9. Knox #2
Pulling Carl’s Red Sox cap low over my eyes, I exit the vehicle and make my way over to the entrance.
Keeping my head down, I pause when I get close to him and pretend to fumble around my pockets as if searching for my wallet, and though I can’t hear who’s on the other side of his phone call, what comes from Holt’s end is worth a whole field of red flags.
“I’m telling you, this girl has some dirt.
I’ve just gotta dig deep enough. You don’t just upend your entire life, change your name, and move somewhere you have no connections to.
” He pauses. “I doubt it. She made plenty of connections through the Chadwicks. Any one of them could have helped with an infraction like that. She probably wouldn’t have even needed to transfer schools, let alone drop out. ”
If he wasn’t being weird enough, Holt begins circling the outside of the building, and I have no choice but to head inside.
Anna should be easy to spot among the other customers, but I don’t see her anywhere.
Holt comes through the entrance and pushes through the crowd, moving directly behind me. “I just need a little more time—”
“ And I need this squashed before it can become anything. Don ’ t give her that chance.”
Even now, the sound of Lillian’s voice is still enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
It seems I’m not the only one with a target on my back. The thundercunt herself is also going after Blondie, and she’s not in the mood to play softball. I know what measures she’s willing to take to remove a thorn from her side, and if she finds Anna’s weakness, she’ll bury her.
Thankfully, Holt is too busy loitering in front of the bathrooms to even notice me standing in line, and by the looks of it, he thinks Anna is hiding out in the restroom.
Perhaps she ’ s the real Houdini here, because how the hell did she get to her car?
As soon as Holt disappears down the hallway, I hear tires squealing outside and catch a glimpse of the Sunfire speeding off with a head of bright blonde hair behind the wheel.
By the time I get my order, the GPS tracker shows Anna heading back to her apartment.
Good.
When I eventually get there, I pull into the same dog park across the street and utilize the information Holt provided as I polish off my meal.
It takes a little bit of investigating, but I’m pretty sure the “Chadwicks” dear old Benny Boy was referring to is an apparent dynasty family that made their fortune generations ago.
Between blood relatives and those who marry into the name, you’ll find every degree of celebrity under their umbrella.
Actors, actresses, athletes, musicians, senators, assemblymen, CEOs, and the like.
The family is worth billions, and Anna is somehow linked to them…
But how?
Plenty of the middle-aged and senior heirs have taken on much younger mistresses, girlfriends, and wives, so it’s not out of the question that Anna’s been with one of them, but I go the safer route and start in our age bracket.
There are six potential suitors, and lucky number two has me landing on twenty-five-year-old Sebastian Chadwick.
Immediately, I want to punch his face. Porcelain teeth that are a little too white and skin a little too perfect, all framed by a haircut that probably cost more than everything I own.
This isn’t a man. It’s a kid. A bratty one who’s never had to suffer the kind of pain that leaves scars or calluses.
He has access to every personal trainer and activity on the planet.
He could rock climb or base jump or mountain board, but that would require skill and a set of balls, neither of which he has.
The only physical activity he appears to participate in is running, which checks out.
Because he’s the asshole in a crisis who would be the one running away .
A friend tagged him in a video showing a group of people near the waterfront when fireworks abruptly go off.
Everybody’s initially startled by the sound, and while the other guys instinctively shield their girlfriends, Sebastian crouches under the table, leaving his date high and dry.
Sure, everyone laughs it off when they realize what it is, but the brunette next to him looks more than a little annoyed.
He’s a pretty boy who never had to grow up, who’s never been told no. He takes vacations every other fucking week and buys new cars and Rolexes almost as quickly.
This can’t be the guy. The women he’s been photographed with over the past nine months all look like runway models who barely survive off of side salads and water.
He clearly has a type, and Anna certainly isn’t it.
Hell, I doubt Sebastian would know what to do with a woman like her even if he was given a map and directions—
But then I see it.
Fourteen months, two weeks, and three days ago, a non-blonde Anna stands next to him in a black and white dress at some upper-crust event. His arm is wrapped around her waist, and in one of the shots, he kisses her cheek. But she isn’t smiling.
I keep scrolling to see more and more pictures and videos of the two of them together, and it’s like watching the breakup in rewind.
The further I go back in the timeline, the more and more she smiles, and the wider it grows.
The fucker actually developed a personality, or at least he gave off the impression of having one, because he’s seen doing shit other than spending Daddy’s money.
The two are shown hiking and playing mini golf and attending a World’s Fair.
They hang out in sports bars instead of exclusive restaurants.
They attend football games instead of three-thousand-dollar-a-plate galas.
She looks like she’s having fun. He looks like a cat who ate a whole pet shop’s worth of canaries. Because he got the girl.
And there’s no doubt in my mind who dumped who.
He may have the kind of money that could buy a small European country, but she’s the real prize.
As that proverb goes, “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.” The proof is in the pudding.
Anna took care of him when he got the stomach bug, cooked him Thanksgiving dinner from scratch when his parents couldn’t make it for the holidays, and helped him study for law school.
She didn’t need to be lavished with expensive gifts to enjoy his company.
Any wealthy man can land a beauty, but finding someone who cares more about him than his bank account? That’s the real keeper.
So, what went wrong? What made her smile collapse more and more the longer she stayed with him?
Sebastian doesn’t leave any hints in the countless posts, but he does provide me with something else.
He’s tagged her in all his posts, but since she’s clearly deleted her account, there’s no clickable link. That, however, still doesn’t hide her name.
Annaleigh Carson.
Despite all of her social media accounts being removed, it’s easy to find the posts her friends tagged her in, and a quick web search also informs me that Miss Annaleigh here earned herself a full ride to college. If my math serves me correctly, she should be in her final year…
But clearly isn’t.
Holt hinted at something happening there, but if anyone knows, they aren’t talking about it online.
I’ve also noticed something else peculiar.
The camera I have in Anna’s living room switches to night vision to show her coming out of the back hallway with a pair of binoculars. The angle doesn’t allow me to see where exactly she’s looking, but it doesn’t take a genius to assume it’s the window.
Fuck.
She can’t see me out here, can she?
The way the nearest streetlight hits the car, only the hood is probably visible, but I turn down the brightness on my phone just in case my face is illuminated.
I keep myself below the steering wheel and wait for movement, for sound, for anything, and when it finally comes, my heart threatens to skip a beat, or five.
Because she’s visibly shaking as she begins researching how to recover memories.
And there’s only one we both know she’s interested in.
What the fuck happened at the restaurant? What has her so spooked? Why is she so desperate for answers all of the sudden that she spends what’s left of the night in the living room trying every technique she can find?
Even more concerning is that she’s scribbling stuff down on a legal pad that I can’t read from this distance or angle.
Fuck me!
Anna turns off the lights and heads down the hall about a half hour before her roommate comes home, and once the brunette turns in for the night as well, I’m out of the car.
Taking the most roundabout way possible, I do everything to avoid appearing on any street or security cameras. The balcony door may be locked this time, but the molding I took provided me with a functioning key, because I’m also able to enter the apartment as soon as I climb up to the third floor.
I need to know what’s on that legal pad.
Unfortunately, Anna took it to her room, and it’s impossible to know whether she’s asleep or not. I have my ear up against her door, hearing soft voices, but there’s no way of knowing whether she’s still watching those videos or if she simply fell asleep with the TV on.
I don’t hear any footsteps or floorboards creaking. All I hear is the door down the hallway suddenly opening.
Shit!
The only places I can duck into before I’m spotted are either through Anna’s door (which obviously isn’t an option) or in the bathroom, so I opt for the latter.
The shower door has that frosted glass look, the towel cabinet isn’t big enough to fit even half of my body, and the floor plan has everything out in the open, leaving me nowhere to hide.
Doing the only thing I can, I shut the door behind me, turn on the light, and pray that the roommate is just grabbing a late-night snack and assumes it’s Anna in here.
Yeah, I’m not that lucky.
The floorboards creek right outside the bathroom door, and they’re not going anywhere. For the next five minutes, it sounds like she’s half pacing, half jumping around.
Finally, I hear, “Dude, I downed a mega gulp at the theater. My bladder is about to explode!”
Even though she says it in a whisper-yell, I want to tell her to shut the fuck up, because the last thing I need is for Anna to come out of her room.
There isn’t a night light this deep down in the hallway, and the one installed in the bathroom will be at my back, so I go for a Hail Mary.
What other choice do I have? My time frame has been accelerated— infinitely —and all I can do now is work with what I have.
I flush the toilet and run the water at the sink, using the noise to conceal my movements as I tear off my mask, jacket, and shirt before shoving them in the towel cabinet.
I also brush as much of my hair over my forehead as I can to obscure my eyes.
It’s about the shittiest disguise I’ve ever seen, but when life doesn’t hand you lemons, you work with what you have.
Hitting the lights switch, I angle my head away from the night light but still make sure it hits the contours of my body to show the roommate that I’m shirtless, not to mention not Anna.
As expected, she’s more than a little taken aback, recoiling as one should at the side of the strange man in her apartment.
But before she can say anything, I apologize as quietly as I can, claiming I forgot that Anna mentioned she had a roommate. Between my sheepish delivery and current state of half-undress, she’s reassured as she comes to the obvious conclusion. And hearing Anna’s name certainly helps.
Yep, I ’ m just your roommate ’ s date that stayed for a roll in the sheets. That ’ s all.
And like the godsend she is, Anna sneezes inside her room, only offering further assurance that she hasn’t been murdered or tied up and gagged. If she were in any danger, she’d be more than capable of screaming about the shirtless man in her bedroom.
But she’s not.
I put the final nail in this suspicious coffin, running a hand through the back of my hair to look even more uncomfortable. “I’m not sure what she’s told you about me, but could you maybe not say anything? The boys in blue wouldn’t be too happy if they found out—”
“That you were flirting with her during your traffic stop?” she finishes for me with a soft laugh.
Thank. God.
It’s so dark that I can barely see the gesture as she runs her thumb and pointer finger over her lips, as if to say they’re sealed.
“I won’t say anything so long as I can get in there,” she says, now pointing to the bathroom. “Seriously, I’m about to piss myself.”
And I’m all too happy to get out of her way, relieved to hear the bathroom door close behind me as I walk down the hall. The only question now is: What the fuck do I do?
I had a plan. I had a timeline for when each step would be executed. Now?
Things just got infinitely more complicated.
Come tomorrow, it won’t matter that I put out this fire. A goddamn inferno will have replaced it once the roommate mentions her little run-in with me.
Regardless of what she thinks of the police, she’ll definitely call them.
They’ll do a sweep of the apartment, and then they’ll find the hidden camera and perhaps even some of my DNA.
Fuck. My only option is to grab the equipment and my clothes, clean up as best as I can, and get the hell out of Dodge.
But there’s still the matter of that legal pad.
I slip into the coat closet at the entrance of the foyer as I wait for the roommate, whose name is Darcy Hinkhouse if the mail on the side table is to be believed, to finish up in the bathroom.
When ten minutes comes and goes without a peep, I settle my back against the side wall and sink to the floor.
I’m exhausted, and the spike of adrenaline certainly doesn’t help.
When it peters away, I find myself even more drained.
My body still aches from the crash, and I don’t have any pain meds on me.
Not even an Advil. The combination kicks my ass, because the second I rest my head back, I’m out.