Page 99 of The Inmate
I clutch my chest. “Oh my God.”
Caleb is crying now. He buries his face in his palms, his shoulders shaking. It’s at that moment I realize something shocking. CaleblovesDawn. He truly loves her. When he was with me, it was all an act, but he’s not acting now. He’s terrified of losing her.
He pulls his hands away from his face, and his eyes are red and puffy. “Natalie,” he croaks. “You’ve got to help me find her. I’ve been driving around for hours, and I don’t know where she is. Please. You owe me this. You oweher.”
“How could we possibly find her?” I say.
“It’s impossible,” Seth says. “We’ve got to call the police.”
“No.” Caleb’s voice is unwavering, despite his puffy face. “You can’t do that to her. Do you know how much trouble she’ll be in?”
“As much trouble as Natalie was in this week?” Seth retorts.
“Seth, stop.” I raise my eyes to look at Caleb. “Do you have any idea where she could be?”
Caleb looks down at his watch. “If I had to guess, I’d say she has been hiding out near one of the beaches. It’s high tide tonight.” He grimaces. “She probably figures if she drowns herself, she won’t be found for long enough that they won’t be able to place the exact time of death.”
It’s the same thought I had while I was sitting in jail. Wait for high tide, throw myself in the ocean.
“We can find her,” I say. Too bad there are about a million beaches around here, depending on how far she went. What if she’s all the way in Cape Cod? “We need to split up. How far do you think she could’ve gone from here?”
“She took all the cash in my wallet,” Caleb says. “But there wasn’t a lot. Maybe a hundred bucks. So she couldn’t have gotten very far.”
“We’re going to find her,” I say with more authority than I feel. “We’ll stop her before she does anything stupid.”
I hope I’m right. I need to stop Dawn from killing herself. I need to make this right.
ChapterFifty-Eight
The three ofus split up.
I take Wollaston Beach, where I disposed of the pieces of the ceramic turtle the other night. It’s the beach I know best. Seth grumbled about me wandering around the beach by myself at night, but I’ll be fine. I bought a new can of mace for my purse after getting freaked out on Monday night when I arrived at my unlocked house.
Unfortunately, the beach is very large, stretching all the way down the coast. And it’s very, very dark out. I don’t know why it always seems so dark after daylight savings time. I put my high beams on whenever I dare, but I can’t see anything.
Dawn could be anywhere.
For all I know, she’s already drowned herself and we’re too late.
I pull over for a moment to think. I have to be strategic about this, or else it’s like trying to find a grain of sand on this gigantic beach. Dawn isn’t just going to jump into the water and drown. It doesn’t make sense. Her natural instinct will be to kick and flap her arms to save herself. Moreover, her body would quickly be found and if they knew she was alive for a week after her disappearance, it could eliminate me as a suspect. When I had contemplated jumping into the water, I knew there was another element I needed.
Something to weigh me down.
I start driving again, but this time I’m looking for something different. I’m looking for places where they’re doing construction.
After another ten minutes of slowly driving along the coast, I spot it. A construction site, abandoned for the night. Full of bricks and mortar and wooden planks and one other thing.
Cinderblocks.
I park my car and get out. If Dawn raided this construction site for a cinderblock, she couldn’t have gone far from here. Those things areheavy. If my instincts are right, she’s probably somewhere around here. Of course, I’m just guessing. She might not even be at the beach. But I also think she would stay close to where I live, in keeping with her strategy of pinning this whole thing on me.
It’s dark when I get out of my car. There are street lights, but they only illuminate the street. The beach is pitch black.
I turn on the flashlight function on my phone. There’s a pier right around here, and that would be the most logical place for Dawn to jump. That’s what I would’ve done.
The pier is to my left. I took my shoes off the other day, but I leave them on now. I need to be able to make a quick exit. I step into the sand, squinting into the distance, directing my phone at the pier. And then I see it.
A figure hunched over at the very end of the pier.
