Chapter Thirty-Three

My aim is to get to the Whimsy Café in record time, and my speedometer very quickly reflects my goal. But I only get a block from the hotel before I catch sight of the familiar flash of red and blue in my rearview mirror. For a second, I don’t stop. I fantasize about slamming my foot to the floor and dragging the local police on a personal tour of the streets of Whimsy. But sense kicks in, and I clench my teeth, pull over, and roll down my window. I even manage to dredge up a smile as the senior-looking officer saunters up with his ticket book in hand.

“Where’s the fire?” he asks.

My teeth try to grit together.

“Sorry, Constable,” I say. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

“I’ll say you did. Going almost thirty clicks over.”

“I’ll get my license and insurance for you.”

Without thinking, I reach over to open the glove box. And as soon as I do, my badge tumbles out and lands on the passenger seat.

Shit.

“Ma’am?” says the Whimsy officer.

I take a breath, widen my smile, and turn his way, my paperwork in hand. I note with a silent groan that his eyes are lingering on my credentials.

“Here you go,” I say, prompting him to jerk his attention to my face.

“Who are you with?” he asks.

I opt for an honest reply. “Vancouver PD.”

His face darkens right away. “Bit far from home, aren’t you?”

I work at keeping any hint of defensiveness out of my reply. “I grew up around here.”

“Did you now?”

“I graduated out of Whimsy U fifteen years ago, actually. Just back for a short visit with some old friends.”

The officer’s expression doesn’t change, and he inclines his head toward my badge. “Hope you’re not expecting special treatment.”

I force a headshake, more because I’m wasting time than because I want to own my speeding ticket. “No, definitely not. I was in the wrong here.”

“You sure?” The words sound like an accusation.

I grit my teeth and continue to smile. “I’m sure.”

Quickly, he scribbles something on the pad, then tears off the top sheet and hands it over. “Just a warning this time.”

“Thanks, Constable.”

“Welcome home. Try to treat Whimsy with the respect it deserves.”

“I will,” I promise.

I resist an urge to ball up the ticket and toss it on the floor, and I make myself wait for the officer to get back to his car before I pull back onto the road. The rest of my drive is excruciatingly slow. I’m glad to know that my suspicions about approaching the Whimsy PD have been well-founded. They clearly dislike outside forces as much as I remember. Finding out like this, though, isn’t exactly a positive. It’s unlikely that the constable will keep my presence to himself. He might stay quiet for a short bit. But he’ll undoubtedly tell at least one colleague by the end of his shift. Maybe it’ll start as a joke about catching a big city cop in the throws of a race through town. And that colleague will undoubtedly tell another. From there, I can kiss my anonymity goodbye. And along with it, my ability to continue with my unofficial investigation.

All the more reason to wrap this up, I think, holding my foot steady to keep from flooring it again.

Finally, I reach the Whimsy Café. I don’t waste time driving around in search of a surreptitious parking spot—I just take the first one I see. But I’m a little more careful when I approach on foot. I move slowly and pause a few feet from the entrance, studying the inside of the café through the window. I seek out Charlotte first. And it takes me a few seconds to find her, which is actually a relief. She’s got a red kerchief tucked around her head and a pair of thick-rimmed sunglasses covering her eyes. A stack of books—ten high, by my estimate—is an ample shield from the rest of the patrons in the coffee shop. Unless someone was looking for her like I am, they likely wouldn’t have spotted her.

I let my shoulders relax and focus my attention on scrutinizing the rest of the customers.

There’s a teenage couple in a corner. An octogenarian on a high backed chair. Two ladies, roughly my age, laughing over their mugs. A small line of people waits at the till. But one person I don’t see is the man in the ball cap and hood. I do a second visual sweep to be sure. I even wait close to a minute to see if maybe he’s in the bathroom. But the male half of the teen duo gets up and opens the restroom door, and I know that my speeding ticket has taken away my chance to come face-to-face with the phony reporter.

Dammit.

Breathing out, I make my way into the Whimsy Café and step directly to Charlotte’s table, an apology for the delay on my lips. But the words don’t make their way out before Charlotte drops her sunglasses, revealing her tear-filled eyes.

“I think he heard me talking to you,” she says, her voice quavering.

I seat myself across from her, and I keep any trace of my concern from leeching into my reply. “What makes you say that?”

“As soon as I hung up, I saw him looking over here.” She swallows. “And then he got up and left. But a few seconds after that, the barista came over and told me that he’d paid my bill.”

Dammit again.

“Do you think he’s going to hurt me?” Charlotte asks.

I reach over, place my hand on top of hers, and give her the same reassurance that I’d given myself before. “No. If he was making an immediate threat, he wouldn’t alert you to the fact that he’d heard you and recognized you.”

Her face manages to crumple even more. “Then why would he do what he did?”

“To make you feel unsafe,” I say gently. “And to make himself feel powerful.”

And possibly to intimidate me, as well, I add silently.

Charlotte exhales a shudder. “What should I do?”

I choose my reply carefully. “What would make you most comfortable? Do you want to file a police report with the Whimsy PD?”

She actually lets out a laugh. “And tell them what? That I think a guy who pretended to be a reporter paid for my coffee and muffin?”

I don’t disagree with her. But I know that my own self-centered reasons for not wanting her to do it make me biased.

“You could tell them everything,” I say. “Reiterate your suspicions. I’d support you.”

“I don’t think it would make any difference. And besides that…I just have this feeling that whatever this guy is up to, you’re the best choice for figuring it out.”

“I need to be completely honest with you, Charlotte. I have zero jurisdiction here. My badge isn’t worth much more than a blank piece of paper.”

“Maybe.” She meets my eyes. “But I trust you.”

I relent. “Okay. I’ll do what I can to help. In the meantime, do you have a friend you can hang out with? Maybe stay the night away from the Whimsy U residences, if needed?”

She nods. “I got a little freaked out when the barista came over here, and I called my friend Elsie. I didn’t give her any details. I just said I didn’t want to be alone, and she’s on standby to pick me up.”

“Perfect,” I say. “I’ll wait with you until she gets here.”

I follow through on the promise, keeping the conversation as light as I can until a peppy redhead comes sweeping into the café, promising to help Charlotte drown her sorrows in an enormous glass of wine. I stay where I am, waiting as the two women leave. But at the last second, Charlotte comes rushing back. She bends down and hugs me, then leans away, genuine concern flooding her features.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be alone, either?” she asks.

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her with a smile.

“You’re sure?”

“Definitely.”

Except once she and her friend are out of sight—completely, this time—I realize that I don’t want to be alone. I grab my phone, tap Gabe’s name, and wait with unusual butterflies in my stomach.

He answers halfway through the first ring. “Trin?”

I order myself not to let out a nervous laugh. “Hey.”

“You okay?” he asks. “No more running into oncoming traffic, I hope?”

My nerves relax a little. “No. Once is enough, thank you very much.”

“For both of us,” he teases.

There’s the briefest pause, and I decide to plunge in with my real question. “Are you busy, Gabe? If not, do you want to go out?”

“Out?” he replies. “As in out, out? Or are you going to order me a pizza and offer me boxed wine?”

I’m glad he can’t see the blush that slides up my cheeks. “How about lunch?”

“I was just about to heat up the leftover ragout. You want to come over and grab some?”

“That sounds perfect.”

“I’ll get an extra bowl ready.”

Relieved, I click the call to an end and exit the café. I’m careful about getting back to my car, watching for any sign of the hooded man. And I know my mind ought to stay on him. I should be thinking of a way to track him. Maybe reaching out to Roddy for some more help. Or possibly simply sitting down and brainstorming a way to flush him out for good. But once I’m on the road, my thoughts refuse to remain on him. Instead, they hang on Gabe. And my mind plays out a ridiculous, four-minute fantasy.

In the imaginary scenario, all of this business with Asher and the missing women gets quickly and tidily wrapped up. I continue to hang around in Whimsy, filling the remainder of my suspension from work with a romantic montage. Gabe and I get closer and closer, and it all feels very natural. Then the job issue clears up, too. I go back to Vancouver. But Gabe and I maintain a long-distance thing for a reasonable amount of time. At last, I have a good excuse to use up all of my banked holiday hours. The two of us take a nice, sunny trip. And finally—

“Yeah, no,” I say aloud to myself. “You definitely don’t need to go any further than that, Calhoun.”

Thankfully, I’ve reached Gabe’s street anyway. Which means I need to settle my brain and act as though I didn’t just mentally live through an entire pretend relationship with my childhood best friend’s older brother.

Why? Wasn’t that a totally reasonable thing to be doing? I think, rolling my eyes as I pull the car up in front of his house.

But when I cut the engine and reach to grab my phone from the center console, all thoughts of Gabe disappear. The cell’s screen is lit up, and there’s a message from an unknown number flashing across it.

'You don’t want to do this,' it reads.

I almost drop the phone. The only thing that stops me from letting it slip out of my grasp is the fact that my fingers are frozen in an autonomic death grip. My eyes, too, are locked in position. I stare down at the words for a very, very long second. And it genuinely crosses my mind that I might be imagining things. I angle the phone away and use my free hand to give the inside of my elbow a sharp pinch, just to be sure that I’m awake. I count up to ten. Then down again. It’s overkill. I know that. But I don’t reposition the phone until I’ve done it all. And when I do, I see that the message is still there.

'You don’t want to do this.'

Not a hallucination.

Heart tripping, I blow out a breath. “Shit.”

This is a new level of worry. My eyes flick around the exterior of the car, as a being-watched sensation makes my skin prickle. But I order myself not to succumb to it. And I realize something else.

This is it, I think. Proof that something is going on.

Quickly, I screenshot the message. Its existence alone is enough to prompt further investigation. And it has to be Smarty-Pants. Who else would it be? But I’m not entirely sure how I want to proceed. I can call Roddy and get him to find the phone number that goes along with the anonymous message. That would be a start. But will a number give me any immediate answers? Probably not. Anyone who’s ever watched a crime show sometime in the last two decades is aware of what a burner phone is. They know they can walk into a corner store and buy one. And undoubtedly, that’s what I’ll find out happened here—the message will be from a disposable number, no name attached. Smarty-Pants will still be just a disembodied creep on the other end of a cell phone.

You have to try anyway, Calhoun, I tell myself.

But when my fingers touch the screen, it isn’t to dial my tech buddy at all. Instead, it’s to send a response to the unknown number.

'Who is this?' I type.

It’s the exact thing I would’ve advised someone else not to do. Don’t engage. Don’t give them the attention they want. Leave it to the people who know what to do. The people like me. Or like the Whimsy PD. The ones I’m currently not calling.

I anticipate that Smarty-Pants will tell me again that I already know who he is. But thirty seconds pass, and I get no response. So I write the same message again, this time, in all caps.

'WHO IS THIS?'

I wait. And I wait some more. In fact, I wait for so long that the screen goes blank. And I still don’t move. Or make an attempt to call Roddy. But unlike my body, my mind isn’t idle.

What would I be doing now if the text message wasn’t for me, personally? What would I do if it had arrived on a stranger’s phone? It only takes a moment for me to decide that aside from trying to isolate the phone number itself, I’d start with extracting what the message connotes.

First and foremost, the thing that stands out is the fact that the sender of the text has my private number. And the second thing that’s clear is that they don’t want me to have any reciprocal information.

Understandable, considering the message.

My internal sarcasm relaxes me a little, and I use it to propel my mental dissection forward. The message tells me that I don’t want to do “this,” but it gives no hint as to what that refers to. I don’t want to assume anything—I really don’t—but I think it’s safe enough to conclude that it must mean my investigation. And if that’s the case, then he definitely knows that I’m looking into the missing women. And he isn’t pleased by it. None of which is good news.

But it begs another truth. Another question.

Why?

Why alert me to the fact that I’m on the trail of something? Why, for all intents and purposes, send me a warning? Because threat or not, the text does exactly that—it gives me a heads-up. Is it just a case of stupidity? Over-confidence? Sheer cockiness? It wouldn’t be the first time a criminal hadn’t thought things through or assumed he was smarter than the people working on the other side of things.

As my fingers start to thoughtfully strum my thigh, a car horn blares somewhere nearby, at last prompting me to action.

I grab the car door handle. Then stop. It crosses my mind that I could go back to the hotel. That maybe I should. But I quickly dismiss the idea. Unless Smarty-Pants is one of Gabe’s neighbors, I’m not in immediate danger. I have a full view of the street. There’s no one suspicious around. And I don’t even know yet what I’m going to do with the text message.

And Gabe is expecting me.

A fact that I can’t pretend doesn’t matter.

I slide out of the seat, walk unhurriedly up the walk, and give the door a light rap. But as my hand drops to my side and I step back to wait, my phone buzzes. Dread sucks the air from my lungs. I don’t even want to look. But I have to. And my apprehension is well-founded. I have another new message from the same unknown number, and this time, it’s more threatening.

'Go back, Trinity. While you still can.'

My heart tightens and my stomach sinks. And before I can recover from the ripple of concern, the door opens. Right away, I try to cover my worry. But the look on Gabe’s face tells me that I’ve failed.