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Offed herself, I want to say. Finished what Stephen Leibman didn’t get the chance to do. “Passed away.”
“What did it say?”
I recite the email word for word, the text etched into my memory.
“Why would she do that?” Jeff says, as if I somehow have an answer.
“I don’t know. I’ll never know. But for some reason she was thinking about me right before she died. And allIcan think about is the fact that, if I had seen that email in time, I could have possibly saved her.”
Tears form, hot in the corners of my eyes. I try to blink them back, to no avail. Jeff pulls me to him, my head against his chest, his arms tight across my back.
“Jesus, Quinn. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You had no way of knowing.”
“But you can’t let yourself think you’re responsible for Lisa’s death.”
“I don’t,” I say. “But I do think I missed my chance to help her. I don’t want to do the same thing with Sam. I know she’s rough around the edges. But I think she needs me.”
Jeff sighs a long exhalation of defeat.
“I’ll play nice,” he says. “I promise.”
We kiss and make up, tears salty on my lips. I wipe them away while Jeff lets go of me, jiggling his arms to release the tension. I give my shirt a tug and smooth out the tear-stained spot I left on his. Then we’re out of the bedroom, moving down the hall with hands entwined. A unified front.
In the dining room, we find the table unoccupied, Sam’s chair pushed away from it. She’s not in the kitchen either. Or the living room. In the foyer, the spot by the door where her knapsack sat is now an empty patch of floor.
Once again, Samantha Boyd has vanished.
9.
My phone rings at three a.m., yanking me from a nightmare of running through a forest. Running from Him. Tripping and screaming, tree branches reaching out to circle my wrists. I’m still running even after I wake, my legs thrashing beneath the covers. The phone keeps ringing—an urgent beep slicing the silence of the room. Jeff, the heaviest of sleepers, trained only to wake to the Pavlovian bell of his alarm clock, doesn’t stir. To keep it that way, I cover the screen when I grab the phone, blocking its glow. I peek through my fingers in search of the caller’s identity.
Unknown.
“Hello?” I whisper as I slide out of bed and rush to the door.
“Quincy?”
It’s Sam, her voice hard to hear over the din surrounding her. There’s chatter and yelling and the harried clack of fingers on keyboards.
“Sam?” I’m in the hallway now, eyes bleary in the darkness, brain swimming in a soup of confusion. “Where did you disappear to? Why are you calling me so late?”
“I’m sorry. I really am. But something’s happened.”
I think she’s going to say something about Him. Most likely because of the nightmare, which lingers sticky on my skin like drying perspiration. I brace myself to hear her tell me that He’s resurfaced, as I always knew He would. It doesn’t matter that He’s dead. That I gladly watched Him die.
Instead, Sam says, “I need your help.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I was sort of arrested.”
“What?”
The word echoes down the hallway, waking Jeff. From the bedroom, I hear the squeak of the mattress as he bolts upright and calls my name.
On the phone, Sam says, “Please come get me. Central Park Precinct. Bring Jeff.”