Page 49 of I Need You to Read This
But despite her best efforts, she can’t focus. Her mind is still circling with thoughts of Howard and Tom and the young girls and the missing knife. Wondering if there is anything she should do, if there is anything that can be done. Absently Alex pulls the next letter from the bin. She doesn’t pay attention to the lack of writing on the front, the absence of any postmark, as she slides the blade of the letter opener through the fold and withdraws the contents. There are two sheets of paper folded together. The first is clean and white, like a fresh piece of printer paper. It holds only two lines of text, printed like the others in the center of the page.
You aren’t taking me seriously. It seems I need to prove to you that I am not joking.
Alex stops breathing as her fingers grope for the second sheet of paper. It is lined, yellowed slightly with age. Alex unfolds it carefully, her fingers weak with fear. Her brain tries to make sense of the handwriting, fast and sloppy across the page. The letter is written with one of those glitter pens young people like to use. The kind used to love.
Dear Constance,
He’ll be back now at any moment. I know that he’ll be angry. I should be leaving. I should be packing my bags and getting out of the apartment, but instead I’m sitting here, paralyzed and replaying the whole thing in my mind. I should have known better than to think I could outsmart him. It’s impossible. I can’t think the way he does. He has his own logic.
And he knows me so well. He has all of my passageways memorized, places I don’t even know myself, dark corners where he can hide and wait for me. You were wrong about him—
Alex can’t believe what she is looking at. She blinks, holding the paper out away from her as if keeping her distance from it will make it less real. She feels like she might throw up. The words aren’t just familiar. They are her own.
The room spins as she puts down the letter she hasn’t seen in eight long years. She tries to absorb the words she’s been running from for most of her adult life. A new terror takes hold of her as she realizes that the letter in her hand is the only one she had never sent.
Who could possibly have gotten hold of a letter abandoned years ago in an apartment halfway across the country? There is only one other person who knows what Alex went through back in Wickfield. Only one other person who was right there through all of it. The one she’s been hiding from all this time. Her body begins to tremble. The letter can only mean one thing. She’s been found.
FORTY-THREE
The scrape of footsteps in the hallway sends the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck on end. If someone is out there trying to scare her, she wants to know who it is. She launches herself to the door, flinging it open. She catches only the tail end of a shadow moving across the end of the hall, and the stairwell door opening and quickly slamming shut.
She bolts down the hall and pushes the door open into the stairwell. Breathing heavily, she stands still and listens. Nothing. And then just as she is about to turn back, she hears the echo of shoes somewhere below her. She leans over and looks down into the stairwell. She gasps as she sees the flash of a hand, on a railing several floors down. Alex tucks herself back against the wall. There is a voice finally, clear and deep.
“Sorry, I thought I heard someone. Go on,” Howard Demetri says. She listens for another person’s voice, but nothing. He must be on the phone. She stands as still as she can and listens.
“It’s there. It has to be.” His voice is heavy with worry. “Everyone is so damn incompetent. I’m going to go to the beach house to find it myself.”Francis’s house?Alex’s chest tightens. She tiptoes back to the banister, leaning forward, over the edge, trying to hear better. What could he be trying to find at the beach house? His voice becomes lower; she strains to hear him.
“No one has been there in months. It’ll be easy to get in. I don’t think the police ever had the key. Under a garden gnome. It should still be there. I’ll go tonight,” he says decisively. There is a long pause before he speaks again, his voice a low moan. “Goddamn it, how did it come to this?”
Alex makes the mistake of looking straight down into the endless loop of the banister. The blood rushes out of her arms as she closes her eyes, trying to regain her balance. Then she hears him say, “We both know the knife is still there.”
Before she can react to that last horrifying sentence, a click of dress shoes echoes up the marble stairs. Alex moves as quickly as she can, tiptoeing one floor up to the very top landing. There she presses herself against the wall, shuddering at the sound of the hinges scraping open and shut below her.
When the door closes, Alex is left with an image of Francis collapsed in a puddle of blood and Howard Demetri hovering above her.
Her mind buzzes with the potential of catching him there, the knife that he used on Francis in his hand. Or even better, she could find it first—prove what he did to Francis Keen, trap him with all the evidence she needs. When she bursts back into the hallway, Lucy is passing through clutching an iced coffee.
“What’s wrong, Alex?” she says, her face dropping. “Are you okay?”
“No, I—” Alex glances behind her. She pulls Lucy down the hall and into her office, shutting the door behind them. Alex sinks against the door, still feeling shaky.
“What happened?”
Alex looks at her assistant. “I think Howard killed Francis.”
“What?” Lucy’s face goes pale. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he—”
Alex is trembling. She knows she shouldn’t tell her assistant, but she can’t help it. The words come out anyway. “I think he was trying to shut her up. About an affair he had with one of the girls from the mailroom.”
“Oh God, Alex.” Lucy’s eyes are dark and fearful.
“I just heard him talking about a knife. He is planning on going to get it tonight and hiding the evidence.”
“He can’t do that. We can’t let him.”
“Lucy, did you say you had a car?” Alex asks, an idea forming in her mind.
Lucy nods. “I do, yeah. It’s not nice or anything, but it works.”
