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CHAPTER SEVEN

TATE

Five Days Before Disappearance

I’m sitting at my desk at work when the email comes in. The article is emailed to me from a bogus, generic email address, and I know enough not to click any links, but the text in the hyperlink catches my eye.

Actually, five words in particular catch my eye.

Bradley Jennings. Dead at 34.

Opening up my search engine, I type in the words. It can’t be real, and yet, it is. What did you do?

The first search result holds the answers I was searching for. Bradley Jennings, a man I once considered a brother, a man who lived less than half a day’s drive away from me and to whom I hadn’t spoken more than a few words in nearly twelve years, is dead.

My heart stalls as I skim the article for details and come up short. The obituary gives a very brief description of the prettier parts of his life but tells nothing of what must’ve been a gruesome death. Images of car crashes flash through my mind, home invasions gone wrong. It must’ve been something awful. He was healthy as far as I knew. Young. He was going to be getting married soon. According to the obituary, he had a fiancée and a stepdaughter-to-be. Together, they had two dogs and a cat. He had a whole life ahead of him, he was finally figuring it all out, and in a split second, it was over. Gone, like sand slipping through your fingers.

Life can be so unnecessarily cruel sometimes.

The vibrating of my phone on the desk causes me to jump, and I nearly fall out of my chair. Checking the phone screen, I see the familiar words.

Unknown Caller

Before I answer, I hurry across the office and shut my door. If I ignore him, he’ll just call back. I grab the phone and swipe my thumb across the screen.

“Hello?”

“Did you get it?” His warm, gravelly voice is an unwelcome intrusion. More than that, it’s not the voice I expected to hear.

“Yes. I saw. Why are you calling me?”

“You know why.”

I swallow. “I don’t, actually. I was expecting?—”

“I’m assuming he called you, too?”

“Yeah,” I croak out. “And you?”

“Few days ago, yeah. And now this. What are we going to do about it?”

“What do you mean? It’s done, isn’t it?”

He breathes in, deep and unsettling. “I wish it were that simple, but no. He was going to tell and now he’s gone. That’s not a coincidence.”

I don’t know how to respond. I’m too terrified by what he’s insinuating. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“If you didn’t and I didn’t, there’s only one other person who could’ve. I think it’s time we paid him a visit.”