I want to reach down and pick it up. But I stop myself. Instead, I take a picture of it, send it to myself just to be sure, then look around more carefully. Walking backward across the lot, I scan the back wall of the building. I catch sight of the emergency exit at the end of the hallway. The door the hotel staff assumed Lydia walked through to escape her bill.
She walked through it. But it was to escape a lock. The staff and the police had the lingering question of how Lydia got through the locked door to the abandoned section of the hotel, to begin with. But she didn't. She walked out of the emergency door and came around here. Something happened to her right here. Enough to knock her earbud out and crush it.
Now the question isn't how she got down to the abandoned area, but why? And who was waiting for her at this door?
I take a few more pictures, then slip back into the hotel using the emergency exit rather than going back to the kitchen. I've nearly made it back through the lobby when I hear a voice that makes my skin crawl.
“What are you doing here?” Rachel Duprey asks me angrily.
“I don't think that's any concern of yours,” I say.
She tosses her head and lets out a sarcastic laugh. “No concern of mine? You're slithering around here like that woman, trying to find more ways to make a lousy buck off my father's ruined reputation.”
“I'm an FBI agent, not a tabloid reporter,” I tell her. “I’m investigating the scene of a crime.”
“What crime?” Rachel asks. “You're not talking about Lydia Walsh? She gets drunk and wanders off into an area of the hotel she's not supposed to be in, and somehow that's a crime? Who committed it? The bartender who served her?”
“She didn't get in that freezer by herself,” I snap. “Just like Lindsey Granger didn't walk away from here by herself.”
I shouldn’t have said that part, but I couldn’t resist.
“That's enough,” Rachel snaps. “I'm done with this. I'm done with you and every other slimy person who delights in making my father seem like a bad man and continuing to degrade him even a decade after his death. I came here to warn the hotel not to sensationalize my father anymore. And I'm going to extend the same warning to you. Don't cross me again.”
“You do realize a threat against a federal agent is against the law,” I tell her thinly. “And unless you want to find yourself with a charge of obstruction of justice on top of that, I suggest you leave. Now.”
She draws in a breath and rolls her shoulders back. Without another word, she spins around and stomps away on sensible nude-color heels that are far too loud against the polished floor of the lobby.
For the next two days, I wait. Eric is researching for me, trying to find anything he can about Lindsey Granger. I've asked him for one very specific phrase, and I hope he can come through. It would be a bit of a miracle, but I can always hope.
That hope is starting to slip away, just a touch on the third morning, right before my phone rings.
“Check your email,” Eric says.
“You got it?” I ask.
“Got it,” he says. “Turns out there were some conscientious police and FBI at the time. Or pack rats. Whichever way you want to look at it.”
“I'm just going to go with, ‘You are amazing!’” I tell him. “Thank you so much.”
“See you for Thanksgiving?” he asks.
“Hopefully sooner than that,” I say. “Tell Bellamy hi.”
I open my email and pull up the old surveillance footage Eric was able to unearth. It's grainy, not a smooth, ongoing recording. But it's enough. I watch Lindsey Granger walk through the hotel, following almost the same path as Lydia the day she died, and as I did the other day. She is more fluid, more confident. She doesn't dip into the side hallways or talk to anybody. She walks through the hallways to the section of the hotel now abandoned but then alive with events and parties.
And was never seen again.
According to reports, there were some sightings of her in the years to come. The most prevalent information showed she had done exactly as Rachel told me. Left with her tail between her legs and started a new life. That became the accepted idea among those who had vilified Michael Duprey. And he went on to do big things.
After, of course, moving to a quiet little place in Salt Valley with his wife to get out of the limelight and enjoy a simpler life. Only to be struck down in a brutal, random act of violence that cut short his promising, glowing life.
I don't believe that for an instant.
Chapter Forty
“Emma,” Sam says, rushing into the room.
“Hey, babe,” I smile, feeling more optimistic than I have in a while. “What are you doing here? I didn't think you were coming back until later.”
I go to give him a kiss, but I see the look on his face and stop.
“What's wrong?”
“Have you talked to Dean?” he asks.
“No, what's wrong?”
The door opens, and Dean rushes in.
“Is he here?” Dean asks.
“Is who here?” I ask.
He looks frantic, on the edge of completely falling apart.
“Xavier,” he says. “I can't find him.”
“What do you mean you can't find him?”
“I can't find him,” Dean repeats. “When I woke up this morning, he was there. Just like he always is. Then I went to have a phone call with one of my clients, and when I came back out, he was gone. I looked all over the house, in the garage, everywhere. He's not there. So, I thought I would come look here. I still have my room here, just in case, so I thought maybe he had come to just have some time to himself.”
“He doesn't drive, Dean.”
“I know,” he says. “But he had to have
