Page 55 of Smith

I eyed my phone on the counter next to Kira’s laptop and snatched it up to see I had two missed calls. One from my dad, one from the place where I’d ordered the bathroom vanities. The design center would have to wait. My dad would give me an hour to call him back before he’d go into full blown Daddy Bear and call incessantly until I answered.

“Do you mind if I call my dad back?” I asked.

“No, go for it. We were getting ready to head out,” Kira said as she slid off the stool.

After that, she shocked the shit out of me by pulling me into a hug.

“I programmed my number into your phone and called myself so I have your number.”

She’d programed her number into mylockedphone.

As soon as she released me I turned and shouted, “Jonas!”

“What can I say?” he yelled back. “I like living on the wild side!”

I rolled my eyes hoping Smith punched Jonas in the gut for screwing with my phone again when bizarrely, strangely, so out-of-the-blue I don’t know what made me think about it, except that I’d used my personal cell, not the one I used for taking pictures and quick videos of my work, and the thought smacked me in the face.

I didn’t bother looking through my phone to look at the picture I knew I’d taken.

Instead, I shoved my cell in my pocket and jogged out of the kitchen, muttering, “Be back.”

I heard footsteps behind me but didn’t stop until I was in the bedroom—not the one I was demolishing for the closet-slash-bathroom, the one next to it with the stain on the floor. I went straight to the closet and stared at the bottom right corner. There hadn’t been carpet in any of the closets. It was weird but all the rooms had exposed wood floors in the closets.

“Do you have a pocketknife?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Cooper produced a knife and held it out me, smartly not inquiring if I knew how to use it.

I slid the safety off and flicked open the knife before I bent to my knees and scooted farther into the closet.

“What’s going on?” I heard Smith ask.

“I remembered something,” I answered, and wedged the tip of the knife between the small crack between the boards.

“What’d you remember?”

I was too busy trying not to break the tip of Cooper’s knife to answer Smith. When I could pry the board up I sat back and looked over my shoulder.

“I can’t get the board up with the knife. I need a?—”

“Aria! What did you remember?”

I used the knife to point to the boards and explained, “When I was doing a walkthrough before I started work, I noticed some of the boards in this closet needed to be nailed down. I didn’t think anything about it and forgot until just now. But what if something’s under these boards and that’s why they’re wonky?”

Now that I said it out loud, it was kind of embarrassing. Not me forgetting to nail the boards, but the flooring was old. Boards twist if they’re not installed properly, and I was probably making something out of nothing. Especially since we hadn’t found anything in the other room and the bottom three feet of drywall had been cut out.

I knew that was Smith’s doing, and I appreciated the effort. But now the remaining drywall would have to be removed as well in case there was something hidden higher up.

“I’ll grab the crowbar from the other room.”

Smith disappeared into the hallway. I closed Cooper’s knife and handed it back to him.

“Three rows,” he noted.

“Could be twisting.”

“That’s not twisting. Someone pulled those rows up and didn’t fully nail them down.”

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