Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hugo
Months of footage. Months and months.
I’ve scrubbed, backed up, zoomed in. I’ve leaned so close my nose touched the monitor. I’ve seen every angle of Rue’s neck there is to see. My head’s throbbing, but Pell’s driveway footage confirms it: she’s never been caught on camera in a necklace.
I power down the monitor and shuffle from my office to my bedroom, tapping the app on my phone that sends music pouring through the wireless speakers embedded in the walls throughout my half of the duplex.
Then I collapse onto the mattress and drag a pillow over my face.
The pillow’s to block out the light currently threatening to melt my eyeballs, and the music’s to drown out the confusion in my brain.
Hopefully by the time I wake up, my subconscious will have coughed up a logical explanation for the necklace puzzle, or it’ll have convinced my conscious mind to let it go.
I’m still wondering which option is preferable when I finally surrender to my exhaustion and sink into sleep.