I recoiled. “Hey. Stop.” I sat next to him and grabbed him, forcing him to look at me. The muscles in his forearm clenched and unclenched under my own shaking fingers. “Think. Where would they have taken him? Why would they have taken him?”
The heavy rise and fall of his chest slowly regulated. “I haven’t got a clue where. As to why . . .”
He cut his eyes to me and I felt like I’d been slapped. Of course.
“It’s not your fault,” Jack said, pressing his palms over his eyes. “I didn’t mean—”
“They took Mr. Emerson to get to me.” I raked my hands through my tangled hair. “So, what, they want me to turn myself in? Wouldn’t they have left some kind of ransom note?”
Jack nodded. “I was just thinking that. Or . . .” He sat up straighter. “That text he sent.”
He was right. I remembered it word for word. If the worst happens—follow what I’ve left you.
“He knew someone was after him,” I said. “The text says he left us something. You, I mean. He left you something.”
“Us.” Jack got up from the couch. Only when I noticed how cold my thigh was did I realize our legs had been touching. “I think it’s pretty obvious now that we’re in this together, whether we like it or not.”
I took a deep breath, then got off the couch, too.
Where would you leave a ransom note? It was nowhere obvious. I stalked across the room and flipped through a stack of papers on a modern, dark-wood side table, then studied a bulletin board that had a flyer for a poetry reading and another for a wine tasting, but no note. Next to it was a shelf full of books and vases and picture frames. A little thrill of wrongness stabbed through me, seeing all Mr. Emerson’s things from his apartment in Boston.
Jack looked under a stack of magazines on the coffee table, then knelt by the dried blood, inspecting the phone.
I headed toward the kitchen, but stopped short at a shelf. I picked up a small paint-by-number picture of a sunset, with colors that were obviously not meant to fill the spaces. Between the oranges and reds and yellows, splashes of purple and blue and black.
I ran a finger over the little painting. I’d added those other colors because all the sunsets I saw weren’t just orange. They had dark spots, too, which made the sunsets even more brilliant. Mr. Emerson had loved it, so I’d given it to him when we moved away.
I swallowed hard. What if we couldn’t find anything? What if I couldn’t help him? Would I turn myself in? They’d kill me. But if I didn’t, would they kill him? I pressed my fist to my mouth.
“Avery?” Jack’s voice jolted me back to the present, and I realized he’d been talking to me. “Anything?” he said, and I could feel him watching me, wondering what I was doing.
I shook my head and put the painting back on the shelf. In the kitchen, an empty coffeepot and a clean mug sat on the counter, along with one white bowl on a dish rack. No note, no sign of struggle in here.
“I’m going to check his office,” Jack called.
I blew out a deep breath and made one last sweep of the room—and saw something lodged under the coffee table.
A clock. My heels clicked as I hurried across the room. Its face was cracked, and a bloody streak ran across it.
“Jack,” I called.
He came back to the living room. I ran a finger over the hands under the bloody glass. They pointed to almost 6:00.
“It probably stopped when they—” Jack swallowed, looking at the bloodstain on the floor. “When it broke.” He took the clock and set it on the coffee table.
“I know. If it was five forty-seven a.m. here, what time would it have been in Lakehaven? What time did he text you?”
Realization dawned on Jack’s face. He pulled out his phone. “Nine forty-three p.m. Minnesota time.” I could see him doing the calculations in his head. “Just a few minutes before this clock stopped.”
“If he sent you the text right before this happened,” I said, “whatever he left for you has to be here.”
“You’re right.” I could hear the renewed hope in his voice, and we pressed on down the hall, doing a quick inventory of everything we saw before we ended up at an office.
A row of books—history, philosophy, poetry—lined the back of the desk, straight and tidy between their bookends, and just in front of them, three pens sat in a perfect row like soldiers at attention. Also on the desk was a day planner, askew and open to a ripped-out page.
Mr. Emerson wouldn’t have left his planner like that by accident.
I went straight to the desk and picked it up. “January thirteenth. Does that mean anything to you?”
Jack shook his head. I looked at the pages nearby. Dentist appointment. Dinner at 7:30.
“Maybe he just ripped out a random page, like to leave a note. Which would mean it’d have to be around here somewhere.” He looked down the hall and paused. I understood his hesitation: even though we were searching for clues, going into Mr. Emerson’s bedroom felt like trespassing. I swallowed and headed down the hall anyway—and stopped short in the doorway. The door had been splintered to pieces around the knob.
Jack’s eyes went big, and he rushed past me into the room. I inspected the door more closely. It didn’t take an expert to tell the door had been locked from the inside and forced open.
“Look.” Jack was crouched on the ground, holding three photos.
I hurried across the room, and he handed me a hammered – copper frame with a picture of himself and Mr. Emerson inside, then one of Stellan, of all people. And then . . . a small, folded shot of me.
“These frames are usually in his living room.” Jack paced the room, methodically scanning a bookshelf, an art deco dresser, and a bedside table.
“Why does he have a picture of Stellan?” Stellan looked younger and more serious than he did now, and his hair was a lighter blond.
Jack’s lips pressed into a hard line. “Fitz sometimes works with the Dauphins, too,” he said shortly, and turned away.
“This one is me,” I said quietly. I was nine. We’d been cooking, and I was half covered in flour.
I turned the photo of Jack over in my hands, looking for a note, a clue, something. Like on the clock, there was a smear of red across the glass. I wiped it with my thumb and started to stand, but stopped. “Blood,” I said.