Page 20 of Safe
I checked out of the hotel and sped over to our old apartment while I tried to calculate what I had missed. Her car was still parked outside, and mine was right where I’d left it. I drove past the police station—Alex’s car was there. If Danielle had left, there was no way she’d done it on her own, and she definitely hadn’t left with Alex. The real question was, who had been with Alex? Thomas mentioned he saw Alex and another man bring her dinner, and then only Alex left.
With Alex at work, it was too easy for me to check out his house. Not long after leaving the police station, I pulled up in front of Alex’s place. There wasn’t a single car in the driveway. If Danielle was inside, chances were good she’d be alone. I parked by the curb, glanced around to make sure no one was watching,rounded the corner of the house, slipped past the gate, and headed toward the back door. Despite Alex being a detective, it was almost laughable how fast I took my knife out and popped open the lock. The deadbolt hadn’t even been turned.
Inside, the house was silent. Still, I moved slow, with intention, from room to room, checking each bedroom just to be sure.
There was nothing out of place in the guest room, no trace of anyone having been there. Next, I tried the room I assumed belonged to Alex’s roommate. At first glance, everything looked normal, as if nothing had changed for months. But Thomas remembered two people going into the hospital that night, and only Alex coming out. Driven by suspicion, I began to rummage through the dresser. The top drawer was empty. So were the next two. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to connect in my mind, the picture shifting as I tried to figure out where Danielle had gone. Would Alex really trust his roommate with her, or was there something else I was missing?
Why would all this guy’s clothes be gone, but nothing else?
I decided to check Alex’s room just in case, but there was no sign of Danielle, and all his clothes were still there. Wherever Danielle was, it was obvious Alex wasn’t the one watching her. It had to be the roommate. Nothing else made sense. There was just one problem. I didn’t have the slightest idea what this guy looked like. I didn’t know his name, where he came from, where he worked, nothing. I’d never met him.
Realizing I wouldn’t find anything here—and knowing I was pushing my luck just by being in Alex’s house—I finally gave up and slipped back out.
I drove around for another hour, racking my brain as I tried to figure out my next move. Alex wasn’t stupid. If hehelped Danielle disappear, he wouldn’t leave a single clue. I was running out of options. At this point, I either had to wait for her to make a mistake or find another way to get the information I needed without Alex catching on, which would be nearly impossible. My chances were better with Danielle; she was nowhere near as sharp as Alex.
Eventually, I pulled back into the parking lot of the hotel where Thomas and I were staying and went up to the room. When I walked in, Thomas was sitting there as useless as ever, lying on the bed and watching some bullshit TV show. I would have thought after letting Danielle slip through his fucking butterfingers, he’d be doingsomethingto try and fix it. No, instead, he sat there waiting for me to tell him what to do.
It was getting fucking tiring having to think for him. It had been the same old shit since middle school. He may have been book smart, but God, he was fucking stupid.
“You have work to do,” I told him, pulling out a laptop. “I want a tracker on her accounts. If she’s dumb enough to use her card for anything, I want to know the second she does.”
Thomas sat up, opened the laptop, and started working. It only took him a few minutes to get everything set up so we could monitor her transactions. He was always a genius with computers. When we were younger, I would try to get him to show me how to do this shit on my own, but I think he realized he was more valuable if I couldn’t do any of it myself. Maybe that made him smarter than I gave him credit for.
By the time dinner rolled around, I was pissed off and exhausted. There wasn’t a single clue as to where Danielle had disappeared to, and there had been no activity on her card. The thought that Alex and Danielle might have outsmarted me disgusted me, fueling both my anger and my need to hunt her down. Still, there was no point in trying anything else tonight. Wherever she was, I knew Alex would make sure she stayed putuntil he found me. As long as I stayed careful, I had all the time I needed to track her down. After dinner and a bit of idle talk with Thomas, I crashed.
As soon as the first light peered through the window, I was ready to get moving. Part of me wanted to hit the road immediately and start searching for Danielle, but I was going to have to play it smart if I didn’t want to get caught. Fortunately, I had enough cash to last at least a month without using any credit cards. If I needed more, I could pick up some side jobs along the way. Growing a beard would help hide my face, and changing cars was something I could do quicker than changing clothes. If Alex wanted to find me, I was going to make it really fucking difficult for him.
First, I had to dump Liam’s car if I was going to leave the hotel. I had been driving Thomas’s car around, but getting rid of Liam’s car should throw him off a good bit. Not to mention, send the message that I’d been here the whole time, and he was too stupid to figure it out.
Thomas walked in with a plate of breakfast from the lobby just as I was grabbing my keys and heading for the door.
“Where you going, boss?” he asked.
“I need to ditch Liam’s car. Take it to some lot and ditch it, get a new one, and meet me at the corner of 85 and 355 in an hour. I’m taking yours.”
I grabbed my things and walked out, not looking back.
10. CODY
I felt genuine sympathy for Danielle—more than I’d expected. In the short time I’d known her, I’d never seen her this vulnerable. The pain from being in the car for so long was written all over her face, and I felt nearly useless beside her. I could help with the rehab exercises, sure, but there was nothing I could do to take away the pain itself. All I could do was help her through it, step by step. There were no walking bars here, nothing more than what we had in the room, so I handed her the cane and wrapped her other arm around my neck.
“Just go slow,” I told her. “Do what you can. I’m in no rush.”
She nodded, but couldn’t stop the tears she didn’t want me to see from coming out. I had this sudden urge to take the pain away or tell her she could quit for today, but that wouldn’t help her get better. She needed, for lack of a better word, tough love now. Actually, that was a really shitty term to use, given the amount of “tough” love she’d already had. Regardless, she needed to push through. For about five minutes, she shuffled back and forth across the hotel room—honestly, more than I expected. By the time we finished, she’d stopped crying.
“Does it feel any better?” I asked, helping her lie back down on the bed.
“It’s not as stiff.” She groaned as she pressed her palm to her thigh, massaging the skin just shy of the scar. “How long did I walk?”
“Five minutes. Not bad. Better than yesterday.” She didn’t share my pride in her progress. I couldn’t imagine how itmust feel to be relearning something as basic as walking. I could see how frustrated she was.
“It looks like you’re starting to get some muscle mass back,” I said, hoping to encourage her.
“Yeah, I guess.” Danielle glanced down, scanning the muscle lines, the shape, the symmetry—she was sizing up her progress.
“So, you know what comes next, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, and I said I could do it myself.” She didn’t even let me respond before she started trying to work the muscles in her leg by herself. I wanted to tell her it was going to hurt, and that she wouldn’t just be able to hurt herself enough to do it right, but I also knew how fucking stubborn she was. Not to mention how much she hated me.
