Page 93 of Love Me Fierce

“Not at all,” I say, tucking my notebook and pen back into my breast pocket.

Zach leads up the carpeted stairs, the middle ones squeaking with our weight. I let my palm glide up the cool, smooth banister as I ascend, thinking through this new angle. If only Ted had thought to keep that flyer.

Why had Marin been so eager to throw it away? Maybe because the person who orchestrated the research study was courting her, and their budding relationship was taboo?

That’s a stretch, but right now, my mind is humming a hundred miles an hour.

Marin’s room is the second one on the right. The white door with the fuzzy residue from stickers she likely decorated with when she was younger is another sad reminder of the carefree girl she once was. The sometimes-silly older sister who made a snowman with her little brother even though she knew it would soon melt.

The missing stickers reminds me that she was growing up, becoming an adult. Learning to make choices. Who to trust and who might not be worthy of it.

Zach stands in the middle of the room, his arms loose at his sides. “Nothing’s changed.”

I make sure my body cam is recording and step into the room. After I state our location, the date and time, I take in the bulletin board above the small desk, the queen bed no one has slept in since Marin failed to come home that night, the bookshelf packed with fantasy and graphic novels and a few textbooks, the highboy antique dresser Ashley stripped and painted white before Marin was born. The big picture window streaked with rain.

“You think she kept the box that the pendant came in?” I ask Zach while we glove up.

“Maybe.”

We’re quiet as we do another full search of Marin’s bedroom, being careful not to disturb the pristine order. I check the closet, running my gloved hands down all of the sweaters, feeling for bulges in the pockets, listening for the crinkle of paper. I check each shoe, shaking them before sliding my fingers into the toes. I use the flashlight on my phone to check every corner of the top shelf, running my hand into the corners, looking for voids that could conceal something.

While Zach takes the desk drawers, I go through all the books, flipping their pages, looking for anything Marin may have kept there, then the textbooks. I peek behind the bookshelf, but it’s just bareplywood. Zach checks under the mattress. I crawl underneath the bed, using my flashlight to check the slats in the frame.

Zach and I pull the dresser from the wall. He pulls each drawer out as I watch from the back. He gently sifts through the items in the drawers while I shine the flashlight underneath and along the sides. The bottom drawer is almost flush to the floor, but when Zach pulls it out, the depth doesn’t match the shape.

“Hold it.” I get down on my knees and slip one hand under the drawer. Zach’s paused it halfway out, giving me about eight inches of space between the wall and the back panel of the drawer. Underneath it, there’s a void, but it’s empty.

On his knees now too, Zach feels along the inside of the drawer, past pairs of jeans and sweatpants, shorts folded neatly.

My heart is thumping faster, louder, or maybe it’s just the echo in this tiny wedge of a space. “Can you tilt the drawer?” I ask Zach while curling as low to the floor as my inflexible spine will let me.

The drawer tilts maybe ten degrees. I shine my flashlight into the space. There’s a hollow there. And tucked against the front of the drawer are two items, both squarish in shape. A small journal? The box the pendant came in?

I pull out my phone and snap an image.

“Find something?” Zach asks, sounding breathless.

“Yeah. I can’t tell what they are yet. Can you pull the drawer out?” I set my phone to the side.

He wedges the dresser back, scooting on his knees as he goes. “No. It’s got those stoppers on it.”

“I’m gonna push the dresser out,” I say, and shift on my knees, rotating the dresser so it’s perpendicular to the wall. I scrunch down again, pressing my cheek to the floor and shining my light into the narrow space again. My big hand barely fits into it. I take another photo.

“Like a false bottom,” Zach says, knocking on the bottom of the drawer. “Only it gets accessed from the back, not from here. There’s no handle or anything.”

My fingertips brush one of the objects deep into the space. I spin it sideways, then pinch the corner and drag it out.

“What the hell is that?” Zach asks in a low tone, bracing against the side of the dresser, his eyes locked on small Valentine’s candy box. “Why didn’t we find this before?”

I snap another picture as a cold flush slides down my back. “The important thing is we found it now.” I peek inside the box, but it’s empty.

I set aside the box then hand my phone to Zach so I can reach back into the void under the drawer. I think I know what else is in there.

I pinch it between my fingers and slide it into my gloved palm.

It’s a phone.

Chapter Twenty-Six

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