Cat peeled away the tape and opened one flap of the box. “Oh, shit. Oh, Jesus.”
The first thing she saw was the copy of People magazine with her on the cover. When she opened the box further, she saw an expensive Nikon camera with a zoom lens inside. The camera sat on top of a stack of photographs printed on computer paper. She slapped her hand over her mouth as she removed the pages one by one.
Next to her, Colleen stared at the photographs wide-eyed.
Every picture was of Cat. He’d followed her everywhere. To school. To the mall. To the movies. To restaurants. There were pictures of her on the beach behind Stride’s cottage. At the Olson house, playing with her son. And more.
He’d been outside the house on the Point. Outside her window. He’d watched her dressing. Undressing. Dancing. Singing. Laughing.
He’d seen her in a towel, back from the shower. He’d seen her naked.
He’d been part of her entire life.
And when she got to the bottom, she found something else in the box. A gun.
“I’m going to be sick,” Cat said.
But she had to hold back her nausea. As the two girls stood in the bedroom, they heard a noise from the other room. A muffled voice came through the apartment door in the hallway. She recognized it.
Wyatt.
“Shit, he’s back,” Cat said.
She shoved the photographs back in the box, carelessly retaped it, and shoved it under the bed. She looked around the bedroom for a way out, but they were trapped. The window offered no escape.
“The closet,” Cat hissed.
The two of them ran for the small bedroom closet and squeezed inside. Cat nudged the bi-fold doors closed, but they were warped and didn’t shut completely. A crack of light remained. Her back was against the wall, shoved in the middle of Wyatt’s clothes, and she could smell him on the fabric. Colleen was right beside her, their bodies pushed together. The air was stifled and warm.
She held her breath.
It was hard to hear, but she could make out the rattle of the apartment door opening, and then she heard Wyatt’s voice from the living room.
“You want to hang out with me tonight, buddy?”
There was no other voice to answer. Just Wyatt’s.
The noise of footsteps got closer. He was in the bedroom now. She could hear the smallest gasp from Colleen, and she squeezed the girl’s hand, not wanting her to make a sound. They could hear Wyatt moving around. Going into the bathroom. Going to the dresser. Cat tried to remember if she’d put everything back in the box and whether she’d shoved it completely out of sight beneath the bed.
Then they both jumped. Music filled the room. Loud, screeching music. Opera. The fat lady sang in some foreign language.
“You like it?” Wyatt asked. “I bet you could hit some of those high notes, huh?”
Who was he talking to? The only sounds in the apartment came from Wyatt. He was alone.
“I’m going to take a shower, and then we’ll play some X-Box, okay?”
The loud music offered them cover, and Cat put her lips next to Colleen’s ear. “When we hear the shower, we run.”
In the darkness, Colleen nodded, her blond hair swishing against Cat’s shoulder.
“Hey, what are you doing over there?” Wyatt asked.
Cat’s mouth dropped open in horror as the closet doors began to rattle. When she looked at her feet, she saw something pushing through the crack where the doors didn’t meet. Orange fur.
It was a cat’s paw.
“Did you lose a toy in there?” Wyatt asked.
The cat kept pulling at the doors, which began to nudge apart, and Cat put out a hand to stop them from opening completely.
“You want me to see if it’s in there, buddy?”
No!
Then, in the other room, a phone rang, rescuing them. Wyatt shut off the opera, restoring silence to the apartment. They heard his footsteps as he hurried to the other room to answer his cell phone. Wyatt began talking again.
“Hey, how are you, Sam? No, my shift got canceled tonight, so I went for a hike instead. I just got home. Yeah, sure, I can put in a couple of hours down there. I have to shower, but I’ll be there in half an hour.”
Wyatt hung up.
“Sorry, buddy, you’re on your own tonight. Looks like I’ll have to drop you back at your parents’ place. I’ve got to go out.”
They heard Wyatt return to the bedroom, and they heard the rustle of him taking off his clothes. His footsteps went into the bathroom, and the bang of water in the shower pipes followed. A minute later, they heard the shuffling of plastic shower curtain rings.
Cat silently pushed open the closet doors. An orange cat sat on Wyatt’s bed, watching them curiously. She could see steam gathering on the mirror through the open bathroom door. In the shower, Wyatt began to sing opera himself, and his voice was surprisingly good.
“Come on.”
She and Colleen tiptoed across the apartment and then silently let themselves out into the hallway. When they finally closed the door behind them, she began to breathe again.
“Holy shit, that was close.”
Colleen looked pale, too. “But it’s him?”
Cat felt sick again. “Yeah. It’s him. And he’s going to kill me.”
20
The orange flames of a fire pit danced in the lake breeze behind the Canal Park Brewing Company. Maggie sat in an Adirondack chair as Serena arrived to join her, and the two of them had the outdoor patio to themselves in the darkness. Maggie had arrived early and was already on her second Stoned Surf IPA. Serena, who didn’t drink, brought a raspberry lemonade from the bar. Behind them, Lake Superior threw waves against the rocks on the other side of the boardwalk. Sometimes the cascading spray made it all the way to where they sat.
Maggie kicked off her boots and propped her bare feet on the side of the fire pit, warming them. Both of them sat in silence for a while, entranced by the flames. Serena’s eyes looked far away and a little cold.
It was awkward whenever they were together, and Maggie knew it. That was mostly her fault. They’d both been outsiders coming to Duluth, Maggie from China as a college student, Serena from Vegas as a cop. That shared bond could have brought them together, but instead, they’d ended up as rivals. Frenemies. Maybe it was inevitable because of the triangle they shared with Stride.
“How’s he doing?” Maggie asked.
“He says he’s calm. He acts calm.”
“I don’t know how he can be calm. I’m not.”
“Me neither,” Serena admitted.
“This thing isn’t going away.”
“He knows, but he doesn’t seem to care.”
Maggie hesitated, then said what was really on her mind. “I keep thinking, what if he never comes back? What if this is it? He’s off the force. After all these years, he’s gone.”
“It’s only been two days. It’s way too early to worry about that.”
“Yeah, but does he even want to come back?”
“Sure he does,” Serena said. “That’s crazy.”
“Is it? Ever since the bombing at the marathon, he’s been different. Burned out. I feel like the violence did something to him. You must have seen it, too.”
Serena stared at her, and her green eyes had ice in them now. “Of course, I have. He’s my husband. Look, the marathon bombing changed all of us. Jonny’s different now. So am I. So are you. It doesn’t mean he’s going to walk away from his job. His job is who he is. I know that better than anyone.”