by Sara Shepard
Maddox tried to protest, but she’d already marched through the apartment and into the hall. Jeff trailed behind her, his man bun bouncing. Halfway through the door, he turned and glanced back at Maddox, their eyes meeting. There was a look of triumph in Jeff’s eyes.
Maddox rolled his jaw. He didn’t want this to feel like a rejection. He didn’t want to feel any emotion about Seneca at all.
Distraction, distraction, distraction, he chanted to himself. And then he opened his phone and studied the guest list, determined to put her out of his mind.
AS THEY SHUT the door, Seneca realized the pleasant smell inside Gabriel’s condo—a mix of sandalwood and cleaning products, like something a boutique hotel would use—did not extend to the hallway, which reeked of warm beer. Wrinkling her nose, she opened the guest list Gabriel had texted and began to peruse the names. Jeff cleared his throat as they walked down the steps to the first floor. “So…are you and Maddox together?” he asked.
She glanced over her shoulder. “No. Why would you say that?”
Jeff shrugged. “Your auras sort of match, if you know what I mean.”
Seneca felt a knot of guilt. Maddox had looked so crushed when she’d told him that now wasn’t a good time for them to try to be a couple. Had she been too harsh? But Maddox was acting fairly normal now. He seemed over it. Why, then, did she feel like she’d done something wrong?
On the wall leading down the stairs to the pool was a flyer for the Bastille Day party decorated with a large rainbow peace sign on the top. Seneca noted when the party started—should they check it out, or was that a waste of time?
They reached the bottom of the stairs. To the right was the swimming pool, where the party was. To the left was a vacant lot she’d noticed from the terrace, filled with Dumpsters and trash. “Let’s cut through here,” Jeff said, leading her through the pool area, saying it was a shortcut to the beach.
He guided her past a bunch of bistro tables scattered around the pool, and his arm brushed against Seneca’s. She pulled away, giving him an awkward smile. Then her phone beeped. It was Aerin. On our way, it said. Oh, and Barnes isn’t Brett, but there’s something creepy about him all the same.
A shiver ripped through her. She called up the guest list Gabriel had sent them, noting that Barnes’s name was on it. She cleared her throat. “Do you know Barnes Lombardi?” she called out to Jeff.
Now it was Jeff’s turn to stop abruptly, next to the diving board. His face clouded. “Definitely not a fan. He has a major thing for Chelsea.”
“And he was at the party, right?”
Jeff’s eyes widened. “Wait. I remember seeing him around the bonfire. Why? Do you think…”
Seneca felt jumpy. Was Aerin sure he wasn’t Brett? Should she follow up on Barnes herself? Maybe Barnes was involved in the kidnapping in another way.
They continued out of the pool and through another gate. Down the beach was an empty tiki bar and a few volleyball courts. Most of the area was surrounded by police tape, though a few condo residents sat inside blue-and-white-striped cabanas closer to the shore. “That’s where the bonfire was,” Jeff explained, pointing at a circle of logs. “Chelsea and I were right about there when we argued.”
Seneca squinted at the unremarkable stretch of sand. “And then where did she go?”
Jeff turned and gestured to a path through the dunes covered over with tall grass. “This leads all the way to the public parking lot, but you have to cross over a bunch of dunes. It’s kind of a sketchy path, to be honest. Had I been less mad, I would have told her not to take it.”
“Let’s check it out,” Seneca said, starting toward the path.
Jeff stared at her. “But it’s blocked off.”
Seneca shrugged. She didn’t see any cops here now. She started up the embankment, but her strappy sandals shifted in the sand, and she began to slip. Jeff grabbed her hand to steady her.
“Thanks,” Seneca said, pulling away when she had her footing. Her cheeks were warm. Jeff’s touch felt protective and…deliberate. She snuck a peek at him, unsure about his intentions, but Jeff’s head was turned away.
She climbed up the dune, ducked under the police tape, and started down the path. Tall wild reeds jutted up on either side. The path wound behind the houses and was so rutted at times that it dipped low in the earth, concealing a traveler from someone sitting on the beach. Sticks, spiky sand spurs, and spiny weeds littered the path; sometimes the vegetation was so thick on all sides that the tall grasses engulfed her almost completely.
The path spat them out into a wide parking lot that was half-full with cars and golf carts. Seneca ducked under the police tape once more and shook some sand out of her shoes. “This is where they found the blood.” Jeff pointed at a spot adjacent to a bike rack. If Seneca squinted, she could see the outlines of a dark splotch there. “Maybe there was a struggle. But there’s no blood anywhere else.”
Seneca scanned the lot, noting there were no surveillance cameras that could have recorded what might have happened here, so she had to try to piece it together from evidence and conjecture. The blood was in the parking lot, which meant Brett had accosted Chelsea here and not on the sidewalk by the street. So he’d gotten to the parking lot as quickly as Chelsea had. Maybe he was waiting here for her all along? But Brett hinted on CNC that he’d overheard the argument. Had he followed her right afterward, grabbing her in the reeds?
She looked at Jeff. “Is it possible someone overheard you guys talking at the bonfire, jumped up, and followed right behind her?”
Jeff narrowed his eyes. “It’s possible. I did grab a beer, but I feel like I would have seen someone go past.”
Seneca gritted her teeth. “Is there another way to get to the parking lot that’s just as quick?”
“You could go back through the beach club, but it takes much longer.”
Seneca made a mental note to question people at the party if they’d seen anyone running like hell through the beach club, but she doubted that was the answer. Brett hadn’t gone that way. It was too visible.
Then she noticed a large pipe next to the steps to the beach. “What’s that?”
She padded over and peered in. The pipe was hollow and filled with a shallow pool of slimy-looking water. It pointed straight out to the beach. “Drainage,” Jeff said. “Something to do with erosion. I’m not sure.”
Seneca tapped her lip. “Do you know where this comes out?”
“I think near the bonfire.”
Her heart quickened. “Maybe this is how he got to the parking lot so quickly.”
Jeff made a face. “People don’t crawl through those things. Could a person even fit inside?”
Seneca ducked down and peered into the tube. She could just fit. If Brett had climbed through here, it meant he’d slimmed down since they’d last seen him. She shut her eyes, adjusting her mental picture of the person they were looking for. It felt like another piece to the puzzle.
She glanced around in the darkness. The tube smelled like salt and plastic. The sides were very smooth and slick. If Brett had crawled through this, it was doubtful he’d left evidence behind—even if he had, the ocean water had probably washed it away by now. But maybe she should check it out to be sure….
Jeff pulled her sleeve. “Don’t. Sometimes those things flood. You could get really hurt.”
Seneca’s heart thudded steadily as she stood up. If Brett was at the bonfire, this could have been how he’d gotten to the street without anyone seeing.
She scanned the rest of the lot. “Where did you pass out?”
Jeff pointed to a spot just inside the path, on the sand. “Right about there.”
“I can’t believe no one saw you.” It was secluded, but not that out of the way.
“I know. A lot of kids got picked up in that lot. The beach club driveway is for valet service only—they get really pissy about random cars waiting for passengers.”
Seneca stared out at the ocean. A single head bobbed
on the water, and when a wave came, the man rode it all the way to the shore. “You know, if you had been drugged, the same person who’d done it also could have seen you fall. And then he or she could have positioned your body so that it was hidden in such a way that no one noticed you.”
Jeff’s eyes widened. “You think?”
It certainly sounded like Brett. Seneca tried to picture how Brett had pulled it off. She could buy that he’d planned to spike Jeff’s drink—he’d probably carried crushed-up pills or some such in his pocket in case he needed them. As for positioning Jeff’s body out of sight, was that premeditated, or did he react on the fly? If only they could get a better idea of how that night unfolded. A video or something. Even a picture. Too bad Chelsea didn’t post this on Instagram.
Then something occurred to her. “Wait,” she said. “What about a PhotoCircle?”
Jeff looked at her. “Huh?”
“I’m sure Chelsea wasn’t the only one taking pictures that night. We have everyone’s e-mail addresses and phone numbers on the guest list. We could contact them and ask them to join our PhotoCircle, and they’d upload their pictures from that night. We can say it’s our own initiative to help find Chelsea. A digital search party.” Seneca reached for her mother’s necklace at her throat, which she always did when she was thinking through an idea. It wasn’t there—she didn’t have any tools with her to bend the pendant back into place, and she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to wear something Brett had touched, anyway. “We might be able to fill in some of the blanks. There might even be proof of you passing out in the grass in the background of a photo someone hasn’t yet noticed.”
Jeff’s eyes widened. “Wow.” His mouth quivered. “Thank you.”
Seneca met his eyes, then looked away. He was staring at her so intensely. “It’s no problem,” she mumbled.
“No, seriously. You don’t know what this means to me. To everyone else, I’m enemy number one. But then you believe in me, and it’s just…”
“There’s no reason not to believe in you,” Seneca assured him, giving Jeff a friendly but guarded smile. She wasn’t 100 percent sure, but it seemed like an alarm in her head was going off. Did Jeff like her?
Not wanting to dwell on that, she texted Maddox about the PhotoCircle idea and asked him to start e-mailing people to join. “So,” she said as she finished, “want to head back up to the condo? I wouldn’t mind another glass of lemonade before we leave.”
“Actually?” Jeff’s voice cracked. He suddenly looked a little gray. “Do you mind if we stay out here for a minute more?”
Seneca peered at him worriedly. “You okay?”
“I just need to breathe.” Jeff collapsed on the stone wall alongside the condos. He looked a little peaked, like rehashing all this had physically drained him.
“Sure,” Seneca said softly. After all, she couldn’t just leave Jeff here. And she understood what it meant to be overwhelmed. Hadn’t she felt like this a million times after her mom vanished?
Jeff smiled shakily. “I just want to talk about something else other than Chelsea for a second. Like what about you? Where are you from? I don’t even know. Connecticut?”
“No, my friends are,” Seneca said cautiously. “I’m from Maryland.”
Jeff smiled. “I’ve got a friend who goes to the University of Maryland.”
“I went there, too.”
One eyebrow shot up. “You graduated?”
Seneca leaned on the wall. The stones were rough against her back. “God no. I ended up not going to any of my classes freshman year, so they kicked me out.” She winced. It still felt shitty to say that out loud. “It was a disaster.”
“Really?” Jeff looked astonished. “What are you going to do?”
Seneca sighed. It was a subject she’d avoided thinking about. “Um, I reenrolled, but I’m not psyched about going. I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
Jeff touched her arm. “That sounds really hard.”
At first, she felt a spike of annoyance—she hated pity. But then her shoulders sagged. It was hard. She might as well face that.
“So what’s your lawyer like?” she asked Jeff, deciding to change the subject.
Jeff wrinkled his nose. “Totally unfriendly.”
“Is he okay with you helping us look into this?”
Jeff stared at a line of seagulls flapping overhead. “He’d rather I didn’t, but he says as long as I don’t do anything crazy or dangerous—or, like, tamper with any evidence—I’m not breaking any laws.” He fiddled with the Fitbit on his wrist, unhooking it and letting it fall to his lap. Then he gave Seneca a cagey look. “You believe I didn’t hurt Chelsea, right?”
“Of course!” Seneca cried, startled at the question.
Jeff set his jaw. “I’m not so sure about Maddox.”
“Maddox…well, he’s…” Seneca brushed sand off her thighs. “He’ll come around.”
The wind gusted. A kite whirled on the beach, and they watched it for a moment. Seneca could feel Jeff looking at her, maybe waiting for a clue about Maddox. That same alarm in her head beeped. She decided to steer the conversation again. “What about your family?” she asked. “Is it just you and Marcus?”
“I have a sister, too, but she’s a flight attendant,” Jeff said. “I barely see her. My parents are cool, though. And my brother and I are really close. We used to beat on each other as kids, but now we look out for each other.”
“I wish I’d had a sibling,” Seneca admitted. “It got so lonely sometimes.”
“Siblings definitely pull you out of your own freaky head. When Chelsea and I grew apart, I was really down. Marcus was a huge help. He forced me to tell him what was going on. It probably prevented me from becoming a total hermit.”
Seneca sighed. “I need a Marcus this summer.”
“Why is that?” Jeff cocked his head.
Seneca thought about the map on the inside of her closet. The obsessive Brett stalking she’d done on Case Not Closed. The notebooks she’d filled with theories about who he was and what he’d done. The only people she’d talked to this summer were Brian at the parking authority—and that was because she had to—and Madison, Aerin, and Maddox, though those weren’t exactly deep conversations.
And what did she have to show for it? She hadn’t found Brett. He’d found them. Maybe she’d hid from the world because it was easier. But it was so lonely, too. All of a sudden, she thought of Maddox’s e-mails to her. And how he’d said how much he was thinking about her this summer. Had she pushed him away? Had that been a mistake?
She took a deep breath. “It just gets hard sometimes. About my mom.”
Jeff’s face fell. “I’m so, so sorry. I can’t even imagine.” After a beat, he slid closer and gave her a hug. Seneca shut her eyes, smelling his coconut sunscreen. His bicep was hard against her shoulder.
They pulled back, and he gazed at her tenderly. A gentle breeze lifted the ends of her hair. Jeff inched his face closer, and she knew what he wanted next. She ducked her head, feeling awkward. “Um,” she said.
Something caught her attention above. A tall, athletically built figure peered at them from one of the condo decks. It was almost certainly Maddox. Did he see her? Seneca’s stomach turned over, and she pressed her lips closed and jerked away.
“I don’t…” She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “We should probably check on everyone.”
Jeff shot to his feet. “Um, yeah. Of course.”
He hurried away as though escaping a fire. Seneca almost stepped on his Fitbit—he’d dropped it in his haste to get away. She sighed and slipped it into her bag. She felt so exhausted all of a sudden. So…heavy, like everything in the world was too complicated to sort out. As she headed back along the creepy path to the condos, she concentrated only on her footsteps through the soft sand. Moments after she stepped, the wind whisked away the evidence, as if she’d never been there at all.
MADDOX WAS A third of the way through the guest
list—e-mailing leads, inviting people to the PhotoCircle, cross-referencing faces on Instagram—when he heard someone pounding on the condo door. His sister and Aerin stood on the other side. He opened it without speaking, but the frustration was all over his face. “What’s wrong with you?” Madison snapped instantly, her eyebrows raised in suspicion.
“Nothing,” Maddox snapped. “I just can’t believe how hard it is to find a guy we already know.” It was like that dream he sometimes had where he was winning a cross-country race, the finish line in view, and suddenly, his legs turned to Lego blocks. He no longer had knees. His limbs were brittle; one by one they fell off. Racers passed him, and he could do nothing about it, just lying there on the ground, a Lego torso and head.
After oohing and aahing over Gabriel’s condo—“Can I marry this guy? He has a Vitamix!”—Madison and Aerin padded to the terrace. Madison spied Seneca and Jeff against the wall of that parking lot immediately, then whipped around and looked at Maddox with wide eyes.
Maddox balled his fist. “She’s just trying to crack the case. Jeff has a lot of intel.”
Madison sipped her drink, which smelled more like vanilla flavoring than coffee. “Okay,” she said, watching him carefully.
Seething, Maddox grabbed his phone and started tapping. “A little help here? This guest list is mad long.” The last thing he wanted was for Madison to feel sorry for him. He’d successfully managed not to think about Seneca for forty-five minutes. He didn’t want to break that streak now.
Maddox, Madison, and Aerin sat down at the table on Gabriel’s deck and kept searching Instagram, the guest lists, and the PhotoCircle Seneca had just set up. One by one, people joined the photo group, uploading their pictures to the public circle. Maddox stared at the app, his gaze flicking through pictures of strangers’ faces. Kids were dancing, laughing, posing, trying to look sexy. People splashed in the shallow end in their clothes. A guy with a scruffy goatee named Rob Dalton had posted a picture of Jeff walking a slackline tied to two trees. Next to him was Chelsea, head down, scrolling through her phone. Maddox tried to zoom in on her screen—what was she looking at that was so interesting?—but it was too blurry. He searched for an image of Barnes Lombardi, who Madison had told him was a total creeper, but Madison couldn’t spot him in any of the pictures.
