Page 96 of The Inmate
We march to the front door, which is hanging on its hinges. This motel is a dive. A man is sitting behind the counter, his eyelids sagging shut, his brown hair long and scraggly. This entire lobby looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a decade. If I sat on the sofa in the room, a big puff of dust would come out of it.
“Help you?” the clerk asks lazily.
“Yes, thank you.” I dig my phone out of my purse and bring up a picture I’ve got of Caleb. Well, it’s Caleb and me. It’s a selfie I took of the two of us, back when I thought he might be the one. I hold it up for the man. “Have you seen this man?”
The clerk barely glances at the photo. “I don’t know. We get a lot of people coming in and out.”
Seth digs out his wallet from his back pocket. He pulls out a couple of bills and slides them across the table. “Do you think you could look again for us?”
The man looks down at the cash on the table. He scoops up the bills and tucks them into his front pocket. Then he leans in to take a better look at my phone.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “Now I recognize him. He was here. On Saturday.”
My heart sinks. That doesn’t help me at all. Caleb already told me he drove here on Saturday. So this only proves that he was telling the truth.
“Did you talk to him?” Seth asks the guy.
He nods. “Yeah, he was checking out.”
I suck in a breath. “Checking out?”
“That’s right. He got a room, I think on Monday night, and he came in here to check out.”
Seth and I exchange looks. There it is. Solid evidence that Caleb is full of it. My boyfriend has been lying to me all week. Except… why?
“Was he with anyone?” Seth asks.
The clerk hesitates. “I’m pretty sure he had a woman staying with him in the room. But I’m not absolutely sure. I try not to pay too much attention. You know? Unless I hear screaming or gunshots, I look the other way.”
A woman?
On a whim, I type the name Dawn Schiff into my search engine. It brings up that awful ID photo of Dawn. I hold up the image. “Was this the woman who was staying with him?”
“It’s possible. She had more hair than that, but it could’ve been a wig. And no glasses. She was skinny as a rail like this woman though.”
Holy crap.
Is it possible Dawn is still alive?
“Did she look like she was being held hostage?” I ask.
The clerk lifts a shoulder. “Didn’t seem like it. She wasn’t tied up or anything. But like I said, I try not to pay too much attention.”
We thank the clerk and get out of the motel. Caleb was definitely here, but it’s obvious he’s long gone. But it doesn’t matter. Caleb isn’t planning to disappear like Dawn did. He’ll show up at work sometime this week, pretending everything is fine. That’s when I’ll confront him with what I know.
“That asshole,” Seth mutters as we get back into the car. “What the hell is he up to?”
“I have no idea.”
“Look what he’s putting you through.” He hits the steering wheel with his palm. “And for what? Why is he doing this?”
I wish I knew.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first.” The sun has dropped in the sky, and his eyes look shiny in the shadows. “I should never have doubted you. I know you wouldn’t steal.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“When I get my hands on Caleb, I’m going to punch him in the nose.”
