What Remains by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-02T18:00:30+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

It isn’t easy to get away, and nearly two days pass after I retrieve the camera from the Ridgeway Shopping Center. Everyone is watching me. Everyone is worried. Mitch is with me in the mornings and evenings. Rowan is with me on the job.

When I’m done at the office, I go straight to the school to pick up the girls. Unless there’s ballet or soccer or a play date, I don’t leave the house once we get home because where would I be going? It would confuse the detail, who wouldn’t know whether to follow me or stay with them. And besides that, Mitch and I agreed to tag team, to be with them at all times when they aren’t at school.

When Mitch gets home, it’s game over. He watches all of us like an eagle tracking field mice. We never leave his sight. Even me. Even after all that’s happened.

I can’t stand not knowing. But I’m patient and I wait until the weekend when I can lie to Mitch about going to the office and lie to Rowan about being at home and when the detail is off duty until after dark.

The texts have been short and carefully planned. He’s gotten control of himself. He sends them only to the burner phone because he knows, somehow, that I haven’t told anyone.

You’re such a naughty girl, keeping secrets . . .

The camera I hid under the seat of the bike caught him. The car was a Ford Focus—a small two-door. He barely fit inside. It was white with Connecticut plates, blending in with all the other cars that day that circled the lot, making that one-way turn around the median to cross in front of the stores, including the Ridgeway Diner.

I ran the plates at the office and contacted the owner. Female. Twenty-nine years old. Recently took a work-from-home job in data entry, so she loans out the car to make extra money. The app she uses is a direct rental service—owner to renter. It operates similar to Craigslist. No middleman. Waivers of all liability required. Everyone on their own to work out insurance and payment, pick up and drop off. But unlike the transaction with the kid who drove the blue truck through the lot that day, this one required the exchange of the keys to the car—which meant the owner met him, face-to-face.

We spoke briefly on the phone. She said he paid cash. She said he wore a baseball cap, jeans, T-shirt, and a red jacket. Casual but neat. Nothing to raise suspicion. He arrived on foot, which meant he must have parked his truck somewhere in the neighborhood and walked to meet her. I asked her if she thought it was strange that she hadn’t noticed how he’d gotten to the house she shared with her mother. She said the renters always came alone and without a vehicle. They usually got a ride or took an Uber. She rented the car out for days at a time.

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