Page 20 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

“Where are you going?”

I stumbled to a stop halfway down the block from Livia’s apartment on the way to my car.

“To find you. Why are you here?”

Reuben lifted a manila folder. “I wanted to run some suspects by you.”

“Really?” Now that was a surprise. “I didn’t think you’d want to consult with me?”

“Consult?” An eyebrow winged upward. “That’s stretching it a bit. I just wanted your insight. You—see things from a different vantage point.”

“Was that a compliment?” I jested, reaching for the manila folder.

“No.” Reuben held it away from me. “It’s a statement.”

Yes. My own case. The fact I’d been a victim too. Well, if it got my foot in the door to helping Sophia solve her murder, I’d take whatever credibility I’d earned unwillingly and use it.

A few minutes later, and after Reuben had told me he was in desperate need of coffee, we ended up grabbing to-go’s from a drive-thru coffee shack on the corner and then monopolizing a picnic table at the park on the edge of town.

“So,” Reuben was down to business. “I ran your profile idea and came up with a few possible people.” He opened the folder. Laying a few sheets in front of me, I looked down at unfamiliar mug shots.

He watched me carefully.

“It’s not like I can ID him from a photo,” I reminded Reuben.

“I know. Just look over the facts. See if something stands out for you.”

“Ok.” Our eyes locked for a second and I thought I saw something akin to hope in Reuben’s. Hope that I might see something he didn’t, and hope that we could bring resolution to this case.

It was a big ask, and while I knew in my soul that Reuben had no expectations of me, I did. I had huge ones.

I looked over the different profiles and faces.

Men, with similar backgrounds and various degrees of prior offenses.

If nothing else, I was getting a fast education that I wasn’t the only person with a seriously dysfunctional childhood.

Of course, I knew that, but it hurt to see it on paper.

I wished every kid who grew up could have a healthy family.

Parents that loved them. Dads that protected and moms that nurtured.

Instead, these men sported backgrounds not unlike mine.

Abuse. Single parents or no parents. Raised by a grandparent. Foster care.

I glanced up at Reuben. “Some of these men don’t even fit the familial profile we talked about.”

“I know.” Apparently, there were reasons he’d pulled these specific profiles, but he wasn’t going to tell me.

“I don’t know.” I hated to admit it, but nothing jumped out at me.

I had even scanned the park to see if Sophia had magically appeared in my vision again with some insight.

But it was just me and Reuben, and the profiles of troubled men and broken lives.

“Are all of these men local to Whisper’s End? ”

“No.” Reuben looked off into the distance. “But within a distance where it could be plausible for them to have been in contact with the victims at some point.”

I did notice one suspect’s file. I pulled it from the pages and met the blank stare of a bald man with a hawk tattoo on his neck. “This guy.”

“Yeah?” Reuben studied me. He did that a lot, it seemed .

“I don’t think he’d fit. Not the theory I came up with anyway.”

“Why not?”

“He had a father,” I pointed out.

“But his grandmother lived with them.” Reuben countered.

“True, but if we’re going strictly by my theory, he’s trying to recreate his childhood to be a positive recreation of what he knew growing up. He was raised by women.”

“You’re really stretching, Noa.” Reuben’s sigh was heavy and I could feel the suffocation of its weight as I sat next to him.

He wasn’t wrong. None of this was based on anything but a gut feeling. And gut feelings alone didn’t solve crimes. At least, not that I knew of.

“There’s really no one in these that hits you as at least a possibility?” Reuben asked again.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to tell him one thing I did remember, that I’d never told anyone.

“Noa?”

The man could read my face and it was unnerving.

I ducked away and engaged in a deep study of the pages in front of me.

“Listen.” Reuben tried again. “I’m not trying to go places you don’t want to go, but if it could save lives . . .”

Sure. Cast the responsibility of the victims’ lives on me like I was a witness withholding critical information.

But this time, I sensed her.

I sensed Sophia next to me, even though I couldn’t see her

He’s not wrong , she whispered into my subconscious. You know what you did. You don’t remember the details, but you know what you did.

It might have saved my life too. I knew that. I’d always known that. But I didn’t want to know that.

Tell him .

Sophia prompted me. I resisted.

Be our voice.

Those words resonated with me like a chorus from a thousand unnamed victims .

“ I knew him.” I heard my own voice, void of tone, of inflection. I sounded dead inside. I was dead inside in many ways. It was how I’d survived for ten years and part of me desperately wanted to go back to that safe place.

“You knew him?” Reuben echoed. “Who did you know?

“My abductor.” My voice had dropped to a whisper. I picked at green paint that was flaking off the picnic table.

I felt Reuben tense. I could tell he was also tempering his reaction.

“You’d met him before?”

“No. Not like that. That’s not what I mean.” How did I explain without losing credibility? Did I have credibility?

I don’t know if Reuben thought it would help somehow, and in normal circumstances, it would have shut me down completely. But he reached out and squeezed my hand. Just for a moment. Then he dropped it.

“It’s ok.”

Those two words were enough. For once, Reuben wasn’t coming at me with a shovel trying to dig into every possible memory. He was giving me some space. Some time.

“When I was kid,” I started, “I watched people, and I studied people. You can learn a lot about what makes a person tick when you do that. What influences them to make the choices they make.”

Reuben nodded.

I continued. “When I say I knew my abductor, I mean, I knew what triggered him. I knew things about how he processed circumstances. I knew by how he interacted with us that he was confident. Sure of himself. So when he was—trying to kill me—I knew if I pretended to die too soon, he’d know it wasn’t real.

But if I waited until just before I was going to pass out, I could maybe fool him into thinking he’d succeeded.

He was confident in his ability to kill.

So I used that. I used that to stay alive. ”

Our eyes met.

Reuben’s narrowed. He was digesting what I’d said.

I continued, “I can’t say I have anything to help you with my case or Sophia’s case.

I just— feel what the others feel. I feel what Sophia felt as she died, and I—I can empathize with her killer.

He feels broken to me. Lost. He’s not confident or egotistical.

He’s a little boy in a man’s body, wanting a home. ”

A long, silent moment passed. Finally, a robin chirped, breaking the stillness.

Reuben cleared his throat. “You know I can’t build a case on a feeling.”

“I know.” My answer was honest. Truthful. Grateful, actually, that he hadn’t belittled my admission.

“But Dickson said to investigate, so I will. Maybe it’s women’s intuition.”

I shot him a quick study to see if he mocking me. He wasn’t. There was even a little admiration in his eyes. I waited.

“You’re a survivor, Noa Lorne. Your voice matters.”

The air conditioning at work was turned so low I had goosebumps. I always wore short sleeves in the summer, but today, and already very distracted, I found myself ransacking my locker in the back room, hoping I’d left a sweater or sweatshirt there over the winter. I hadn’t.

I shut the locker and Toby stood on the other side. Jumping, my shoulder hit the locker and banged. “You scared me!”

He grinned. “Sorry. Hey. I was wondering if you could check the address for that job this afternoon? The work order smudged and I can’t read it to put it into the GPS.”

“Sure.” I didn’t mind the distraction from the cold, and I didn’t mind doing a favor for Toby. “Give me a sec.”

I made my way to my desk with Toby following, and pulled up the customer job database. Finding the job site address was easy, and within minutes I wrote it down and had it in Toby’s hand so he and the crew could pull out and get to work.

A smile and a wave, and Toby left the offices to go do his job.

I shivered. Not because of Toby or any other reason than my nerves were raw.

I took a moment to practice measured breathing.

I even surveyed the office to re-center myself.

My desk, Elsie’s desk in the corner, a pot of ferns on the floor—their tips mostly brown and dry—a few framed photos of rainbows and forests, and a wall lined with cupboards that stored office supplies.

“You doin’ all right, honey?” Elsie asked from her desk in the corner where she pecked at her keyboard in slow motion, entering data that I was pretty sure wasn’t needed except to create something for Elsie to do and stay relevant.

“I’m fine.” A reassuring smile cast her way, I returned my attention to my desk. I’d done a poor job of making it homey. No framed photos, like on Elsie’s. Not even a knick-knack. I had one sticker that I’d stuck to the wall.

Coffee saves lives, it boasted.

I felt so conflicted. My conversation with Reuben yesterday had gotten us no further in the investigation and it felt as if I was in this terrible pause. Like in a movie or a book where everything was moving fast and then suddenly, page after page or frame after frame, nothing seemed to happen.

I stared at my computer.