Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
The word autopsy makes me go still. “Someone died?”
“Well, yeah. It’s New York City. We average more than one homicide a day.”
My voice climbs an octave. “That’s . . . that’s awful.”
“You get used to it, sadly,” he says. “Looks like an older-man-younger-woman thing this time.”
My eyes flare. “What happened?”
“The suspect was his mistress. We can’t find her. She took off, but no one else had motive.”
I swallow back the rise of fear. “How much younger was she?”
Sam chuckles. “Not getting ideas, are you? Killing an older man you’re sleeping with?”
“Of course not.” I force humor into my voice, levity. Inside, though, I’m sinking deeper into a dark place. Nothing about the last twenty-four hours feels like coincidence right now. “How would I ever get that home-cooked meal then?”
“I could make dinner at your place while you work tonight. You gotta take a break to eat sometime, right?”
I open my mouth to tell him I can’t. The last thing I need is to spend time with a police detective right now, but the scrap of paper on my desk catches my eye, gives me an idea. “Hey, I have a question.”
“What’s that?”
“Is there a way to trace an email address?”
“Just an email address? Or an email received?”
“The address.”
“An email address by itself can be tough. But you can usually trace an email received back to the approximate location of the sender using their IP address, as long as they’re not using a VPN. Though you would need an incoming email for that.” He pauses, and the wheels turn in my head. “You need to track someone down?”
“Just wondering.” I chew the end of a pen, practically hearing the curiosity on his end as silence fills the line. “One of the students in my fiction-writing class had a character track someone’s location from their email in their story. I didn’t know if it was accurate or not.”
“Oh, gotcha.”
“Listen, Sam, someone just walked into my office,” I lie. “So I have to run. Maybe we can get together next week?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Good luck with your . . . homicide.”
We disconnect. My brain tingles with the information he’s given me. I want to think about the woman murdering the older man, but I’ve got other things to keep me busy.
I pull up a new email, type in the address Aaron provided, and compose yet another lie:
Hannah,
I received the chapter you submitted through Blackboard. However, for some reason I was unable to open it. It’s a system glitch, which happens occasionally. Can you please email it to me directly? At this address would be fine.
I stare at the screen. Hit send. And the wait for a response begins.
CHAPTER
4
Normally, on Thursdays after I’ve finished teaching, I head to the yoga studio across from campus, but today I skip exercising. I also haven’t been running every morning like I usually do. It’s been almost a week since I emailed the student who submitted the ominous chapter, and I can’t seem to quell the unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I’ve considered calling Ivy. The three of us—Ivy, Jocelyn, and me—were inseparable back in the day, the three musketeers. A trio of lost souls who bonded over being dirt-poor and neglected by our alcoholic, single moms. Or in Ivy’s case, alcoholic and drug addicted. We told each other everything. So it’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since I’ve spoken to either one of them. I know where Ivy is at least. Jocelyn, though, she disappeared the day I did, two decades ago. I went north, and she went south to Florida, and that’s the last I heard of her. I’m not sure whether I should try to make contact with either of them. What if someone is trying to smoke us out, cause us to make mistakes? No, it’s best to keep to myself. Besides, it could all still be a coincidence, couldn’t it? I once read an article about identical twin brothers separated at birth. They never even knew about each other, yet they married women with the same names and gave their firstborn children and dogs the same names.
It’s not impossible.
That’s what I keep telling myself.
But today I need to do a little more digging, a little more research—though not from my laptop this time. Everything we do in today’s world leaves an electronic footprint, and one can never be too careful.
My eyes are alert, scanning face after face as I walk to the library. Three kids fresh out of high school kick around a hacky sack to the left, a redhead twirling her hair and making googly eyes at a nice-looking guy with broad shoulders sits on a bench to the right—he’s too busy to notice, checking out the ass of every woman who passes. Before last week, I wouldn’t have seen a single face, but suddenly everyone is a suspect to rule out.