Chapter Six
I thought he’d want me to come by his house again, but he suggested a bar downtown. I was relieved. I didn’t need to be a horror movie fan to know the risks of going to a stranger’s house alone at night.
I stepped out of the motel room, about to knock on the door next to mine when I lapsed in judgment.
Nick had both my number and Mitchell’s but chose to call me.
Perhaps it was something to do with Lucas rather than Amanda.
I trusted Mitchell and June, but I worried that Mitchell’s assertiveness and June’s lack of patience might intimidate the guy, so I decided to talk to him alone to increase my chances of actually finding something out.
And I fully intended to fill them in later, once I knew what Nick had to say.
The bar was mostly empty, with just a few people hunched over drinks at scattered tables.
It smelled just like the bar I worked at—fries and beer.
However, this one seemed a bit more upscale, with candles on each table.
I ordered a hard apple cider and sat down at a table by the window, waiting for Nick.
A couple in the corner interrupted a long kiss and fell into quiet conversation, smiling at each other.
I forced myself to stop picking at my bracelet.
Seated facing the entrance, I watched the door intently and caught sight of Nick’s arrival the moment he strode in, still disheveled and wearing the same checkered shirt.
He looked nothing like Lucas, but their height was nearly the same, around six foot two.
That resemblance alone made me uncomfortable, triggering something visceral, as if my body remembered Lucas before my mind could suppress the thought.
Nick recognized me, too, and headed straight for my table.
"Where are your friends?" he asked, settling into the uncomfortable wooden chair.
"I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see all of us or just me."
I couldn’t tell whether he approved.
"You guys came asking about Mary and caught me off guard. I got lost for a minute. Wasn’t sure what it was about."
"Okay?" I was growing impatient.
"And it wasn’t until you left that I realized I should have told you."
"Told us what?"
He fell silent, collecting his thoughts before responding. Throughout this time, I held my breath.
"May I ask why you thought your relatives had any connection to her beyond her store?"
I let out a small sigh, "It’s all we had."
"So, you have something else now?" he pressed, catching onto the past tense.
He still wasn’t saying why he’d called to meet. I pressed my palms down on the table, weary of the cat-and-mouse game. Maybe I had made a mistake coming here alone and not letting Mitchell handle it.
"We might. Look, can we stop playing this ‘no, you tell me first’ game? Why did you call me here?"
I handed him the crinkled Post-It note with Lucas’s scribbles on it. "That’s all we’ve got. Plus, a photo with a similar symbol on a tree. See, I’ve nothing to hide."
He looked amused by my agitated tone, but his brow furrowed as soon as he saw the note. "Slow down a bit. What is this?"
"I’ve no idea," I replied. "It was in Lucas’s things. And Mitch and June’s sister had a picture on her phone of something similar but carved into a tree. Do you know what it is?"
He slowly shook his head, tracing the lines on the paper. "No. Do you have the photo?"
"Yes. But seriously, your turn."
He paused, then revealed, "Mary Flynn was my mother."
"Oh," I exhaled in surprise. "Why didn’t you… Wait, ‘was’?"
"She passed away. Two years ago"
"Passed away? Not missing?" I clarified, ensuring I gathered as much information as possible from him.
He gave a tight nod and then pointed at my empty glass. "You want another one?"
I thought for a second, then agreed. While Nick ordered, I finally had the chance to take a good look at him.
When we visited his house, I was too nervous and distracted, but now I could see him clearly.
He appeared younger than I had initially thought, likely in his late twenties rather than early thirties.
From behind the blurry glass door, he had looked like Lucas for a second due to his height and similar build.
But that was where the resemblance ended.
Lucas had blond hair and gray eyes. Nick’s hair and eyes were dark brown.
Lucas had no tattoos, while this guy’s right arm was covered in ink, intricate, intertwining patterns that crawled upward and disappeared beneath his rolled-up sleeve.
I forced myself not to stare too long, so I didn’t get a chance to decipher the designs.
He set our drinks down and changed the subject without warning, tipping his chin toward my university hoodie.
"What do you study?"
"Psychology," I said, caught off guard by the sudden shift. "But I dropped out last year."
"How come?" He took a long swig of beer.
It felt like the reason for our meeting was making him nervous, despite his relaxed demeanor. Maybe that was why he kept falling back on small talk instead of getting to the point of why he’d called me. His calm exterior was betrayed only by the subtle tapping of his fingers against the glass.
"The whole boyfriend disappearance thing, mostly," I said, trying to downplay it. "What about you?"
"Biology," he replied, then added for some reason, "I went to school in Oregon. Practically grew up there."
"I thought your mom lived here."
"She did for as long as I can remember. But she sent me to boarding school in Oregon, and I stayed there until a couple of years ago."
"What made you move back home?"
"Different reasons. My mom’s death. And things didn’t work out with my ex, so I thought I needed a change."
"Did it help?"
"Kind of. I didn’t plan on staying here that long, though."
"I’m sorry to ask, but what happened to your mom?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation back on track. After all, that’s why we were here.
"She was hit by a car."
"Here, in Duluth?"
"No." He looked at me a little too closely as if weighing whether he wanted to say more. Then he added, "It happened on some small country road in West Virginia, not far from where she grew up. Black Water, if that means anything to you."
I nearly choked for the second time that day. My brain struggled to process another connection leading us to the same place. It seemed impossible, and yet, it was happening. Nick noticed my widened eyes and raised his eyebrows.
"Lucas was from Black Water, West Virginia," I said.
"Strange coincidence." He shrugged as if he didn’t quite know how to react or perhaps didn’t think it was a fascinating piece of information.
"You’re kidding me, right?"
The more of these overlaps surfaced, the less I believed they were accidental. Amanda knew Mary. Mary might not have known Lucas, but they were from the same place. The connections were still hazy, but they were beginning to take shape.
"So all three—Mary, Amanda, and Lucas—are somehow tied to this town, Black Water, and you’re calling it a coincidence?"
To be fair, Amanda wasn’t definitively tied to Black Water, but it was close enough that I left it out to keep him talking.
His mother, psychic or not, had to be involved in these disappearances.
Or was I swayed by Mitchell and June’s contagious conviction, tumbling into a spiral of cognitive bias, drawing meaning from nothing more than chance?
Nick shrugged again, his evasiveness as apparent as the ink on his skin. God, I wanted to strangle him.
I exhaled, closed my eyes briefly, and then said, "We’re going to Black Water to see if we can find whatever makes people disappear."
"Or kills them," he suggested.
I looked up at him, once again facing the possibility that Lucas might be dead.
Each time the thought made me shudder. I still spoke of him in the present tense, but reluctantly, I nodded and said, "Or kills them.
" Then it hit me. He wasn’t talking about Lucas.
"Wait, killed? I thought you said your mom was hit by a car! "
"She was. Kind of. A car ran her over," he paused. "Three times."
"Holy shit!"
"Yeah," he exhaled, confirming that my reaction was justified.
"Do they know who did it?"
"Nope."
It couldn’t have been an accident. Hit-and-run is one thing, but hitting a person with a car, backing up, and then deciding to take their chances and flee the crime scene, running the victim over yet again, was a horrifyingly conscious choice.
"And you never thought to look into it?"
"Not until you guys showed up," he raised his eyebrows. "Homicide is not that common, statistically speaking. There are always higher chances that you’ll die being hit by a car than be murdered. And that’s what the police report said, too, anyways."
"The police thought it was an accident?"
"Yep."
"So we have two people missing and one dead, all allegedly linked to the same place," I recounted the facts. "Don’t you think that is more than just odd?"
"I think it’s something to take into account."
I looked at him again with a heavy sigh. He was making mental notes, but he was cautious about what he shared.
"We’re leaving in the morning. We’ll go to Black Water and see what’s going on there."
"Are you inviting me to come?"
"I’m just saying that we’re leaving in the morning, so you can take that into account as well."
He looked at me, offered a small, inward smile, and shook his head.
"You could find out what happened to your mom," I baited. We needed him. His mother could be the missing link that would ultimately tie everything together.
"Alright," he agreed too easily. "You friends won’t mind?"
"Why would they?"
"Absolutely not," Mitchell cut me off the next morning when I met them to tell them about my night’s adventures. "And seriously, Foster, what the fuck were you thinking, going to meet with a stranger alone? He could’ve murdered you!"
I gave a noncommittal wave of my hand, imagining he’d freak out if I told him how dating apps work. We all crammed into Mitchell’s hotel room, which was surprisingly tidy. He had even made his own bed while June and I left ours messy, our clothes and toiletries scattered all over.
"And he lied to us," June chimed in, immediately siding with her brother against me.
"He didn’t know who we were! All he knew was that his mom was killed, and then random strangers came knocking on his door.
How would you feel in his shoes?" Frustrated with Mitchell’s sudden reluctance, I resorted to my mother’s guilt-tripping techniques.
"And, by the way, we weren’t exactly forthcoming with him from the start. "
"Wait, did you tell him anything else?"
"Yeah, everything." I flashed my palms up at their dropped jaws. "I know, I know, I will never make it as a spy."
Mitch rolled his eyes. "Good grief, Foster."
"How do we know he didn’t kill his mother himself?" June asked, playing with the trim on her Psycho T-shirt. "What if he’s a serial killer?"
I was running out of arguments, but deep down, I felt that Mitchell was just upset because I hadn’t included him when I went to talk to Nick, and June had simply sided with her brother out of loyalty.
To be fair, I had asked myself all the same questions, but Nick didn’t give off a serial killer vibe. And, for once, I trusted my instincts.
I sighed. "Well, if it helps, there are three of us and one of him. I’m pretty sure we can overpower him if it comes to that." I turned to Mitchell. "And didn’t you say that the more coincidences, the better our chances of solving this?"
June raised an eyebrow, taking on a judicial air. "You did say that."
"Alright," Mitchell reluctantly agreed, "But no more wandering off before checking with the team. This applies to everyone. Got it?"
I gave him a mock salute and sent a text to Nick, letting him know what time we’d pick him up.
June, however, wasn’t done. "But just to be clear, I don’t like him." The look she gave me was all-knowing.
"You don’t like me, either," I blurted, immediately regretting it.
But somehow, she seemed flattered and gave me a smile.
"At least we’ve now established you’re not a serial killer," she said.
"How can you tell?"
She cocked an eyebrow. "Well, for one, serial killers are organized, and you travel with an Ikea bag."