God is the liar. I only show you the truest truth—the truth you’re scared to admit to yourself. The truth that haunts you in nightmares and gnaws at your heart.
“Shut up.”
All these disappearances. People leaving town. What’s one more—right, Bess Jackson?
“Shut up.”
I see you.
“Stop it.” Tears coursed down Bess’s cheeks.
Where did your fiancéBrandon end up, Bess Jackson?
Yes, I see you
I see you
I see you
Iseeyou
Iseeyou
Bess acted without thinking. In one smooth motion she knocked her radio to the floor and stomped down hard with her boot. And everything went silent. The crunch was oddly anticlimactic. Her most prized possession, trash on her floor. She was alone now, cut off.
Just like Amelia.
Just like Amy.
13
SOMEWHERE NEAR THE river there was a house with a basement and Bess was going to find it. Daniel Mills’s address was easy enough to locate with a quick Google search. He lived on Poplar, only a few blocks from Greg Leeds. He might not be keeping Amy there, but it was at least a place to start.
She rushed to her bedroom and changed into a pair of black yoga pants and an oversized, charcoal grey hoodie. She wanted to be covert. It felt like a game, but without any rules or possibility of winning.
It was cooler after the sun set, but still much too warm to be wearing a sweatshirt. Bess pretended not to care as she casually walked down Aviary Street, glancing at the foundations of homes and businesses as she passed. Dead trees, like gnarled arthritic fingers, clawed up from the bank of the Reddington River. Barges slid noiselessly downstream, their long black bodies opaque against the moonlit water. Only their absence of reflection gave them away out there. Like a hole punched through reality into some other place where black spaces stole light and never gave it back.
Not a lot of basements along the river.
Bess turned down Poplar Street, which ran parallel to Aviary. In some towns, houses near the water would be nicer, more expensive—the land considered prime real estate. Antioch was not one of those towns. The homes here ranged from decent to ramshackle with most in the in-between area Bess would describe as “rundown.”
Two blocks down and Bess was already beginning to feel frustrated. She’d seen two homes with basement windows instead of vented crawlspaces, but after poking around she decided both were harmless. Her cell phone was snug in the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and she kept her hands on it as she walked, reminding herself it wasn’t lost and that help was only a call away if she needed it. She wasn’t sure Scott Howland would be eager to answer her calls, but she hoped.
The address for Daniel Mills was still two blocks down. Bess stopped at what appeared to be an old storefront building. The windows were boarded up. Above the door a sign hung slightly askew on time-loosened nails. The paint had faded and worn down to the bare wood in some spots, but large red letters at the center still declared “VHS”. Bess thought she noticed the tell-tale small rectangular windows along the bottom of the structure. Trying to seem as if she belonged there, Bess left the sidewalk and veered into the little gravel lot of the old store. There was definitely a basement, soft yellow light bled out from one of those windows. She eased along the side of the structure and knelt beside the window, but it was too grimy to see anything inside.
Bess stood and slowly crept to the front of the building, but the shrill whine of rusted hinges made her stop short. Someone was coming out of the building’s front door. Bess pressed her body flat against the side of the wall and held her breath, watching. A man stepped out onto the sidewalk and paused under the streetlight, looking back. At first, Bess wasn’t sure if it was Greg, or if she just wanted it to be, in the way your brain makes you see faces in inanimate objects because it wants things to make sense, to be easy. The way you hear words like Bevington instead of Reddington or New York City instead of Norwich City. But there was no reasoning it away. That was Greg Leeds. He headed north along Poplar and Bess counted to ten before inching her way out of hiding and onto the street. He was already out of sight, probably turning on a side street to take him back home to Aviary.
For a few seconds she stood there, trying to decide if she should call Detective Howland. But what would she say? Greg Leeds came out of a building? It wasn’t the most damning evidence, and she needed something concrete. Bess followed Greg away from Daniel’s house.
She was trying to keep her breathing as quiet as possible when a hand clapped over her mouth. Her startled shriek died behind a man’s pressing palm.
“What’s this?” Greg whispered into her ear. “A concerned citizen out for a midnight stroll?” His other hand snaked around her middle, pulling her body in close to his own. She could smell stale sweat, old cigarettes, and something else—the high metallic scent of adrenaline pumping through a scared animal.
“You’re starting to become a real nuisance, Bess. There’s been cops driving around here all day.”
Bess bit into Greg’s hand and kicked backward with all her strength, hoping to connect with something soft and vital. He cried out and his grip relaxed out of instinct. Bess threw an elbow back against the bony middle of his chest. Loose gravel scrunched under her sneakers as she ran. Bess yanked her cell phone from her pocket and dialed 911 without slowing down. No time to hope for Howland. She needed someone immediately.
“My name is Bess Jackson.” The words came out in bursts, punctuated by hard desperate breaths. “I’m on Poplar Street near the river. A man just attacked me. He’s chasing me. I need help.”
“I’ve dispatched police to your area. Do you know who attacked you?”
Bess’s lungs burned as she struggled to respond. “His name’s Greg Leeds. White man, six foot, slender.”
“Ma’am? I can barely understand you. What’s happening?”
She considered slowing down or stopping, but only for a split second. That was how people died.
Bess ran until blue lights flashed behind her and a loud voice told her to stop. She raised her hands and yelled back that she was Bess Jackson, that she had called the police. She lay on the pavement when they told her to. She placed her hands on the back of her head. She stayed still and quiet. A police dog sniffed at her body. She was told to get on her knees and then her feet. She was patted down, and finally taken to the station to give a statement.
“What in the fuck were you doing stalking Greg Leeds?” Scott Howland asked, exasperated.
“I wasn’t stalking him. I wasn’t looking for him at all. I was looking for… houses with basements.”
“Thinking of moving?”
Bess stared into his eyes until he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Greg jumped me. Right out there on the street. He was coming out of that old video store on Poplar. You have to check it out.”
“Well, someone owns that old building, believe it or not, so we can’t just bust down the doors.”
“Isn’t this probable cause? I’m sure I’ve heard that phrase before.”
“You know what happens to illegally obtained evidence? It gets thrown out in court. It loses cases. If you’re up to something, I’m begging you to tell me what it is.”
“I’m not up to anything.”
“Whoever told you I’m your enemy… how do you know they’re your friend? How can you be so sure you’re looking at this through the right perspective?”
Bess remembered Daniel talking about Jesus. Just because you’re told someone is good or bad or holy or maybe pure evil, that doesn’t make it so. She’d spent her teens and twenties looking critically at religion and faith and deciding things for herself. It was a disservice to who she was to throw all that away now. She needed to choose for herself who her allies would be.