Page 6 of These Cold Strangers

The life I could have had. It will never leave me alone.

My coffee has gone cold. I toss it and get a fresh cup, then plug in my laptop and use my phone, with its secure VPN, for Wi-Fi. I open my browser and type injulia harding marchburg. I am met with multiple articles.

Details are sketchy: basically, everything Simone told me is what the press knows. The police will know more; they always do. I search formissing women marchburgand find another slew of articles—three women over ten years, gone into the ether.

My pulse ticks up, and I feel the pull as strongly as I felt the need to meet with Todd.

There is a story here.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The lunch crowd comes and goes, but I’m lost in the land of missing women, and it’s not until my phone dings with a text that I am pulled from my rabbit hole. The text pops up on my screen. It’s Leslie.

How’s it going? Get your story yet?

No, he didn’t want to talk about it. I’m heading home. Gotta take care of the cat. See you tomorrow.

Are you giving up that fast?

It’s not giving up. He was adamant. He is a good guy. He doesn’t want the attention.

Well, that’s weird. Everyone wants attention. There’s an entire industry making billions of dollars on the concept of 15 minutes of fame.

Not everyone is like you, Leslie. He’s a proper hero, doing his good deed and riding off into the sunset.

That’s your crush talking. Hell, if you won’t pursue it, I’ll come down there and bang on his door. This could be big for you, Addie. Don’t give up. I’ll check on the cat for you.

That pisses me off, and I don’t reply. I pack up my things, mind already back on the missing women. I need to see if the Marchburg police will talk to me, but I’m loath to reach out to them. They aren’t going to be as kind and forgiving as Simone. I mean, think about it. The former suspect in a triplemurder shows up a decade later wanting information on the local women who are missing? Yeah.

It takes the heater on the rental a few minutes to get going, so I sit there, shivering, debating my course of action. I should go back to DC, talk to my editor at the paper, Harold Reston, and tell him about both stories. I’m a freelancer. I need resources. I can’t afford to stay here any longer on my own dime. But the odds of getting Harry to go for two random stories from a small town three hours away? Slim. I need a better strategy.

I need Todd Preis to agree to go on the record about his heroic actions with the old photographer. I get that, and it will springboard me into a bargaining position. Bring an exclusive, an angle on a viral story no one else has, and Harry will have to listen to me.

A light snow begins as I pull to a stop in front of Todd’s house. The light is on in his office, and the plantation shutters are cracked. I can see him, a dark red sweater, the shock of brown hair. He stirs and faces the window. What is he thinking?God, here she is again. Won’t leave me alone—what a sad creature.

WhatamI thinking? He said no. Who am I to go banging on his door again? I can feel him watching me from his desk. He hasn’t gotten to his feet. It’s as if he knows I will pull away soon enough.

So I do. I chicken out and put the car in gear.

This was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I’m doing here, and I don’t have a chance at making a real story, or two, out of the horrors this town has seen. I am never going to get hired on at the paper. I’m a mediocre writer at best. Who do I think I am?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Aweek passes. I settle back into my normal day-to-day. I pitch the missing women story, and, as expected, my editor shakes his head. No hook, he says. Stick with what you know. Stay in your lane, Addison.

Should I tell him I am the hook? That I have a connection to the city, to one of the women? That would involve revealing more of myself to him than I’m willing, but it would get his attention. No. Not yet, anyway.

I write my little column, which feels flat and lonely. I have trouble sleeping. I lay my head on the pillow and think of Todd, sitting in his office, watching to see if I will bother him again, and I am relieved I drove away. Leslie reiterates the solution—give his name to Harry, let him assign a journalist who won’t back down with a single no, and move on. It’s a cop-out, for sure, but it is a resolution, and for someone like me, a woman for whom resolution will never truly exist, it will allow me to move on. But something makes me want to protect him. A tenderness toward a former flame, I suppose.

Marchburg looms large, never far from my thoughts. Those horrible days following my family’s murder are no longer a decade in my past. They are alive and well in my brain. During my waking hours, I am overwhelmed by the regret of not being able to say a proper goodbye, my own particular survivor’s guilt.

And in those small moments when exhaustion turns to sleep and sleep turns to dreams, I struggle to wake myself from the horrors imprinted on my psyche. Dreams that startle me awake, breath catching in my throat as I choke back screams. Dreams of knives and blood. Dreams that are morphing. It is now Todd standing in the living room, a knife in his hand. Todd who scurries away when I stumble, drunk and high, into the house. Todd’s Jeep Wrangler, with the rip in the top, squealing away from the curb, the bloodred paint job black in the early morning darkness.

Why am I dreaming of Todd’s Jeep? Does he still have it? It wasn’t parked in the drive, though I suppose it could have been in his garage. But he’d have to register it, right? If it’s not in his name, perhaps his deceased father’s or his mother’s.

I look halfheartedly for the Jeep’s registration, toggling through the databases without luck.

What are you doing, Addison?

---