She knew that Dash would not want her to go walking alone. Her boyfriend. She still could not seem to wrap her head around that fact. On Thursday, they'd been arguing about one thing or another; on Friday, they were sneaking kisses in between public arguments, much to their mutual surprise.
Today? Today was a whole different world. She felt as if she were on another planet. Was it called Bizarro World when Superman went to that planet where everything worked in the opposite way than how it should? She'd have to ask Dash about that.
God, now she was thinking about superheroes. She groaned out loud. I'm doomed, she thought.
She meandered under Newcastle Pier and held on to the piling while she jumped with the waves, her jeans rolled up to her knees. The water was frigid, but she found it invigorating. The word "doomed" barely escaped her lips when her day started to go sideways.
"Excuse me, ma'am?"
Harper turned around and saw it was the woman who had walked by her earlier with the dog. Her heavily-made up eyes were wide, and she looked scared and anxious.
Harper exhaled, grabbing the spot on her chest closest to her heart. She'd just been thinking about how safe she felt on the beach; she'd hardly been expecting a stranger to walk right up behind her.
"Can I help you?"
"My dog. Have you seen her?"
Confused, Harper glanced around up and down the beach.
"You had a man with you earlier, in the blue jacket?"
The woman nodded. "Yeah, he went and looked for Sheba that way." She pointed up toward the north end. "You didn't see her run past this way, did you?"
Harper shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't."
"Darn," the woman said. She absently pushed up the sleeves of her sparkly cowl-necked sweater, and Harper got a flash of two things: a silver cuff bracelet with words stamped on it, and bruising on the woman's forearm.
"Do you have a phone number I can call? In case I see your Sheba?" Harper asked.
The woman shook her head and bit her lip. "He…that man…has my phone. He likes to, um, keep track of who texts me."
Harper didn't respond at first, only raised her eyebrows in alarm.
The woman shrugged, and her painted ruby lips smirked shyly. "Overprotective boyfriends, what are you gonna do, right?"
Harper let those words hang in the air for a few beats while she processed what was going on.
She blew out a breath. The poor thing needed help.
"Do you need a safe place to go to?" Harper pressed.
The woman looked around nervously.
"I… okay, here's the truth… I'm so sorry to bother you with this, but my sister said I could stay with her."
Harper nodded. "Good. You should do that."
She looked around sheepishly. "I'm, like, scared to drive there myself, though. He put this tracker thing on the car." A single tear leaked from the outer corner of the woman's eye, smudging her heavy black eyeliner. "I'm sorry," she said, casting her eyes down and dabbing her tear away with the back of her hand. Harper caught a closer glimpse of the bracelet and saw by the lettering it was Tiffany. Harper's mind automatically filled in the gaps of the story: some rich, controlling boyfriend thinks that showering his girlfriend in expensive jewelry gives him the right to yank her around violently —or worse— and monitor her every move.
Harper didn't need to hear any more. She pulled her phone out of her bag. "Oh, honey. Okay. Here, use my phone; call your sister."
Harper handed the woman her phone and watched as she made a call. She held her breath. Maybe it was a bad idea to let someone handle her phone like that, but she'd handed it back to her.
"He went up to the woods over there to take the dog to the bathroom. If you drop me off at my sister's house, I'll give you gas money."
Harper jumped into action. "Let's go."
She didn't even stop to get her shoes.
As the two women walked up the beach toward the public parking lot, Harper kept an eye out for the man. She didn't know what finally convinced the woman to reach out for help, but she was glad she had done it.
"Sure you don't wanna take off your boots? Might help you walk a little faster," Harper suggested. "I'm Harper, by the way."
The woman shook her head and laughed. "I'm sure. It's so cold. You can call me Pearl."
"That's a lovely name," Harper remarked, decided it was best to make small talk instead of asking probing questions that might spook the woman into changing her mind about getting help.
"Thanks," Pearl said. "He told me not to ... I mean, she, my sister, told me not to use my real name because anybody who, uh, helps me, would be, like, bullied into telling him where I was. Or something like that.
Harper tried to make sense of the woman's nervous babbling, which spilled out faster and faster as they approached the car. Well, of course, she's scared, Harper told herself. Who wouldn't be after asking a stranger for help?
When they reached the car, Pearl gave her an address.
"Okay, great, lemme just find the directions," Harper said, quickly typing in the address into the map all on her phone. The address was on a street not far from there but in one of the more desolate areas in the warehouse district. Then she noticed that somehow, the location services on her phone had been turned off.
"That's weird," she muttered, getting an odd feeling in her stomach.
"Oh, it's real easy," Pearl said hurriedly. "I'll just tell you how to get there."
Something about that made Harper pause. "Hang on," Harper said. "Let me just turn on—"
Pearl gripped Harper's wrist in a panic. "Oh my god he's back. He's by my car; he's looking for me. We have to go!"
Her heart hammering in her chest, Harper set aside her confusion, dropped her phone to her floorboards, locked her
