Page 99 of Missing White Woman

She didn’t hear me, too busy looking past the camera at the street. “No. Don’t stop. Gun it.” There was a pause, then she glanced down at me, disappointed. “Kara stopped at a yellow.”

“You hear what I said?”

“Yep. The woman is dangerous.”

But it was obvious that dangerous to her was reserved for movies and true-crime podcasts. And it had never crossed her mind she could be the subject of one of them. The world was a safe place for her—and I wanted it to stay like that. So I tried a different tack. “What’s the address?”

I’d call the cops as soon as I had it. Beg them to send someone over.

“We’re here!”

I tried again. “This is a horrible idea. Stay in the car. Call the police.”

But she just opened the door. “Gotta go.”

She hung up, booting me back to our IG DMs. I called her back, but it just rang until finally Instagram told me to give it up. She wasn’t going to answer.

Crap.

I wasn’t Adore. I didn’t know what to do. Had no idea how to handle this—the situation and the guilt that I’d sent two naive young women to confront a killer. I hadn’t been thinking when I did that Live. I already regretted it. This time I’d deserve all the hate and hashtags.

I tried them again and still got ignored. So I DMed. Please don’t go to that house.

It wasn’t even marked seen.

Then I remembered why she was doing this: the Live stream.

I went to her profile. Finally found the name of the woman I had put in danger. Layton. Sure enough, the word “Live” was in small letters under a profile pic of her enhanced by both makeup and filters. I clicked. Layton had the camera flipped as another thin, long-haired brunette walked ahead of her, the door I recognized from the photo in the distance. They were indeed there.

There were only nine people watching. I commented.

Stop. Please head back.

But Layton wasn’t even looking at the screen. “We’re two seconds away from finding the woman who killed Janelle Beckett. And I bet you’re wondering how we know. Well, you probably know Kara does DoorDash. She’s been to this place a couple of times, including last night!”

A voice spoke from off camera as they made their way up a short walkway to what looked like a row house, but there were a billion of those in Jersey City. “Yep,” what had to be Kara said. “And I only remember her because she used the same name as my mom and she’s a horrible tipper.”

They got to the first step. “Of course she is.” Layton didn’t sound surprised.

I pulled my phone closer to my face. Maybe I could make out a house number or some landmark. Anything to give to the police I was finally willing to call.

But there was nothing.

Instead, I watched Kara press her face against the window next to the door, both hands cupping her eyes for a better look.

“You see her?” If Layton’s voice got any higher, only dogs would be able to hear her.

Kara turned around dramatically and just stared directly at the camera. And I found myself holding my breath. Please don’t ring the doorbell. Just go. Please just go.

Finally, she spoke. “No one’s in there. She’s gone.”

The tension instantly lifted, bringing my shoulders and the sides of my mouth with it. I’d never thought I would be happy Janelle was nowhere to be found.

My first thought was another lecture, but it’d be nowhere near as effective via comment as in person. Even if I used all caps. Instead, I just left the Live. It took fifteen minutes for my brain to focus on anything but my breathing. The inhales sharper than my uncle dressed for our last family cookout. It was almost an hour before I got my breath back right—and that’s when I realized something crucial.

She’d stayed in town. Holed up in much nicer digs than I was and probably ordering better food too, but she was still in Jersey City. That alone made me think it was indeed Janelle. I’d had a lot of experience recently with not wanting to be recognized.

Janelle should’ve been long gone, just like I wanted to be. But I’d been forced to stay. She probably had been too. And it couldn’t be because the police were making her. It had to be something else. I could think of only one thing that could keep someone from leaving a town where everyone was looking for them.

---