A prickling sensation dropped down the length of his spine.
Had it been open earlier?
He thought back to his first time in this bathroom, but he couldn’t recover the detail. He’d been too focused on his friend.
Grant cocked the flashlight back like a baton as he turned toward the bathtub.
No sound came from behind the curtain.
He stepped forward onto a blood-free section of tile, reached out, caught a fold of fabric between his thumb and forefinger.
He ripped it back.
An empty tub.
The bunched muscles in his shoulders relaxed, but an explosion of footsteps out in the corridor spun him around.
He stepped over the blood, bolted out of the bathroom, and shot through the bedroom toward the open door.
The footsteps pounded down the staircase, shaking the house.
Grant sprinted through the hall above the foyer, screaming his sister’s name, screaming for her to wake up.
When he turned the corner, he stopped.
Paige’s bedroom door was open.
Blackness inside like he’d never seen.
He felt the mysterious pull.
The rush of air behind him.
He needed his legs to work, to propel him in the opposite direction, but they’d gone lame, and now his knees failed him too.
He was sinking down onto the floor as the room sucked him in, but it wasn’t just a physical undertow. He was suddenly aware of something lurking on the outskirts of his consciousness. A concentrated intellect studying the framework of his mind. Searching for a way in. The intensity of its attention like a furnace.
Grant sat up on the living room couch.
His chest billowing.
It took him a moment to recalibrate.
The fire had gone out and the room was freezing.
He reached down and felt for Paige, found her back.
It rose and fell with the unhurried pace of a deep and restful sleep.
Bittersweet reality.
He lay back down and drew the covers up to his neck. The pillow was soaked in sweat and so was he.
Waking up from that nightmare into this one was a small relief, but he’d take it.
He’d take it wherever he could find it.
His pulse rate was falling back toward baseline, and sleep was creeping up on him again like a welcome predator.
No more dreams.
As if he could will such a thing away.
Grant closed his eyes, and they had been shut for less than a second when a sound like a gunshot filled the house.
His eyes opened.
He didn’t move because he couldn’t.
Frozen with liquid fear.
He stared into the ashen bed of coals beneath the grate, glowing the same subdued color as the brownish-purple dawnlight that was filtering in through the windows.
His heart banged inside his chest with a relentless fury, and he was on the borderline of hyperventilation, his vision sparkling with pulsating specks of black.
That sound.
He knew exactly what it was.
The door to Paige’s room had just slammed shut.
Chapter 16
You’ve reached Grant Moreton. I can’t get to the phone right now, but if you’ll—
Sophie Benington shelved the handset.
Her sergeant, Joseph Wanger, walked over, looking every bit like the terrifying slob he was—big and broad, his white, button-down oxford hanging out of his waistband, his collar stained with duck sauce the color of radioactivity.
He was tearing through a carton of Chinese food from Grant’s second favorite restaurant in the world—the Northgate Panda Express.
When he reached her desk, he rapped his knuckles on the particleboard.
Sophie shook her head.
Wanger sighed heavily and stabbed a plastic fork into the carton.
The rippled surface of his shaved head was sweating from the handful of hot mustard packets he’d undoubtedly squeezed onto his meal.
“I’ve been calling him all morning,” Sophie said. “It rings, but he’s not picking up.”
“You guys are close, right?” His voice pure gravitas and boom. Sophie had seen it break more than a handful suspects, blundering unis who’d muddied the chain of evidence, and even the occasional detective.
“I don’t know if I’d say—”
“Come on, Benington. What’s going on with your boy?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you do know Grant’s got a taste for scotch. I mean, that don’t require any sort of special training to deduce.”
“I’m aware, sir.”
“He’s been fine the last year or two, but he’s has not always been the straight and narrow. Any chance he’s going through a thirsty spell, and you just don’t have the heart to rat him out? It’s not a part of your job to protect him, you know.”
“I’m not protecting him.”
Wanger shoveled a pile of lo mein noodles into his mouth, his massive black mustache glistening with MSG.
“Look, I’ve known Grant for two years,” Sophie said. “He’s shown up for work hung-over a few times.”
“A few?”
“A few times a week. Rolled in still drunk once or twice. But he’s never not shown up.”
“Boy could be going through some shit not on your radar.”
“I don’t think so.”
“So you guys are all cuddly then?”
She imagined lifting the paperweight off her desk—a viceroy butterfly enclosed in a clear globe—and smashing it into Wanger’s ball sack.
“No, but I do sit across from the man every day. I wouldn’t be a good detective if I couldn’t tell if something was bothering my own partner, would I?”
“So does this mean you’re worried?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve tried him at home?”
“His cell is the only way to reach him. I also texted him and sent him an e-mail. No response. I was thinking of driving over to his apartment in Fremont.”
Wanger was already nodding as he chewed.
“Do it,” he said. “Right now.”
# # #
Sophie stood at Grant’s door on the third floor of his townhome walkup. The building was nice, but Grant had about as much design sense as a monk.
She pounded on his door again.
“Grant! You in there?”
No answer.
Turning away, she pushed the thought out of her mind that he was lying dead in there. She had circled the surrounding blocks several times, but couldn’t find his black Crown Vic. At least that was something.
Halfway down the last flight of stairs, her phone rang—Detective Dobbs calling. She answered as she moved past the mailboxes and toward the front door.
“What’s up, Art?”
“I just got a strange call. A groundskeeper spotted a man in the Japanese garden at the Washington Park Arboretum.”
“So what?”
“Silver responded. Turns out it’s Benjamin Seymour, your missing lawyer.”
“So Seymour’s okay?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just go see for yourself.”
Sophie pushed open the front door and headed down the concrete steps toward her silver TrailBlazer which she’d double-parked in front of the building.
“I’m on my way,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“Fremont. Have Bobby keep eyes on him.”
“Any word on Grant?”
“I’m just leaving his apartment. He isn’t here.”
“Your boy’ll turn up. Probably just tripped over a big night.”
“Hey, Art?”
“Yeah?”
Her car alarm chirped.
“He’s not my boy.”
“If you say so.”
Chapter 17