially stupid.
“I know I’m not supposed to be calling,” she continued, repentant.
“I’m all for the peace and quiet and the digital detoxing or whatever, but I’m dying here.
Not literally. Don’t go calling EMS or anything.
I just mean, I’m… well, I’m about to break into her apartment, and I could really use my best friend in my ear while I do it.
Where are you that doesn’t have a teeny tiny smidgen of signal, huh?
Enough to answer a call from your best pal. ”
She paused again, huffing out a breath that briefly fogged her glasses. “Well, I just thought you should know that I’m going in, and you’d better answer if I need to be bailed out of jail for breaking and entering.”
She shuddered; it wouldn’t have been her first time spending a night or two behind bars.
“I’m about to find a proper lead. I can feel it in my bones. So, you know, just hurry up with the solo writing retreat and come back to me! Call me, at least. I miss you.”
It had been two weeks since her best friend and foster sister, Emily, had called from the airport to say she was off on a month-long research trip for her latest book.
Emily had warned her that she might not be reachable, but Nancy had taken that with a grain of salt.
In this day and age, everywhere has Wi-Fi.
Yet, Nancy’s messages and voicemails continued to go unanswered, and Emily’s dedication to her writing was beginning to grate on Nancy’s anxieties. Selfishly, perhaps, Nancy just wanted to hear from her best—and only—friend, to update her on her own project.
“I’ll call again,” she said, “either with good news or from jail. Love you. Bye… bye, bye… bye.”
She hung up and slid the phone into her pocket, steeling her nerves for what was to come.
It’s not like I didn’t ask for a guided tour first. What else can I do?
She had tried to get in touch with the building supervisor, the neighbors, the shady investment company that owned the apartment, and even a friend of the missing woman. All had either ignored her calls or outright rejected her request to see inside Adeline Clark’s apartment.
So, when all of the legal avenues were closed to her, she didn’t have much choice but to get a little legally gray. If it solved the mystery, if it brought some justice to the missing woman, then she’d just ask forgiveness later.
With her hands pushed deep into her jacket pockets to fend off the damp chill of the unseasonably cold Spring day, Nancy waited on the sidewalk for someone to open the main door of the apartment building.
Step one.
She didn’t have to wait long, as a food delivery guy on a moped drove right up onto the sidewalk, hopped off, and went to press the buzzer for whoever was about to get Thai food for lunch.
Nancy’s mouth watered at the thought, her stomach growling so loudly she worried it might alert the guy to her presence.
But with his motorcycle helmet on, it was clear he hadn’t heard a thing as the door buzzed and in he went, fragrant bag of goodies in hand. Nancy walked quickly to catch the door before it closed again, and made her way up the stairs to the apartment where she wasn’t exactly invited to nose around.
Tapping into old skills that used to get her into abandoned warehouses and condemned houses and high school after dark, she discreetly picked the lock with a kit she’d bought off the internet.
Her old kit had been confiscated eleven years ago, the very last time she was hauled into a police station, and her poor social worker had to be dragged in to explain that she was a “good kid, really,” even though the line was way past believable with every addition to her rap sheet. The kit had never been returned.
A flutter of excitement churned like indigestion in her stomach as the door clicked. After a year of hitting dead ends, she felt like she’d finally found a hidden trapdoor.
“Now then, what secrets are we hiding?” she whispered as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind her.
The apartment was surprisingly… normal: a short hallway led to a kitchen-slash-living room, and then, two doors further on, a bedroom and a bathroom, most probably. It was what an estate agent would have called compact or cozy, but the layout wasn’t what Nancy had come here for.
With a frown, she sniffed. A faint citrus scent tickled her nostrils.
Lysol?
According to her investigation and the timeline of Adeline Clark’s last known whereabouts, the apartment hadn’t been lived in for pretty much three years.
So, why on earth did it smell like it had been recently cleaned?
Sure, Lysol was fairly heavy on the perfume, but not enough to last three years.
She crouched down and swept her finger across the floor. No dust, either.
Puzzled, she peeked into the kitchen and living room. Everything was in its place, not even a stray drip from a faucet, as if it had been staged for viewings.
But, of course, Nancy knew that wasn’t the case. It hadn’t been rented out to anyone. In fact, the ownership was kind of murky; it belonged to this weird investment company, but Adeline’s name was on the deed.
Moving down the hallway, she eased open the first door she came to. The bedroom was pristine, with the faint aroma of Lysol lingering here as well.
“Good taste,” Nancy murmured, noting the novels on the bedside table.
Two small bookcases stood in the corner of the room, so crammed with books that the shelves had begun to bow. All except three books on the top of the bookcase, which stood alone: beautiful and leatherbound, clearly prized by the woman who hadn’t been seen for three years.
Nancy rose slightly on tiptoe to reach them and imagined Adeline doing the same thing, though Adeline was a couple of inches shorter.
One book was on its side, a weighty copy of Gray’s Anatomy.
Fitting for a doctor. The other two were less predictable: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte.
As she carefully plucked them off the bookcase, something fell out of Gray’s Anatomy. Two slips of paper, one so yellowed and old that Nancy flinched, fearing it might crumble as soon as it hit the floor, the other fairly new.
Setting the books on the little reading chair nearby, she crouched to pick up the slips of paper… and furrowed her brow.
The time-stamped note said: “Tell Emma that Charlotte loved the drawing.”
But the writing didn’t look ancient at all, with the fat letters and loops of a more modern cursive.
The newer note, however, was the one that rocked her.
Look for the Hawk. Might help with the book.
“What the hell?” she whispered as she whipped her phone out of her pocket and opened her messages to the last one Emily had sent before radio silence.
I won’t be gone long. You can survive a month without me. I’m just so stuck with this book, and my agent and the publisher are going to have my ass if I don’t deliver soon. This Hawk Laird was a bad inspiration choice. Should’ve just made someone up.
Nancy’s eyes flitted between her phone and the note. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
But then, if it wasn’t a coincidence, why was there a note here that looked as if it had been written specifically for Emily? How many people could possibly be writing a book about a laird in medieval Scotland called ‘the Hawk’ at the same time?
“What is going on, Em?” she muttered. “Do you know the Clark sisters? Did Adeline leave this note for you?”
Surely not. Nancy had been on a mission to find the missing Clark sisters for a whole year, regaling Emily with every clue, every conundrum, every dead-end, every frustration, every glimmer of hope, every weird twist in the tale.
There was no way that her best friend in the entire world, someone she thought of as a sister, knew the missing women and just… did not say anything.
Clearly, someone is screwing with me.
It was a lightbulb flashing in the dark confusion.
But it wasn’t much comfort, her heart suddenly beating faster as she understood the gravity of what that might mean. If someone had put that note there, then they knew she’d planned to come and inspect the apartment, and that meant they might know she was there at that exact moment. Watching her.
She’d made no secret of what she was investigating. She’d already written three articles that mentioned the Clark sisters, and the fact that no one seemed to notice or care that women all over the country were going missing, and no one was reporting it. A pandemic of vanishing people.
Maybe the wrong people had noticed her articles, despite her editor telling her that folks were getting a little bored with the same old stories. It wouldn’t be the first time a reporter had gotten a target on their back.
She stuffed the notes into her pocket and put the books back on the top of the bookcase.
So that whoever left it knows I’m onto them, when they find them missing, she told herself as she turned and scanned the room, anxious that someone might leap out at her.
Mumbling a sharp curse under her breath, she hurried out of the room, down the hall, and out of the apartment.
As much as she wanted to turn the place upside down for more clues, she didn’t want to wind up being a third missing person in this investigation. At twenty-seven with a rough start in life, she’d already avoided being a statistic in a lot of ways, and she didn’t feel like changing that today.