Still though; there was this tingling in my gut that this was the guy.
I narrowed my eyes as I took down his information. He’d been taken in as a minor in possession before, arrested with…
I blinked a few times, wondering if I was hallucinating. The name of the person he’d been arrested with blazed in my mind, glimmering on the screen in front of me.
Tim Carr.
* * *
I didn’t feel tired at all now that I had a lead. Making myself a cup of coffee, I watched as the sun rose, filling the kitchen with the glorious morning light.
There were two hours that I had to myself, to torture myself with thoughts of Luke. He’d been in this kitchen just a few days ago, when we’d made breakfast together and had that wonderful day. I wondered what he was doing now.
Probably getting ready for class.
Even though my mind knew that was the most logical answer, it didn’t stop me from picturing him going to a coffee shop to meet with his ex or something.
Finally, after I’d drained two and a half cups of black coffee and throughout about what Luke might be doing to exhaustion, it was eight in the morning.
Mrs. Carr would be awake now.
“Hello?” she answered on the phone, her voice vibrating with worry.
“Hi Mrs. Carr, how are you doing this morning?”
“What’s Tim done now?” she asked, skipping right over the pleasantries.
“Nothing, ma’am. I was just calling you because I’m investigating a past case. Would you mind answering a few questions for me?”
I could practically hear it as she relaxed. “Oh— oh alright.”
With my laptop open in front of me, I scanned the file, reading the name again. “Is your son friends with someone named Kirk Vaughn?”
She tutted. “Oh, Kirk. Let me tell you about him,” she began, taking in a huge breath as she launched into a story. “He was riff-raff in our old neighborhood. Used to come by the house a lot, I never liked him. Older than Tim, too. Stole his toys and took them home when they were kids.”
“Mhm,” I said, scribbling down some notes on a pad next to me. I needed every bit of information about this guy.
“When Tim got in trouble for stealing at a store, he tried to feed me this story about how he’d done it alone. I kept asking him who he’d been with before it, and found out he’d been at Kirk’s house,” she said, a sense of being slighted permeating her tone. “Even someone with half a brain could put two and two together; I could see that this trashy kid was corrupting my son…”
I scowled. Everyone in the police department knew that Tim had been rotten since he was a kid, with or without the help of this Kirk guy.
“I told Tim that he couldn’t be friends with Kirk anymore. I’d met Kirk’s mom a few times… she was so trashy.”
“I bet she was,” I offered sympathetically, trying to redirect the conversation. “Does Kirk go to school around here?”
She paused, thinking.
My heart quickened when she spoke.
“Yeah, he’s already in college, I think. Yeah, Tim mentioned that he’s going to that local college around here. Trying to get a degree in pre-law.” She tutted indignantly. “Can you believe that?”
I thanked her for her time, and reassured her that she was a wonderful citizen to help out the police like this.
She brightened right up, hoped that I would have a nice day, and then tried to launch into another story. But I told her I needed to head into the office, and our conversation was over.
Once I’d hung up the phone, I glanced at the pad next to my computer. It was filled with my barely-legible writing and a shaky-looking maze pattern in the margins. One note was circled three times: Pre-law.
I had a name, and now I had a major. With this information, I could probably find out his class schedule, and then follow him around.
Then I stopped myself, recognizing this pattern of thoughts. I was getting obsessive, this wasn’t healthy. I was operating on nearly no sleep and I had to go into work in a few hours.
I was a mess, fueled by the paranoia that Luke was going to leave me and go back to his ex.
Then a text arrived from him like a message in a bottle: “Good morning handsome!”
I relaxed and began typing a response.
I was being crazy; I needed to chill out. This wasn’t healthy of me, and I knew that I was just blowing things out of proportion in my mind because of what had happened with Peter. I followed the same patterns when I was with Brian because of it: I was clinging so tightly to him, afraid that he would slip away from me.
Letting out a steady exhale, I made peace with the fact that if I wanted to keep Luke, I needed to give him space.
As soon as I was about to send a response to him, another text came in from him:
“Just so you know, I’m meeting with my ex this morning. He wants to apologize.”
25
Luke
I walked through the doors of the coffee shop, my heart racing.
There, sitting at one of the tables in the back, was the face that had haunted my nightmares for the past few months:
Kirk.
Though, there was something different about him. Seeing him in person, he was less threatening and monstrous as he had seemed in my head.
He turned to me, his brown eyes filled with a nervousness that didn’t fit with the memories I had of him.
He was scared.
I didn’t bother getting a coffee; I knew this would be quick.
“Hi,” he said as I sat down across from him.
Even his voice sounded less scary and intimidating than I remembered.
“Hi,” I echoed, fixing my gaze on him.
I’d imagined this moment so many times in my mind since
