CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Edward
I walked back to Cara’s place enjoying the slight chill to the air.
November in Charleston could be warm during the day, but by nightfall the air held a hint of the coming holidays.
I breathed in deeply. The scents of fall were everywhere.
Hints of wood smoke mixed with the damp, not entirely unpleasant, smell of decaying leaves, and the pumpkin-scented baking of one of Cara’s neighbors trailed from an open window.
I could hear the strains of Lana Del Rey’s “Diet Mountain Dew” coming from the open windows of a car stopped at a nearby stoplight.
It was a perfect night. Cara had believed me about what happened with Sara, and, more importantly, she’d forgiven me for not telling her about it.
That had meant the world to me. It would have been easy given our history for her to just walk away from me.
But she hadn’t, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Of course, part of the reason I was so happy was because I knew I was about to take Cara back to Wixby with me.
She’d be away from the Hart family for good.
She was leaning hard towards purchasing the dance studio from her former teacher and staying in Wixby.
I’d be able to see her all the time. Maybe I could even get her to move in with me pretty soon. Things were looking up for us.
My phone rang, and I moved all my bags to one hand so I could answer. It was Olivia.
“Hey, Livy.”
“Edward?” her tone was frantic. “Are you with Cara?”
Her tone put me on high alert instantly. “What? No, but I’m almost back to her place…”
“Oh my God. You’ve got to hurry. Something’s really wrong.” Her voice was trembling, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was crying.
But Olivia never cried.
“No, it’s all good,” I tried to reassure her. “I just left her, like, fifteen minutes ago, tops, to go down the street and pick some things up. She’s fine…” but my voice trailed off as several things stood out to me at once.
I stopped walking and stared, trying to process what my brain was seeing.
Cara’s door was open, as if she was about to come bounding down the stairs and throw herself in my arms. But she was nowhere to be seen.
I glanced around, confused. Why was her door open?
She never did that, even when she wasn’t trying to avoid a family of stalkers.
“Edward?” I could hear Olivia’s voice as if from a distance, but other things were more pressing.
Like the pool of dark liquid on the concrete in front of the stairs leading to Cara’s townhouse. What was it? Wine? I couldn’t quite make out the color. Was it dark red or black?
I kneeled down and looked at it closer at the same time a stiff breeze blew the unmistakable coppery smell of blood into my nose. I jerked back, shocked. Slowly, ever so slowly, the scene before me started to make a horrible kind of sense.
I don’t remember dropping everything in my hands, but I must’ve. I ran past the pool of blood and up the stairs.
“Cara,” I screamed, bursting through the open door, and hoping beyond hope that she’d come out of her bedroom and laugh at me for overreacting.
But she didn’t.
I ran through every room in the townhouse, yelling her name and pushing open every door, hoping to find any trace of her.
But she was gone.
She was gone.
I hurried back out the door and leaned on the railing, hard. I was gasping for breath. I was starting to panic.
“I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have left her.” The thought was crashing through my mind on a loop.
I didn’t realize I was talking out loud until someone answered.
“Who exactly did you leave?”
I looked up, startled. A middle-aged, paunchy policeman was looking up at me from the pavement in front of the stairs. Blue lights were flashing from a police car at the curb. It must’ve pulled up while I was inside Cara’s house. “My… my girlfriend.”
“Are you Edward Ashton?”
“Yes.” How did he know my name? I stared at the policeman as I walked down the stairs to him. My legs felt shaky.
I must’ve looked as bad as I felt, because he said, “Sit on the curb, sir, and put your head between your legs.”
I did what he said, sucking in air and trying to calm down.
“What happened here?”
The voice penetrated the fog of terror in my mind. The blood. It had to be Cara’s. Why did I leave her?
I turned and stared up at the police officer. “I… I don’t know.”
“Do you know the whereabouts of Sara MacAllister?”
“What?” The question threw me off completely. Why was he asking about Sara?
He cocked his eyebrow at me. “Sir, I’m going to need you to answer the question. Do you know where Sara MacAllister is?”
“Yes.” But did I? “I mean… not exactly, but I know she’s in the city. Unless she left.”
He narrowed his eyes, put his hands in his pockets, and looked around as he chewed gum with vigor.
“Look, you need to find my girlfriend.” I patted my pocket but didn’t see my phone.
“I was on the phone with her sister…” I looked around.
And that’s when I saw the mess on the sidewalk.
My phone, the remnants of the dinner I’d just picked up, snacks, drinks…
all of it lay in a discarded jumble where I’d obviously dropped it.
He ignored me. “When was the last time you saw Ms. MacAllister?”
“Why are you asking me about Sara?” I stood up, coming to my senses. “I’m telling you, my girlfriend was here fifteen minutes ago and now she’s gone. She’s missing,” my voice was getting progressively louder, “and there’s fucking blood on the sidewalk.” I gestured to the pool of dark liquid.
“Calm down,” he said impassively, not even glancing at the blood as another policeman walked over and started taking in the scene.
The other officer looked at the puddle of blood. “Hobbs,” he called, “we got blood over here.”
Hobbs turned sharply, studying what his partner was doing. He turned back to me, looking at me with renewed interest. “What the hell happened here?”
“I was trying to tell you. I don’t know. Cara was here. I went to the store to get some things and when I got back, this is what I found. And now she’s gone.”
“Who is Cara? I told you we’re looking for Sara MacAllister.”
It was the first time I realized their names rhymed. Huh. I wondered why I’d never noticed that before. And why did I care right now? Was I in shock?
“Is that Sara MacAllister’s blood?” Hobbs asked, pointing to the dark liquid on the pavement.
I frowned in confusion. “No. Why would it be? I’m afraid it’s my girlfriend’s blood,” I practically shouted.
Hobbs’ eyebrows raised. “Watch your tone. When’s the last time you saw your girlfriend, Sara MacAllister?”
I was so frustrated, I wanted to pull my hair out. But I was starting to catch on that if I wanted him to listen to me, I had to start from the beginning. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, trying to calm down. “I saw her this morning. But she’s not my girl…”
“Her parents in,” he looked at his notebook, “Wixby, Georgia, reported her missing and said the last person they knew of her being with was you, her boyfriend. We also got an anonymous tip that you were seen threatening a woman who fits Ms. MacAllister’s description earlier this morning.”
“Threatening?” What was he talking about?
“Look, Sara is not my girlfriend. I mean, she was, but that was a long time ago. I brought her here to tell my current girlfriend, Cara Hargrave, that she’d faked some photos to try to get back together with me.
” I said her name slowly in the hopes Hobbs would catch on that a woman who was not Sara MacAllister was missing.
Hobbs narrowed his eyes at me again, then turned to his partner. “Maynard. What you got over there?”
“It’s definitely blood.” He looked up at me, the blue lights flashing over his skin making him look strange, other-worldly. I saw the suspicious look in his eyes and, for the first time, thought I might be in trouble. He turned away as he put a walkie talkie to his mouth. “I need backup.”
He gave them Cara’s address.
“Sit here,” Hobbs pointed to the curb. I watched as he walked over and started looking at the scene with Maynard. The two of them stood talking for a while as they took turns looking over at me as if they were afraid I would run off.
After what seemed like forever, Hobbs came back over. I could hear sirens in the distance and was pleased at the thought they were going to start looking for Cara.
“Tell me what happened this morning,” Hobbs said, flipping to a new page in his notebook.
“I put Sara in an Uber to the Urban Holiday. I gave her money for a couple of nights here and a plane ticket home.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Look, I’m sorry she’s missing, but I swear she was fine the last time I saw her. But can you please listen to me about my girlfriend?”
His attention was pulled away by the arrival of a few more police cars. “Stay here,” he said sternly. He walked over and started giving instructions to the arriving officers.
It took several minutes, minutes that could have been spent looking for Cara, before he came back over to me. “Who did you say lives at this address?”
“Cara Hargrave.”
He turned and nodded to another policeman. “That’s the caller’s sister.”
My hopes were raised. “Sister? Are you talking about Olivia?” I’d love to talk to Livy right now. I needed backup of my own. Desperately.
Hobbs ignored me. “She said she was on the phone with her sister when she screamed and dropped the phone. It looks like we might have two missing women on our hands.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
He cocked his eyebrow at me, displeased. At least he was starting to acknowledge that Cara was in trouble. I vaguely noticed Officer Maynard bagging what looked like Cara’s phone.
“Is that Cara’s phone?”
“Where did you put her, Mr. Ashton?”
“What? Put who?” I tore my eyes away from the plastic bag with Cara’s phone in it and stared at the officer looking at me, his eyes cold.