Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“Did anyone stop by the last couple of days after work?” she asks. “Or did you go shopping and set your phone down somewhere?”
“We went to the grocery store Sunday night …” my voice trails as I mentally rewind everything we’ve done since Fabian left town. “And we stopped at the hardware store for bird seed after that. I didn’t take my phone out either time though.”
“Okay …”
“Oh my god.” My hand flies to my chest. “Dan stopped over last night …”
Carina rolls her eyes. “If I can’t access your phone, Dan sure as hell can’t either—unless you did something stupid and gave him your passcode.”
“No.” I cover my mouth. “Monday night he came by around dinner to drop off some mail of mine that had gotten mixed in with his.” And also to apologize for that awkward kiss, but I don’t mention that part to my sister because it’s neither here nor there. “I invited him in since I was in the middle of cleaning up Lucia’s mess … most of which was in her hair. Anyway, I told him to hang on quick while I gave her a bath. I left my phone on the counter. I was maybe gone for less than ten minutes.”
“How could he get into your phone though without the code?”
“I’d been texting with Mom right before he showed up. It’s set to automatically lock after five minutes, but it’d only been a minute or two.” I suck in a sharp breath. “Oh my god, Carina. It had to have been him.”
She shakes. “I just got the chills. I always had a weird feeling about that guy. Like he was borderline obsessed with you, and not in a cute way.”
“Fabian noticed that too,” my voice lowers. “But why would he do this? We were friends?”
“He never wanted your friendship, Rossi.” She tilts her head. “He wanted you. And if he couldn’t have you, maybe he wanted to make sure Fabian couldn’t either?”
“That conniving …” I mutter under my breath, shoving my chair out from my desk and flinging the door open.
“Where are you going?” She chases after me.
“Next door to confront that bastard.” I step into my sneakers, nearly stumbling into the wall in the process.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Carina steadies me, her hand on my shoulder. “Anyone who does something like this? They’re mentally unstable. Do not go over there. I forbid you. I will literally handcuff you to this console table if you take another freaking step.”
I jerk my shoulder out from under her.
“Let the police deal with him,” she says.
“Is this even something the police can deal with?” I ask, envisioning a police officer laughing in my face when I explain the situation. “This is the sort of thing that involves attorneys and court orders and the way Fabian made it sound, this is going public tomorrow.”
“Then let Fabian deal with him.”
Charging into my office, I fetch my phone and dial Fabian.
He doesn’t answer.
Chapter 32
Fabian
* * *
“Your destination is on the right,” the GPS guide announces. I slow to a crawl outside a brown duplex.
Parking by a broken concrete curb filled with weeds, I double check the address. A sun-faded red Grand Am is parked in the driveway, which is nothing more than two strips of gravel divided by patchy grass. No garage. No landscaping. No sign of life other than an empty terracotta planter by the front door of the left unit.
Heading up the drive, I notice the front windows of the duplex are cracked a few inches, emitting the scent of stale cigarette smoke and the sound of canned laughter coming from a TV.
There’s a chance the person living here isn’t Frankie.
There’s also chance the person living here is Frankie—and that she’ll slam the door in my face.
Before my parents’ respective deaths, they were adamant that if my sister wanted to be found, she’d come out of hiding. And that’s how they always described it. She was “hiding.” Though occasionally they’d say she was “on the run from her troubles.” They made her sound lost and unstable, hopeless, and they warned me to “leave her be.”
Now that I have a daughter of my own, I can’t imagine turning my back on her in her worst time of need. I imagine my parents thought they were doing what was best for me, but at what cost?
My father once said Frankie was beyond saving.
My mother kept a scrapbook of pictures and newspaper clippings of my sister, all of which stopped around the age of fourteen. Before she became “precocious.” It’s as if they wrote her off after that, and for reasons they never quite explained in any detail.
Standing at the front door, I knock three times.
A large-sounding dog barks from the neighboring unit.
“Hello?” I call out. “Anyone home?”
The TV goes silent, replaced with the sound of footsteps as a dark-haired woman steps into view.