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He has issues with you and Remy, she wrote,maybe every man he doesn’t compare favorably to.
Your safety is more important than how he feels about me. I’m worried about that stuff in the closet. Maybe it does belong to him. We know he was in love with Lyssa. It’d be like him to keep that photograph.
True. I don’t want to drag it out again, but I’ve been thinking that maybe I should take pictures of all of it, not just Lyssa’s photograph, in case something ever comes of it—or happens to it.
That would probably be smart. A little documentation couldn’t hurt.
And tonight would be her last chance to do it.
Okay, she wrote,but don’t go anywhere. It creeps me out to have to touch it again.
I’ll be right here.
Once again listening for Bastian, to determine his whereabouts, she held her breath, but the house was silent. Had he gone to bed while she was texting with Bo?
She hadn’t heard him in the hall...
Maybe he’d finally passed out on the couch downstairs.
Hoping that was the case, she climbed out of bed and crept across the floor. The boxes were still there—she hadn’t moved anything—so she used them once again as the step stool she needed to reach above the shelf.
Putting a hand on the lintel to steady herself, she used the video feature of her camera to show the shelf, Remy’s notebook, the loose panel, and how it came out—and the hole behind it. But when she reached in, planning to pull the duffel bag out for the camera, there was nothing there.
25
Was Bastian some kind of pervert?
He was certainly odd. Bo paced in his bedroom while waiting for Ismay to get back to him. He didn’t like that she was at the cottage alone with Bastian, not with the way things were going. Actually, he’d never liked it. He hated to step in—it really wasn’t his place and risked his job—but who else was going to do it?
Tomorrow she’d be out of the cottage and away from Remy’s brother, he told himself. Surely, she’d be safe until then. But after he received her text, he was no longer so confident.
It’s not there.
Too impatient to bother continuing to write, he called her.
“Hello?” she said, her voice barely audible.
“What do you mean it’s not there?”
“It’s not there,” she reiterated.
“Where could it have gone?”
“Bastian has to have taken it. He’s the only one here.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe he realized the danger of me finding it, since I’m staying in this room. Or maybe all the talk about Lyssa spooked him, and he decided to get rid of it. I don’t know. My mind’s racing.”
So was Bo’s.
“And something else is weird,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m pretty sure a pair of my underwear’s gone missing.”
This was more alarming than all the rest. “Are you kidding me?” he said, leaving out the expletive that nearly wound up in that question.
