Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

The driver, a man, called out to her: “Chloe?”

She looked. It wasn’t Charise, but maybe she’d taken the day off.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Someone would like to talk to you,” he said, pointing his thumb toward the back seat.

But did she want to talk to Miles? She’d promised her mom not to call him, but she hadn’t promised not to talk to him if he came all the way up here to see her. The message he’d left her made it clear he was trying to make things right.

And the truth was, she wanted to apologize for how she’d left things. Getting out of the car, leaving him at his lowest point — the more she thought about it, the more she regretted it.

“Okay,” she said.

The driver hit a button and she could hear the car doors unlock. She opened the back one on the passenger side and got in.

Once she had the door closed, she turned to look at the other person in the back seat.

It wasn’t Miles.

It was a woman.

“Who the hell are you?” Chloe asked.

That was when the woman gave her a shot of pepper spray and the driver floored it.

Fort Wayne, IN

Travis Roben had not left the house for a day and a half.

Except to go to the bathroom and have meals, he had barely left his bedroom. It was on the second floor of the house with a view of the street, and he spent most of his time perched by the window, watching for the police to show up.

So far, nothing.

There hadn’t even been anything on the news about the woman Sandy hit with the bat. The back side of that warehouse was clearly not a well-traveled spot. Travis thought the occasional security guard might have wandered that way.

Unless...

She didn’t have to be dead. Sandy had given her a good whack in the face, but it didn’t have to be a fatal blow. Could be the woman’s partner took her to the hospital, got her fixed up. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but holy fuck, it sure had looked bad. That would explain why a body hadn’t been discovered. And if those two were fake cops, it also explained why there hadn’t been a story about the woman being attacked. If they weren’t real cops, they wouldn’t be going to the authorities to report what had happened.

Or...

They were real cops, but the whole thing was being kept secret until he and Sandy were found and arrested.

Regardless, Travis still couldn’t figure out why they would want to kill Sandy and him. For trespassing? Seriously?

Nothing about it made any sense, which made it even scarier.

Sandy was as freaked out as Travis. So far as he knew, she was hiding out at her place just as he was hiding out at his, afraid to go out in public in case anyone was looking for them.

Travis’s mother repeatedly asked what was wrong, and he’d done his best to persuade her he had some sort of stomach disorder, although the fact that he was still able to consume the meals she made for him had left her unconvinced. He wasn’t ready to tell his parents what had happened. First, he’d have to tell them he had an actual girlfriend, which was going to make the story sound pretty fantastical before he’d even got started. (His mother had noticed his slightly less nerdy appearance of late, and when asked about it Travis had said he’d simply looked in the mirror one day and decided a change was in order.)

He and Sandy had texted back and forth several times, each asking the other whether they had seen or heard anything.

Nothing.

Until this morning, when that car with an Uber symbol in the windshield stopped in front of the house.

Travis had left his bedroom lookout point for only two minutes to take a leak, and when he returned, a black Prius was at the curb. There was a man in the back seat. Fortyish, moving kind of slow, dressed casually in a sports jacket, jeans, and a pair of high-end runners. He opened the door, got out, stood in front of the house and took it in.

“Fuck,” Travis said. This was not good.

But this man couldn’t be a cop. Nothing about him said law enforcement. First of all, what cop showed up in an Uber? And he didn’t look cop-like. He didn’t have the bearing or the swagger, and it didn’t look like he had a badge clipped to his belt or a holstered weapon under the flap of his jacket.

So who was he and what was he doing here?

The man approached the house, mounted the steps to the porch.

Travis heard the doorbell ring.

Not going down. Not going down.

He heard faint footsteps on the floor below. His mother heading for the door. He considered shouting down to her to ignore it, but if he did, the man at the door would surely hear him.

Maybe the man was not here to see him. It was possible he had some business with his parents. Maybe this guy was a lawyer or a real estate agent, and his parents were making a will or putting the house up for sale.

This guy did not look like a lawyer or a real estate agent.

But still, it was possible that — “Travis!”

He debated whether to respond. Trick his mother into thinking he’d left the house. The trouble with that was, the only escape route would have been right by the kitchen, where his mother had been for the last hour.

If he didn’t answer her, she’d come upstairs looking for him.

So he called back, “Yes?”

“Someone here to see you!”

He swallowed. “Kind of busy right now.”

What a stupid answer. What could he be so busy with that he couldn’t come downstairs? Could the man come back when I’m done jerking off? No, that wasn’t going to fly.

“Travis!” his mother said sharply.

“Who is it?” he called back.

There was a pause, a murmur of conversation. “A Mr. Cookson!”

Cookson? Who the fuck was Cookson?

“What’s he want?”

This time, his mother did not reply. What he heard, instead, was her stomping up the stairs. Seconds later, she was standing in his doorway, hands on hips.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked. “How can you be so rude? A man is here to see you. Get your ass down there and find out what this is about. And then you can tell me .”

Travis slunk down the stairs behind his mother, who flashed the man an awkward smile and said, “Look who I found!” She slipped into the kitchen while Travis held a position on the bottom step.

“You’re looking for me?”

The man nodded. “Travis, my name is Miles Cookson. I wonder if I might speak to you about something.”

“What?”

Miles hesitated. “An opportunity.”

“What kind of opportunity?”

From the kitchen, his mother snapped, “Just talk to the man!”

“Who are you, exactly?” Travis whispered. “Are you with the police?”

“The police?” he replied, keeping his own voice low. “No. I run a tech company that designs apps. I’m from New Haven. I flew here last night, to see you.”

“To see me?”

“That’s right.”

Travis had his phone in hand and asked, “What’d you say your name was again?”

Miles told him and Travis typed it into his phone, waited for search results to come up. He tapped on Images and compared the headshots that came up to the man standing before him.

“Satisfied?” Miles asked. “What do you say we take a walk?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe just sit on your porch? My legs are a little wobbly today. But I have a story to tell you. It’s going to sound kind of fantastical, but I’m going to ask you to keep an open mind and listen to what I have to say.”

“What do you mean, ‘fantastical’?”

Miles paused. “I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but it’s possible you could be in some danger, and I want to warn you about it.”