Page 152 of Dying to Meet You

She hits send, and then decides the text doesn’t properly convey the situation.

Natalie: I found something WILD.

Because it really is. Natalie clearly remembers the first time she wore her Saint Raymond medallion to yoga class. It was a bad wardrobe choice—every time she leaned into a forward fold, the medallion smacked her in the chin.

But after class, Beatrice took note of it. “I like your necklace,” she’d said. “Where did you get it?”

“From my father,” Natalie had replied.

But then Beatrice didn’t say: I have one just like it.

She only said: “It’s so unique. And so beautiful.”

58

Rowan

The sound of a baby’s cry rises and then falls into silence. I forget to breathe.

Beside me, Lickie whimpers.

I force air into my lungs. God, where is that noise coming from?

“Beatrice? We’re coming up.”

“We?” she asks in a strained voice.

“I have the dog with me.”

“Good,” she says. “I could use a cuddle right now.”

I can hear her clearly, but I can’t see her even as I reach the second floor and ease my way around the curved gallery toward the next flight of stairs.

It’s gloomy here. There are no lights on in any of the rooms. And cloud cover outside means there’s barely any light filtering through the stained glass above.

Every open doorway that we pass gives me the heebie-jeebies. But the glow from the top floor gets brighter as I begin the final climb to the third floor.

Lickie suddenly overcomes her hesitation, and her tail begins to wag. Maybe she’s caught the scent of Beatrice. So I let go of the leash and let her proceed ahead of me. She vaults up the stairs, toenails clicking on the polished wood. Then she disappears from view.

“Hello, girl,” Beatrice says in a low voice. “Hi. You just sit right here, okay? Who’s a good girl?”

My phone chimes with two texts as I reach the top of the stairs. I reach for it automatically, but I don’t look at the screen. I’m distracted by a mess on the floor—torn pages strewn around.

Lifting my gaze, I’m about to ask why, when I finally spot Beatrice. She’s reaching behind an old metal radiator on the gallery wall.

And drawing out a gun.

By the time my brain makes sense of this, she’s pointing it at me. “Hands where I can see them,” she says. “Drop the phone.”

I freeze. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Drop the phone!” she shouts.

My fingers loosen their grip on the phone, and it crashes to the wood floor. “Beatrice,” I say, my voice tense. “Please. Tell me what’s going on. You need to put down the gun before someone gets hurt.” Even as I say it, my stomach drops into my shoes.

Because I think she intends to hurt me. And I’m realizing that she probably killed Tim, too. She must have. All these papers on the floor? They’re the right size and shape to have come from his Moleskine notebooks. I think I recognize his slanting script.

“Why?” I demand.