And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Glad that she had answered, Gray explained that she was working a missing persons case. “And Omar Neville’s name came up, but only as a friend. He certainly hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s just that we can’t find someone he knows.”

  Bruce Norwich barked a laugh. “You taking more clients? I haven’t seen Oz in weeks.”

  “He’s in Nevada, isn’t he?”

  “He was supposed to be, but he never showed up. I waited two weeks for him to come, but nope, no Omar. No word from Omar. No nothing from Omar. So I fired him last week—not that he knows that.”

  “He didn’t pick up his last check?” Gray’s face had numbed, and now she couldn’t feel the words vibrating off her lips.

  “Nope. Someone else signed for it.”

  Gray grabbed a pen from the center console and a napkin from the bag. “You know who signed for his check?”

  “Uhh … Lemme look…”

  She closed her eyes as Bruce Norwich flipped through the pages of a ledger. “Here … I found it. So … his wife picked it up. Yeah. Says here, Elyse Miller. You should probably call her—she’ll know where he is.”

  Gray sat in her car, gaping at the cars racing up and down Crenshaw Boulevard. Unblinking. Unmoving. Until: “Who the fuck is Elyse Miller?”

  28

  The aroma from Gray’s bag of soul food trumped whatever musky creature Mrs. Kim was now sautéing behind her apartment door. The hipsters were blasting Macklemore, and “Good Old Days” echoed through the hallway. Gray thought she’d already hated Jessica and Conner at full capacity, but tonight …

  A sticky note had been taped to her door: a delivery down at the security desk. What now? A certified letter from the IRS about being audited? A collections notice from Columbia House Records from 1992?

  Her phone rang.

  “Are you Gray?” a young woman asked.

  Gray said, “Yep, and this is…?”

  The caller took a deep breath, then pushed out, “This is Noelle Lawrence, Isabel’s friend. You talked to my mom this morning.”

  Gray paused in her step, then unlocked her front door. “Hi. Thanks for calling—”

  “Listen. This whole thing with Isabel is just … crazy, and—” A car horn in Noelle’s world honked and honked.

  “Do you know where she is?” Gray dropped the bag of food on the breakfast counter.

  “Yeah. Well … kind of. It’s complicated. She used to have me do some shady shit. Last time I asked, she sent somebody—Oh, fuck. Hold up.”

  Gray said, “Noelle—”

  “Can’t talk right now,” the young woman whispered. “Come to the Grove tomorrow. No, go to … Phillips on Centinela. Like around six. Gotta go.”

  The dial tone hummed in Gray’s ear.

  Down in her building’s lobby, Melvin the guard sat behind the security desk. He had a tiny head and a heart as big as a golden retriever’s. “Something special came for you today.”

  “I have no idea what it could be.”

  “Best kind of surprise.” He took the notification from her, then waddled back to the storage room. A few seconds later, he returned with a crystal vase of lavender roses.

  Gray clutched her neck. “They’re gorgeous. You sure those are for me?”

  “Your name, your roses.”

  From waking up to text messages from Sean to the Hank-hatred that she’d clung to all day … All of that was now shoved off a cliff by the dizzy joy twirling inside of her like Julie Andrews in the Swiss Alps.

  Back in her apartment, the refrigerator’s humming was scratchy, like it had caught a cold. Ignoring it like management had ignored her request for a new fridge, she set the vase on the dining room table.

  The flowers had already made her house into a home. Those flowers warmed up the part of the couch that had rarely hosted another’s rear. Adding to that, the aromas of soul food and gravy now sloshing at the bottom of the plastic bag reminded her of home cooking. Mom Naomi’s meatloaf with that ketchup topping. Mom Twyla’s fried chicken legs with those burn spots here and there.

  Maybe Gray would eat at her tiny—no, intimate—dining room table. Use one of her nice wineglasses, a stemmed one instead of a tumbler. Maybe she’d listen to Luther or Maxwell or that old D’Angelo album she’d played all the time back in the day. Maybe she’d do all of that instead of sitting in her place on the lived-in side of the couch, in front of the television and the Netflix home page.

  She plucked the bouquet’s card from its envelope.

  You take my breath away.

  Typed. No signature.

  Hank—he’d said the same thing to Gray last night. He’d said it again before he’d left her apartment this morning, as the sun kissed the sky.

  How had he guessed that lavender roses were her favorites, in this life and in her last? She took a picture of the arrangement, then texted the former marine. They’re beautiful!!

  Gray moved the vase to the coffee table as ellipses from Hank bubbled on the phone’s screen. She checked the ORO license plate reader app—no alerts—and security video from her doorbell camera—no visitors except for Melvin placing the delivery notice on her door.

  She hadn’t received flowers from a lover in years—living by the five-second rule meant there was no room for others. Hank Wexler, though, had managed to sneak through.

  Her phone vibrated.

  U trying to make me jealous?

  Huh? I just wanted to thank you.

  For?

  The flowers dude

  Phantom crows dropped frozen pebbles into her belly.

  The fridge clattered again.

  Her phone buzzed, and she startled as though a gun had gone off an inch from her ears.

  I didn’t send those. Sorry. Didn’t think we were there yet.

  Cheeks burning, she typed, Oops, with a blushing face emoji.

  More frozen pebbles filled her belly. With stiff fingers, she texted Nick. Hey! Did you send me something today?

  As a thank you for taking the Lincoln case? As a—

  No I didn’t

  Ian O’Donnell didn’t know Gray’s home address, so he couldn’t have sent …

  Gray’s stomach cramped from all those cold stones, because who …

  Oh. Oh.

  He found me.

  Sean had not only found her phone number, he had also found her address.

  Shit.

  She plopped down on the couch. Hugging her knees to her chest, she sat there, as still as a possum under threat.

  Now what?

  The old Gray would’ve texted Nick her distress code—4357—then grabbed the already packed Louis Vuitton backpack—a Christmas gift from Nick—that she kept in the back of her closet. A blue Honda minivan with plates that led to nowhere, sent by Nick, driven by a mom type with a bad ponytail and high-waisted jeans, would have picked her up in the lowest level of the parking garage. Gray would have hidden on the floor of that minivan, among the crushed Goldfish crackers and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Her eyes would be closed as the Honda wheezed on its climb up the Hollywood Hills or Topanga Canyon to a safe house. She would have stayed there until Nick moved her somewhere else. Again.

  Gray had changed her adult life already because of Sean Dixon, all because of a young woman’s natural desire to be loved, all because she’d had mercy that night and didn’t end him when she’d had a chance.

  Now she grabbed her Glock from beneath the pillow on her bed, then grabbed the vase of perfect lavender roses. Her heart, scarred from nearly four decades of living, pumped electric blood through her body as she snatched open the front door.

  She looked up and down the hallway, hoping that Sean Dixon stood there with a smug smile on his face, with his Jim Beam eyes widening as the Glock lifted in one smooth motion, pointed in his direction.

  But no one stood in the hallway.

  Gray left the door open, hoping that Sean would pop in and “surprise” her from the shadows. Heeeere’s Johnny! Then she could shoot him and cl
aim that he’d been trespassing and had invaded her home. That’s what she hoped for as she slipped into the trash room and pulled down the chute’s handle. She dropped the vase in and down it went, sixteen stories, fifteen, fourteen … until a crash, then silence.

  Somewhere, a door hinge squeaked.

  Gray strained every muscle in her body to hear …

  Voices, male, deep, floated down the hall and into the trash room.

  She stepped back into the hallway.

  Alone.

  No one stood at her door or at the emergency exit.

  Back in her apartment, she stood in the doorway.

  The fridge grumbled.

  She crept to her bedroom.

  The comforter on the bed—that dip in the middle. Was that always there or …

  Into the bathroom.

  She slammed the shower curtain to one side.

  Empty.

  She peeked into her closets.

  Empty.

  No one was here.

  Nauseous, she closed her eyes. Breathe. Just breathe.

  The red numbers on the nightstand clock glowed 10:02, and the refrigerator rattled, and it was as it was every night … except she could still smell the faint scent of those lavender roses.

  The old Gray would have never eaten that peach cobbler. No. Tonight, Gray enjoyed her hard-earned meal but drank only one glass of Viognier. She could have eaten more, drunk the bottle to commemorate My Abusive Ex Found Me Day. But he didn’t deserve any of her fought-for binge.

  Still …

  How had Sean Dixon found her?

  Did he have someone following her again?

  After dinner, she cleaned her gun and remembered those Sunday afternoons when she’d done the same with Victor Grayson. Then she made sure that knives remained in their designated spaces around her six hundred square feet. And she made sure the Mace in the medicine cabinet sat beside vials of pills, mouthwash, and Chanel No. 5—the perfume, not the cologne. Then she drank cans of LaCroix. Sober. Steady. Tired of his shit. Tired of this shit. Couldn’t even get properly drunk on a night she deserved to be wasted.

  Sean had fucked up, this time.

  No more running.

  She’d find his spy and kill that person. Then she’d find Sean Dixon, but she’d let him live long enough to realize, to understand, and to accept that he would die by her hand. And then she’d kill him. And this time she’d shove mercy through the holes she’d put in his bloody chest.

  TEN YEARS AGO

  AN OLD FRIEND

  Two months before Natalie had graduated with a B.A. in history, Victor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was a nasty, quick disease, and he died a day after her graduation Sunday. Nick had remained at Victor’s bedside as Faye had flown down to attend their daughter’s ceremony.

  Victor Grayson’s funeral had been upright, with American flags everywhere and straight spines and somber men, many soldiers wearing uniforms. Faye, wearing black, had clutched that trifolded flag like a life raft. Evil hadn’t taken away her beloved—his treacherous body had.

  Every federal agent in Northern California, including Dominick Rader, attended his funeral. Victor’s small family, the two women he’d left behind, cried and mourned. The younger one hurt but understood that her dad had been in pain. With her diverse belief system as a foster child, she knew that Victor Grayson could be anywhere or nowhere after his death.

  It was a Thursday three months later when Faye kissed her daughter’s forehead and told her that she wanted to be alone for a moment and that she’d made lasagna for dinner. The heartbroken widow retreated to her and Victor’s favorite place, Half Moon Bay, a small coastal town an hour’s drive south of San Francisco. Big waves. Good fishing. Perfect sunsets. And as Natalie watched a rerun of The X-Files while eating pasta and drinking from one of the many bottles of wine left from Victor’s funeral repast, Faye Grayson walked into the cold waters of Half Moon Bay. Surfers found her battered body yards away from a pod of seals.

  And so, three months after the first, Natalie Grayson planned a second funeral. Not many agents attended, but Dominick Rader came. Educators, students, and their parents filled the pews. Despite the hundreds that attended, despite the assurances that Faye had loved her, Natalie knew and understood the truth—that Faye had loved Victor more. She’d only been a Grayson for seven years. That had been enough time, though, to inherit the house on Monterey Bay and to receive insurance and Social Security payments, pension payments, access to bank accounts, a Volvo, a Jeep, and jewelry. She had more than she’d ever had, but …

  She was alone in the world again.

  Natalie sold the Volvo and stored the jewelry, including Faye’s diamond engagement ring, in her parents’ safe deposit box at a bank in the city. She also kept the house and paid a company to manage renters. Zoe, Jay, and Avery persuaded her to move to Oakland—they lived across the street from Lake Merritt—and so she packed the Jeep and rolled up the highway.

  And now, on the seventh anniversary of Victor Grayson’s death, Natalie visited a seaside cemetery near Monterey Bay to place yellow tulips on his marker and to place tiger lilies on Faye’s marker just a reach away. She tasted tears from crying and she tasted blood from tearing at dry skin on her lips. Her parents had been dead now for seven years.

  Felt like a hundred.

  Someone came to stand behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  That familiar face had always been a grab bag of ethnicities. Today, Dominick Rader looked African American.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you today, Dom,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  “Wow,” he said, that word flat and far from “wow.” “You remember my name.”

  Every time he’d come to their house for dinner, Natalie’s belly had fluttered, just like it fluttered now. “Yeah. I remember all of Dad’s agents.”

  “Hunh.” Irritation flashed across his face—he’d been more than just an agent to the Graysons. “You still living here?” His voice was deep and scratchy, like stones and whiskey.

  “No. I live in Oakland. Like you don’t already know that.”

  “And the house?”

  “Still mine. A minister and his family are renting it, but…” She had spent the happiest years of her life grilling and reading big books on that deck. “I’ll never sell it.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Sunlight danced across the steel plate of her father’s marker. The salty Pacific rode atop the breeze and her stomach wobbled. Dominick wanted to say something to her, but he was hesitant. And she was impatient. “What is it? Just spit it out.”

  “Victor and Faye wouldn’t be happy,” he said. “With you and Sean—”

  “I thought I asked you to stop—”

  “Nat, come on.”

  “And we’re just dating. And I’m twenty-nine years old. Most people my age are married by now and have a house and a retirement plan. I don’t need your advice.” She glared at him, frustrated. “Anyway, you don’t even know him.”

  “And here I thought you knew me.” He folded his arms.

  She glimpsed his holster and badge beneath his jacket. “You don’t know him.”

  “I know enough about him to know that your father—”

  “Daddy was being hyperbolic when he asked you to look after me. He was dying, Dom.”

  On his deathbed, Victor had forced her to memorize Dominick Rader’s phone number. Once she recited it without pause, then recited it backwards without pause, he let go and let God.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dominick said now. “He gave me an order, and I’m following it.” He clasped her arm. “Natalie, look—”

  “No.” She broke from his hold and kneeled beside her father’s grave. “Thank you—and I mean that—but I don’t need you to look after me. I mean that, too. Just let me be. Please?”

  Grief paralyzed her lungs and her breath caught in her chest. Fat teardrops tumbled down her cheeks and plopped down to the
grass—her tears were keeping that piece of land green. She bent and kissed the grave marker’s cold metal like she kissed it on every visit.

  She looked back over her shoulder. “Dom, I’m—”

  Dominick Rader was gone.

  She was alone again beneath that hot August sun.

  29

  Grayson Sykes knew that, in the end, it would all be handled—by her, by Sean Dixon, and by her Heavenly Father above. She knew this was chess, and despite Victor Grayson’s insistence on teaching her the game, she had remained a mediocre player. Instead, she excelled at Tetris and Centipede, games that threw spiders and bombs at her, quicker and more complicated missiles with each round, until they burned and separated and spiders and blocks covered every blank piece of the screen.

  That afternoon, he had stood from his armchair, beer bottle in hand, Polo shirt still tucked into his khakis even though he was home. “Reactionary,” her father had said.

  “Nimble,” Natalie had countered with a smile.

  His love was like fresh strawberries and warm socks, and it flowed over her, that love, like clear, clean water over smooth river stones. A daddy’s girl. Finally.

  “Admit it, Vic,” Faye said, looking up from her Essence magazine. “You lost, dear.”

  “You suck at Centipede,” their daughter had boasted, “and I am the queen.”

  Victor had kissed the top of Natalie’s head, then slid open the glass door. The aroma of brisket from his smoker wafted into the house. “You are the queen of this, Nattie. Chess—”

  “Yeah, yeah, game of kings.” She’d reached for the board beneath the coffee table, the one she had found off of Champs-Élysées, with the silver and blue stainless steel pieces. The trio had eaten crepes afterward—cheese and black pepper for her, lemon for Mom, and ham for Dad. It had been the third full day of their Parisian vacation …

  And that’s what Gray thought about as she fell asleep—her life with Victor and Faye, savory crepes in Paris, Centipede and chess. She didn’t think about Sean; she didn’t fret about Hank—five-second rule, just another block in her life that would soon disappear like the others. The heavy food from Dulan’s and the exhaustion of a nonstop life pulled her down, down, down, and she slept until well into Saturday.