by Max Hudson
For a few moments there was blessed silence behind him, and he thought Simon might actually be listening to what he had said. Then:
“…I didn’t know you had a niece.”
Adrian paused and rolled his eyes heavenward. Really? “That’s because you never asked, now hush.” He glanced back at him over his shoulder, glaring.
Simon glared in return. “What, do you really think someone’s hiding in here? Other than Minnie—God, if she’s home she’s going to be so pissed with us."
“If she’s home we can laugh about this and I’ll ask why she wanted the apples, but she’s not home because she knows me too well to send cryptic-ass messages and not expect me to break into her house to figure out what’s going on. Now will you be quiet?” He narrowed his eyes and gestured widely around at the dark room. We are breaking in, has this guy never seen a single movie?
To his surprise, Simon actually listened to him. He didn’t look happy about it, lips pressed tight together and jaw clenched, but he shut up. Good.
“Okay. Now. You just stay here. Guard the door. I’m gonna look around.”
“You want me to just—?!"
“Hush.” So much for doing what he said. “Look, Dove, just don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He turned, paused, then looked back and added in a slightly softer voice, “Seriously. Guard the door. I’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t entirely sure himself why he felt the need to add the last part—but for the briefest moment, he thought he saw a flicker of something like relief or reassurance pass behind those brown eyes. Then Simon’s expression shut down again, hiding whatever he might have been thinking. He nodded once, jaw tight, and Adrian shot him a cheeky grin and a double thumbs-up.
That earned him a rather obscene gesture in response. He chuckled quietly to himself as he turned to begin searching the room, still moving carefully and quietly. He started with the perimeter, doing a basic scan for anything unusual, or even just a bit out of the ordinary.
Why would Minnie want to keep us out of the house? Simon had actually had a good point earlier when he had guessed it was something to do with work. But, considering that their friend was a detective, a “work thing” could land pretty much anywhere on the scale from “minor inconvenience” to “massively dangerous.”
Okay. Maybe he had also had a point to be a little nervous about this whole thing. It probably would have been smarter—and definitely safer—to just go home when they’d gotten that text.
Adrian had never exactly been all that concerned with playing things safe. He had definitely never cared about doing what was “smart,” at least not when there were answers to be found.
The living room was a bust. Minnie was so damn neat, he definitely would have noticed if something was out of order in there.
On to the kitchen. It was surprisingly bare, but not to the point of true suspicion. He knew Minnie ate out most nights that weren’t their little get-togethers.
Her office was just as neat as the living room—almost too neat, even for Minnie. As though someone had gone through and made sure to throw out ever last scrap of paper, clear every note off the desk. He eyed her laptop for a moment, debating. Then decided against it. He wasn’t a particularly talented hacker, and knowing Min, he’d be surprised if she had trusted technology enough to leave anything important on there.
No basement, but plenty of closets here on the first floor. There was nothing to be found in any of those either.
Eventually he made his way back around to the living room, shaking his head. “Well, we’re alone in the house,” he reported, frowning as he glanced around the room again. “But I can’t find anything down here. I’m gonna have to check upstairs.”
“Wait, hold on.”
Adrian shook his head and flicked his gaze back to Simon, who was waiting sort of hunched by the back door. He really had just been keeping watch.
Still, he was more than a little irritated by now with this whole investigation getting nowhere, so his tone was probably more snappish than it needed to be when he replied, “What, what now?”
Simon narrowed his eyes in the beginnings of a glare but didn’t rise to the bait. He kept his own voice cool and quiet when he replied, “How do you know we’re alone in the house. What if they’re upstairs?”
Adrian blinked, a little bit taken aback that Minnie’s rather bumbling childhood friend would have even thought of that. Then a slow smile worked its way across his face. “Aw, you worried about me, Dove?”
Simon’s expression morphed into a real glare. “I’m worried we’re going to get arrested.”
“You said them,” he countered, the smile a full-blown smirk by now. He really could not seem to help himself—Simon just made it so easy. “You’re not worried cops are gonna come charging in, or they’re waiting at the top of the stairs with cuffs. You think I’m right. You think something weird is going on here, and there might be someone dangerous waiting for me upstairs—”
“Just shut up!” Simon looked away, but for just a second. Adrian knew he saw a hint of a blush on his cheeks.
To his surprise, his heart sort of skipped up toward his throat for a moment, a fraction of a beat. Simon was actually worried about him. That was—that was almost sweet.
Almost despite himself, he took a step forward and reached out to lay his hand on Simon’s arm lightly. “Hey, Dove. Look, no one is here. Just us. Remember how thin these floors are? We’d have heard them, or they’d have heard us and either called the police, or tried to confront us by now. It’s fine.”
Simon started slightly when he touched his arm, then looked down at his hand as though it was some sort of unknowable foreign object. Then he shook his head and shuffled away a few steps, breaking the contact. He nodded once, stiffly. “Still think you’re crazy,” he muttered.
Adrian released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. Summoning up another cocky grin, he jerked his head back over his shoulder toward the stairs. “I’m gonna take a look around. It’s our last shot at some clues about whatever is going on here.”
“Yeah, right.” Simon huffed and glanced out through the window at the backyard. “I’ll just wait here. Then you’ll see you’re being ridiculous and we can leave.”
Adrian huffed and rolled his eyes as he turned away. So much for that. “Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand at him over his shoulder as he made for the stairs.
Honestly, he was starting to worry Simon might be right. He might not be able to find anything in the house—and the potential gloating he knew Simon would give him was almost worse than the idea that he wouldn’t have a next step to go from here.
God, please don’t make me resort to calling Minnie until she caves and tells me what’s going on. He had done that once back in college, when the “secret” turned out to be a surprise party for his birthday. She still had yet to let him live that down.
“You want to know more than is good for you,” she would say, laughing. Always laughing. Even when he irritated her half to death, he knew Minnie would smile at him.
He hoped she was okay.
SMACK.
“OW! Shit.”
Wrapped in his own thoughts like an idiot, Adrian hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going and ran face-first into Minnie’s slightly ajar bedroom doorway. Dazed and blinking, he found himself quite suddenly on the floor, glaring blearily up at the offending slab of wood.
“Shit, I am glad no one was here to see that.”
“Adrian!”
“Oh hell.”
Groaning and rubbing his head where he could already feel a lump starting to form, Adrian managed to get to his feet just in time for Simon to come thundering up the stairs, wide-eyed and brandishing an umbrella.
“What the hell just—? Are you okay? What happened?!”
With another quiet groan, Adrian dropped his head into his palm and then dragged his hand down his face. “Nothing, I just…hang on.”
He looked Simon up and down, fr
om the wide—he had gone so far as to say terrified—eyes, to the slightly heaving chest, to the impromptu umbrella weapon. His eyebrows started to creep up toward his hairline. “Were you—did you think I was in trouble?” He felt his lips start to curve up in the beginnings of an expression that was caught oddly between a smirk and a genuine smile. “And you were going to defend me…with an umbrella?”
“What? No.” Simon looked from his face to the umbrella he still clutched and back, then sort of shuffled around to hold his oblong choice of weapon behind his back. “I was…”
He trailed off and Adrian quirked one eyebrow even higher, unable to keep himself from grinning now. Glowering in response, Simon muttered, “Look, it was the first thing I grabbed. You yelled! I didn’t know what was going on.”
Adrian chuckled and raised his hands peaceably. “Yeah, okay, okay. It was nothing, sorry I scared you. I just…” His eyes glided back to the offending door and he suddenly trailed off, brows coming together slowly in a considering frown. “Wait a second…”
“You just what?” Simon hissed, all but tip-toeing forward a few steps. “Crow, what happened—?”
“Door’s open.”
“What?”
“The door is open,” Adrian repeated, as though explaining an obvious concept to a small child. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Simon glaring at him—shocker—and rolled his eyes. “This door. Minnie’s door. It’s open.”
Another moment of blank staring. Then he saw the light go on behind those big brown eyes, Simon’s lips parting just slightly to form a small “oh” of realization.
“There it is,” he muttered to himself, turning to face the door again.
Minnie never left her door open. Never. Not once in the last three years had he ever been in this house when her bedroom door was even unlocked.
He and Simon exchanged a look, and a shiver of understanding passed between them. Lips tight, Adrian gave a single, firm nod before carefully moving forward and pulling the door just that much closer, peering around into the darkened room.
At first, he could not see anything out of the ordinary—other than the obvious aberrancy of Minnie’s door being open at all. Nothing overturned, no papers scattered over the desk, nothing broke. Essentially no sign that anything might have happened that would cause Minnie to leave the space in a hurry, other than the bed being left unmade.
He huffed out a sharp breath and stepped fully into the room, frowning as he looked around. “I wish I knew if that were normal,” he muttered, gesturing vaguely to the rumpled sheets and blankets. “Could be best to just assume it’s not.”
“You’re the one who shared a dorm with her for four years,” Simon pointed out as he stuck his own head cautiously around the door. “You’d be the one who’d know.”
Adrian rolled his eyes again and shot him a quick, droll look. “Yeah, in college. No one makes their bed in college. If you made your bed in college, you turned out to be a sociopath,” he grumbled. “Besides, three of those years we just shared a dorm, not a bedroom. I have no idea what her sleep habits are like these days.”
Shuffling one step further into the room, Simon took a look around, then offered slowly, “I mean…she was always neat when we were kids. Really neat. Almost scary neat.”
Adrian’s lips quirked up on one side. “Yeah, that sounded like Minnie.”
He sometimes wished he had known her back then. He had seen pictures of her as a kid, all chubby-cheeked and big green eyes, but his first memories of her were freshman orientation back at school—still not quite the woman she had grown into now, a little awkward around the edges, but definitely not the bouncy, smiling little girl from those photographs.
A little girl usually with her arm thrown around an awkward, gangly boy with an unkempt mop of shaggy brown hair and typically downcast eyes, even in pictures. He glanced back at Simon again considering, almost despite himself. What was it like to know you back then?
He had to pull himself together here, now was not the time. Giving himself a brisk shake, he gestured toward the bed again and said quickly, “So, let’s just assume that’s not quite normal then. Anything else?”
He expected Simon to argue with him again, tell him how pointless this was. But to his surprise he just tip-toed his way around the room, a hulking shadow in the dim light. Adrian gave a mental shrug and set about looking around himself, peeking into the closet and checking around the desk first.
His eyes lit on a scrap of paper, crumpled into a ball. He felt that familiar thrill of discovery zap down his spine and through his gut. What’s this then?
Movements quick and well-practices, he snatched the discarded paper up and carefully smoothed it out against the leg of the desk, then squinted at the faint pencil lines.
Mina. 147.
“Hey.” He snatched the paper up and scooted back out from under the desk, looking up at Simon with a triumphant grin. “Found something,” he declared, waving the paper—a post-it, now that he saw it in just a bit more light.
“Yeah.” Simon was hovering by the desk next to the bed. He turned, and Adrian’s attention was immediately drawn to the line between his brows, the flex and tightening of his jaw.
His stomach sank, just a bit. “Yeah?” He got to his feet, moving cautiously forward in an effort to see what had affected the change in him.
“Yeah. Me, too.” Simon moved one step to the right to give Adrian space to come up beside him. That enough would have been cause for bafflement on an ordinary day. Just then, Adrian barely even noticed.
Simon pointed to the calendar sitting at the edge of the end table. It was one of those “quote a day” things that Minnie had loved since college. She would tear off a date and leave it somewhere for him to find around the dorm the next day. She still did that, sometimes, with quotes or jokes she thought he had like. Stick the damn things in an envelope and actually mail them to him, because everyone likes getting real mail nowadays, Adrian, even you have to admit it.
He did. But he had never told her that. Simon was deflecting that part of his brain that was really and truly beginning to worry noted. I’m deflecting because I don’t want to notice, Simon thought.
Problem was, he had already noticed. Once he saw it, it was obvious—it made everything else obvious. How had he missed the hints throughout the rest of the house?
“So.” Simon’s voice was a low rumble beside him, a sound he felt as much as heard.
“Yeah,” Adrian agreed quietly. “So.”
The date on the stupid little calendar was a week off.
Minnie hadn’t even been in the house in at least six days.
Chapter Three
Simon Dove
Something was definitely wrong. A very, very small corner of his brain was almost more exasperated with how insufferably smug he was sure Adrian was going to be about this than he was worried.
“All right. So we go to the police, right?”
They’d gotten out of the house quickly after taking one last look around to confirm that Minnie hadn’t been there in a week. Once they knew what they were looking for, the signs were obvious—a slight buildup of dust, all the windows being locked (Minnie only did that when she went out of town), even the stubborn clusters of weeds in the front garden that Minnie would never allowed such headway had she been there regularly.
Adrian had all but piled Simon into his car, saying they should get some distance from the “scene,” and drove them out to what he deemed “someplace we can talk without looking suspicious.”
Which turned out to be a Dairy Queen parking lot.
Folding his arms and hunkering down in his seat, Simon added in a petulant mumble, “And I still don’t see why we could not have just gone to my house.”
“Because you live half a block down from Minnie, and I said we wanted distance,” Adrian replied briskly. “Also, I wanted ice cream.” When Simon gave him a long, incredulous look for that, he bristled a bit defensively. “What? I’m stressed!�
�
Digging a spoon into his sundae, he added quickly, “And we most certainly are not going to the police. That’s a terrible idea.”
Simon bit back a growl. “Why? This is a missing person’s case, isn’t it?”
Adrian brandished the spoon at him like a conductor’s baton and he flinched back from a spattering of mint chocolate chip. “No, it’s not that simple,” the journalist retorted. His brow was set in a heavy, contemplative frown. Simon rather got the feeling he was more thinking aloud than he was actually talking to him as he continued, “Minnie texted us earlier tonight, so she’s not missing. She’s not in immediate danger, I don’t think, but something weird is going on. Why wouldn’t she just tell us she wasn’t home, hadn’t been for a while?”
“Because she knows you’re nosy as hell?” Simon grumbled. It wasn’t exactly a constructive anger, but he was sick of Adrian talking at him like he was too stupid to understand what was going on.
Either oblivious to the hostility in his tone or ignoring it, Adrian gestured with the spoon again, eyes bright. “Yes! Exactly. She knows I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from looking into this, not with as suspicious as a quick text and nothing else made it. Which means…” He paused, lips pursed.
“She did that on purpose. She wants us to investigate!”
“You’re insane,” Simon huffed. “That’s a whole lot of conjecture and jumping to conclusions.”
Adrian rolled his eyes and gave him an exasperated look. “You do know that’s basically what “conjecture’ means? Jumping to conclusions?”
Simon flushed and opened his mouth to retort, but before he could Adrian continued, “But it’s the only thing that makes sense. Minnie knows I can’t leave a mystery alone to save my life, especially if people I care about are involved. She had to know how suspicious this would all look—I mean, not telling us that we weren’t doing family dinner until literally minutes before? Asking me for apples a week in advance and then not being there? Come on.”
