Ditched_A Left at the Altar Romance Page 6

  My wandering thoughts bring peace. Kate’s bustling around: sounds like she’s found the kitchen. At least she’s doing something. I pile my arms high with boxes and make my way back out there.

  “Whoa....”

  Kate’s piled the dining room table with a bewildering array of bags, brushes, and sprays. The Thai food’s already vanished into some Tupperware. A cloud of Febreze hangs in the air. She offers me a shaky smile. “So I thought I’d start through there—” She gestures at the kitchen. “Figured you’d be more comfortable going through the personal stuff—the bedroom, whatever’s upstairs.”

  Dev’s bedroom. I was the closest friend he had, as far as I know, and I’ve never set foot in there. I don’t want to face it alone. “Actually, I thought we should tackle that together. While we’re fresh. It is the most likely spot.”

  “Good point.” Kate grabs the top box off the pile and fills it with cleaning supplies. I lead the way to the elevator. Her eyes widen as I press five.

  “Told you. Bigger than you think.”

  “I’ll say....”

  We emerge in the fifth floor atrium. It’s a crime, how cheerful the place looks, with the sun streaming through all that glass. An upended rubber plant, half-toppled in the fountain, ruins the illusion of tranquility. I hurry down the hall, past the library and study, and... I think this is it. I pause with my hand on the door.

  “You okay?”

  “Give me a second.”

  She’s touching me again. Rubbing my back, like that one moment of weakness in the conservatory made me hers. I twitch away, throwing the door open.

  “Oh....”

  “Holy....” I step back, knocking Kate into the wall. “Sorry.”

  She waves me off, edging into the doorway again. “What—is that blood?”

  “It’s not chocolate syrup.”

  Kate strides into the room ahead of me. The noonday sun casts her in sharp silhouette. For a moment, she’s Athena marching to war, wielding a spear in place of a mop, a shield for a box. Then she steps behind the curtain, and she’s just Kate again, half kneeling on the bed to inspect the stain. “There isn’t that much. Maybe he....” She falters. “Maybe he tried.... Before he jumped, maybe—oh, God!”

  She drops the mop with a clatter.

  “Don’t say that shit.” My admonition comes out harsher than intended. “Don’t do that to yourself.” Didn’t need that image in my head, either, Dev hacking at himself, swallowing pills—this place smells like puke. How many ways did he try it, before he found one that’d be over in an instant? And now, I’m ready to kill her again. “Get the nightstand. I’ll take the desk.”

  “Right.”

  It’s oppressive in here. Not just the heat or the smell, but the atmosphere. The air feels thick. I can’t fucking breathe. Everywhere I look, it’s nothing but remnants of him. A pair of jeans hung over a chair, waiting to be pulled on. A scrap of paper—my heart plummets, but all it says is lebkuchen, salty shit, Kraft Dinner—food cravings, jotted down for later. A sudden compulsion to check his kitchen trash, make sure he got his treats before he went, almost has me fleeing the room.

  There’s nothing in his top drawer but a dry cleaning ticket and a broken ruler. The next one down’s empty, and the one below it’s just as barren. There’s a footlocker underneath, key hanging out of the lock. That looks promising, but there’s nothing inside but a bag of lemon drops. An expired bag of lemon drops.

  Kate stands up. “Anything?

  I shake my head. “You?”

  “Condoms, and a copy of The Overcoat.” She trashes the rubbers and starts to strip the bed.

  “Wait. Isn’t that evidence?”

  She pauses. “I don’t think.... I mean, there’s no crime scene tape on the door, or anywhere.” Her hand’s shaking where it’s settled on the pillow. “Half the world saw him jump. The coroner’s probably—”

  “Yeah.” I cut her off before she can say done or given up, anything in that vein. The closet’s standing open, so I drift over there. Kate heads for the ensuite. The whiff of warm vomit intensifies as she opens the door. To her credit, she doesn’t so much as wrinkle her nose. I turn away to hide my own disgust. Soon, all I can smell is Lysol and dry cleaning fluid.

  I unzip every garment bag, dip my hands into every pocket. I empty shoeboxes, shake shoes, unyoke socks. I empty the trash, crawl under the bed, flip the mattress. The sun moves across the sky. Kate leaves and comes back with more boxes. She empties his bookcases, flipping through every book.

  I box up the last of his spare blankets and rock back on my haunches. It’s been hours, and we’ve barely cleared one room. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “I know.” Kate coughs.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Dry throat. Going to grab some water.” She dusts off her hands. “Could you finish that last box? I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  “Sure.”

  Kate hands me the packing tape and heads off. We need a better plan. One of us cleaning, the other searching. Guess I’ll search: I know the most likely spots. His study should be next, and if it’s not there, he did have that stupid man cave. I shudder at the thought of him reading his blackmail note on the giant screen, letters six inches high spelling out his doom.

  A faint shriek rings out.

  “Kate!”

  I take the stairs to the first floor, three and four at a time. “Kate? Where are you?”

  “Kitchen, still. Max, it’s—”

  I burst through the old-fashioned swinging doors. Kate’s staring into the sink like she’s found something living in the drain.

  “What is it?”

  She points at the garbage disposal. “I can’t reach it, but isn’t that...isn’t that a flash drive?”

  I nudge her aside. It’s hard to tell without a flashlight, but yeah. Yeah. That’s definitely a USB connector gleaming in the pipe. The drive’s scored and scarred, speckled with coffee grounds, but it’s there, and we’ve found it.

  “You didn’t run water over it, did you?”

  She shakes her head. “He might’ve. But we can try that rice thing, like when you drop your phone in the toilet. If it doesn’t work. And if we can get it.”

  Getting it isn’t a problem. I’ve dismantled a garbage disposal before. It’s what comes next...hell. My gut’s turning sour, and it’s not the smell of old onions and drain slime rising from the pipes. Whatever’s on there, it drove him to suicide. Suicide—it’s too neat a word for what went on here. What he must’ve put himself through... He didn’t want to die. I’m sure of it, positive, and the thought of him psyching himself up for it....

  I pluck out the flash drive and wipe it clean. “Look at it together?”

  Kate’s head bobs once, stiffly. Her throat works.

  “My laptop’s in the foyer.” I lead the way, lead-footed. I didn’t much like the answers I got from Wes last night, and this...this’ll only be worse.

  Kate takes my arm again. I wrench free. “Quit touching me! We’re not—”

  She recoils. Bites her lip on what might’ve been the start of a sorry. That spark in her eyes: she’s angry. I’m being an ass.

  “Sorry.” I reach for her, brushing our knuckles together. “I’m—”

  “I know. Me, too.” But her voice is tight. There’s an edge to her that wasn’t there in high school. She’d have cried, back then, if I yelled at her like that. Now, she turns her back on me, powering on my laptop. The password prompt pops up, and she steps aside. I type in 31-8-2007, and my desktop appears.

  “You ready?”

  “Do it.” She rests her hands on the table. If I hadn’t gone off on her, I could reach for one of them. Have that comfort, at least.

  I plug in the drive. It doesn’t want to go at first, the scratched-up edges resisting the shape of the socket, but a quick jiggle slots it home.

  Kate shifts her weight. “That second one—that’s not a text file.”

  She’s right. Dev’s
is different. One document—instructions.txt—and a video.

  “Please. Just....”

  I tap on the trackpad. The text pops up instantly:

  * * *

  *****DESTROY AFTER READING*****

  I KNOW ABOUT MATT DANBURY. END YOUR LIFE BY THE END OF THE MONTH, OR YOU GO DOWN WITH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS. SHOW THIS TO ANYONE AND I’LL KNOW, AND I’LL GO TO THE COPS.

  * * *

  Kate makes a wounded sound, deep in her chest. Her knuckles turn white. “Play—play the video.”

  “Are you—”

  She reaches past me and clicks it herself. It loads for a moment, but only a moment: it’s only eight seconds long.

  And it’s Matt’s house—the laundry room window. Just before the fire. The timestamp spins fast, counting tenths of a second. I squeeze out the window. Kate grabs my hand to steady me. The picture jerks, bounces, and refocuses on Dev. He’s running backwards, laughing. Carson’s car’s barely visible past the garage. He’s leaning on it, looking out toward the lake. Smoking.

  The picture cuts to black at six seconds. Freezes on a placard, white on black—

  * * *

  CAUGHT 10 MINS OF THIS.

  30 MORE @ BEACH.

  U KNOW WHAT 2 DO.

  * * *

  They saw us. Heard us. God, the beach—it hasn’t been so long I don’t remember Wes pulling his sleeve over his nose to filter the smell of the smoke. Dev crying his eyes out. Kate shaking like a leaf, and all of us, all of us, deciding we weren’t going to come clean. Because we didn’t know, never meant, couldn’t have known.

  “This was—God!—Dev was murdered.” She snaps my computer shut, hard enough to crack the case. “Who would do this? Why?”

  I reach for her, misgivings forgotten. If there was ever a time to hold her, in spite of everything, this is it. And I need this. Need her.

  Kate clings to me. She isn’t breathing, isn’t moving at all, except to clutch at my shirt. I stroke her hair and her back, as much for my comfort as hers. I can’t stop the whirl of thoughts and images and memories, each darker than the last, but I can feel her against me, warm and alive. Feel her heartbeat, and remember there was hope in Pandora’s box, after all.

  “We’ll get through this.”

  She nods against my chest. I can feel her trembling, but her eyes are dry. She’s holding it together, maybe for me. “We’ll get this fucker.”

  “Curbstomp his ass.”

  “Fucking monster.” Kate squeezes my shoulder, almost painfully, and steps back at last. “We can’t deal with this now.” She gestures wide, indicating the chandelier, the floorboards, everything. “We’ll come back with everyone. Do this for him.”

  “Yeah.” She’s right. Someone needs to tidy up his affairs. Someone who cares—not a stranger. But for now... I can’t be here one second longer. And Kate, she’s teetering on the brink. I can tell by the way she’s grinding her teeth. “Let’s go.”

  She takes my hand and we walk out together. Neither of us says a word. We stay trapped in our thoughts all the way to my office. Everyone’ll be arriving soon, expecting answers. A solution. What we’ve got...it’s a nightmare.

  We’ll get through this.

  Chapter 12

  Kate

  * * *

  I’ve watched it so many times it’s branded on my retinas: me smiling up at Max. Dev’s exuberant bouncing. Carson smoking in the background. I don’t need to see it again, so I watch their faces instead. Kyle keeps his expression impassive, while a muscle jumps in his neck. Carson sneers. Wes looks away. Only Rachel isn’t here. Had to fly home for a school play.

  I risk a peek at Max. He’s staring at the display, stone-faced. When the clip ends, he plays it again. And again.

  Nobody moves when the screen goes black. I’m sick of these weighty silences, but we agreed on this. Run the clip. Watch their reactions. Don’t intervene.

  Carson’s the first to turn his attention from the screen. Our eyes meet across the table, and I look away. He’s making me nervous. None of them seem eager to trust me, exactly, but Kyle’s willing to listen, and Rachel—she mostly seems scared. But Carson has me walking on eggshells.

  I’m on the brink of confronting him—if you’ve got something to say, just say it!—when Wes speaks up. “Was anyone else thinking how happy he looked? Dev, I mean?”

  Kyle scoffs. He’s picking at his nails.

  Carson leans back in his chair, making it creak. “I was thinking we just learned two things: first, it has to be one of us. Second, it’s not me or her or him.” He stabs a finger at me and Max. “Which leaves—”

  “Oh, fuck off. Rachel and I were in the house, in case you’d forgotten. Screaming at each other in front of half the school.”

  “So it’s him.” Carson zeroes in on Wes.

  “What? I was way off by the back gate.” He looks around the table for support. “Don’t you guys remember? I didn’t even get to the car till everyone was pouring out on the lawn.”

  “Which gave you all the time in the world to loop around.”

  This is derailing fast. I glance at Max, but he’s either zoned out or biting back a tirade. Hard to tell. The look on his face hasn’t changed.

  Kyle shakes his head. “You guys are idiots.” He nods at Max. “Play it one more time.”

  Max’s lips compress into a thin white line, but he taps the trackpad.

  “See? Right there!” Kyle’s grinning, triumphant. Way too pleased with himself, given the circumstances. “Pause on that.” The picture freezes on Max scrambling out the window. “Now tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

  Carson narrows his eyes. Wes shakes his head, confused.

  “Fuck, you’re dense. First of all, that’s glass, right there.” He points at a bright patch to the left of the screen. “See? You can totally see the reflection of the lens.”

  I cock my head. Looks like a UFO to me.

  “Then, there’s the angle: this was shot from inside the house. From Mrs. Danbury’s parlor. Now, Wes here....” A chuckle rises in his throat. “It’d have been a snowy day in hell he got into that party at all, let alone penetrated the holy of holies. Even the cool kids weren’t allowed on the white carpet.”

  Carson eyes the display. “I don’t see any lens.”

  Wes perks up. “Don’t you think Kate or Max would’ve mentioned something by now, if I’d come running after them with a camera?”

  “You could’ve used one of those buttonhole ones. They had those in 2007.”

  Kyle throws up his hands. “And the massive brick wall between them and where he’d have had to be standing?” He clicks his tongue. “Give it up already.”

  Max shuts off the projector with a snap. “Kyle’s right. It was shot from inside. You can even see the curtains, when he swings around. Which rules out, well, all of us. Me, Kate and Carson are in the picture. Will never went inside. And you and Rachel—we’ve covered that. So that tells us—”

  “It could still have been one of us,” says Carson.

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  “No, hear me out. None of us did the actual filming. But one of us could’ve had an accomplice. Someone who—”

  Carson’s really banging that drum. I let my attention drift to Max. He’s closed his eyes. This is going exactly like last time, right down to the backbiting. And the sunset’s down to a thin strip of crimson.

  Time to move this along.

  I cut Carson off mid-sentence, a little payback for last time. “We’re not getting to the root of this tonight. Not with what we’ve got. But the notes, Dev’s and mine—” Fuck. “—I mean, Dev’s and the rest of ours... If we can figure out why they’re so different....”

  Kyle tilts his head like he’s mulling that over. Or wishing he hadn’t come. A first-grade play would be better than this.

  Max fires up the projector and switches to the note. “It’s nothing like ours. Not just the content, but the style. The nature of the threat.
”

  A surge of pride washes over me, the same pride I used to feel when he’d score a touchdown or stand up for Wes. He’s in control up there, calm and in charge after our walk through hell. My man.

  “Fuck....” Where’d that come from?

  Wes darts a curious glance my way. I turn my head to hide my flush. Shouldn’t be thinking like that. Especially not now.

  “So we thought—Kate and I thought this points to one of two scenarios: either we’ve got two different blackmailers, or Dev was an impulse, and we’re...planned. I think—”

  “Or it’s been Dev all along.” Carson’s on the edge of his seat.

  “Wha—?”

  He presses on, seemingly oblivious to Max’s murderous glare. “I mean, think about it: the whole thing was his idea. He’s gotta have hated himself way more than the rest of us. Maybe he saw us getting on with our lives, and wanted us to feel what he felt.”

  “Carson—”

  “It’d be a hell of a revenge story. He’s six feet under, worry-free for eternity, and we’re running ourselves ragged, chasing a blackmailer we’ll never find. He could’ve sent out the flash drives before he did the deed. Then, he’d just—”

  Max hurls the projector at the wall. It shatters, raining glass and electrical sparks on the carpet. “It. Wasn’t. Dev.”

  Carson’s on his feet, too. “Yeah? You think you can be objective here? It makes sense, if you—”

  Max advances on him. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw what we saw.”

  “Yeah, well, since you didn’t see fit to include us in your little fishing trip....”

  “What—you’re feeling left out? It wasn’t a goddamn pleasure trip.”