ON A STICKY, sweltering Saturday morning in July, Seneca Frazier stood on a brick-paved side street in downtown Annapolis, Maryland, wearing the long-sleeved uniform of the Annapolis Parking Authority. The getup was 100 percent wool and didn’t breathe. Unless she got into air-conditioning in the next three minutes, she was going to pass out from heatstroke.
Brian Komisky, the officer she was shadowing, inspected a parking meter next to an off-white Range Rover. His hazel eyes lit up. “Bingo! One minute left, and this baby’s expired.” He offered Seneca the gray handheld computer that electronically processed parking tickets. “Wanna do the honors?”
Go, me, Seneca thought as she held out her palm for the device. It was demoralizing that making a prehistoric iPad wannabe spit out a thirty-dollar parking ticket was the highlight of her day. It wasn’t like she’d set out to score a summer internship with the APA. She’d wanted to intern with law enforcement, and her dad even begrudgingly helped her get the interview, calling upon a friend on the Annapolis PD. But somehow she’d gotten stuck on parking duty instead of actually solving crimes.
She and Brian inspected more cars on the block, but everyone was paid up on their meters, so they headed to Brian’s van. Sweat dripped down Seneca’s back as she walked. They passed a little boutique called Astrid, and Seneca noticed a gaggle of girls in flirty sundresses squealing over something on their phones. She felt a pang. According to her overprotective worrywart of a dad, that frothy, bubblegummy life was the one she should be living.
In another universe, maybe.
Brian started the van, and Seneca cranked the AC on high and pressed her face directly against the vent. Brian peered at her before pulling out of the spot. “You okay?”
Seneca tried to tell herself that the sudden chill she felt was from the subzero air. “Right now, I’m just trying not to melt into a puddle,” she said.
“C’mon, Seneca. You’ve been vacant all day. What’s on your mind?”
Seneca sighed. Was she that transparent?
“Is it…a boy?” Brian asked gently, turning down the AC a touch.
Seneca felt herself blush. “No!” Though it was kind of true. She was thinking about a boy. Just not that way.
A wrinkle formed between Brian’s eyes. At twenty-four, he was already married to his high school sweetheart, and Seneca understood what his wife saw in him. His penny-colored hair was thick and wavy, his hazel eyes were kind, and his impressive physical size always made Seneca feel safe. No one would mess with her with Brian around. And by no one, she meant Brett Grady.
Or whatever the hell his name really was.
It started three months ago, when she and Maddox Wright, a friend she’d made on a website dedicated to cold murder cases called Case Not Closed, looked into what happened to Helena Kelly, a murdered girl from Dexby, Connecticut. They teamed up with Aerin Kelly, Helena’s younger sister; Madison, Maddox’s stepsister; and another site regular, BMoney60—Brett Grady. Together they discovered that Helena had been having an affair with Skip Ingram, a much-older man, and that Marissa Ingram, Skip’s wife, had most likely killed Helena. Case Not Closed team out.
Or…not.
Only after Brett Grady skipped town did Seneca figure out that their so-called friend wasn’t who he said he was. Once she put together that his name wasn’t even Brett Grady, Seneca realized that Brett had fed them every clue that led them to Marissa Ingram. He’d been so subtly cunning that Seneca believed she’d come to each conclusion on her own, and she’d felt like a brilliant crime solver. Which was an improvement over feeling like the girl who’d flunked out of her freshman year at the University of Maryland—aka the truth.
But Brett knew everything because he’d killed Helena. And she wasn’t his only victim. He’d also killed Seneca’s mom, Collette, a murder Seneca had spent years trying to solve. And Seneca had discovered a slew of other cases with Brett’s name written all over them, each one involving the disappearance of a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman.
Seneca didn’t dare share her theory with anyone besides Maddox, Madison, and Aerin—and she only discussed it in clinical terms, verifiable facts. Not the emotion of it. Not the crushing terror that they’d all been duped by someone they’d considered a friend. That they’d been working side by side with the very person who had destroyed their lives. She was desperate to tell the cops, but she didn’t have any hard evidence Brett had done anything. She didn’t even know his real name or age or where he was from. If only Seneca could find Brett, follow him, get something on him…but he’d disconnected his phone. Stayed away from CNC message boards. Shut down his social media accounts. Seneca wondered whether Brett went AWOL because he knew she was onto him, but if that were the case, wouldn’t she be dead by now?
At the next stop sign, Brian swung the van to the left. “Let’s take a break and get some ice cream for lunch. My treat. Sprinkles? A waffle cone?”
“Whatever.” Seneca slumped, embarrassed that Brian thought she’d actually get this bent out of shape over a boy.
Brian pulled into the ice cream stand, a glorified shack with a small service window and a large grassy area that abutted a swampy back stream of the Chesapeake. Seneca peered nervously around the gravel parking lot, looking for Brett, as she’d done ever since he’d vanished into that crisp April evening in Dexby. She thought of the map she’d constructed on the inside wall of her closet. Each pin on the map corresponded with the locations of the cases Brett had commented on through Case Not Closed under the handle BMoney60—crimes he also might have committed. His trademark was weighing in with one simple but salient clue that broke the case wide open, like he’d done with the Ingrams. There were pins in Arizona, DC, Florida, Georgia, Utah, Maryland, Connecticut, and Vermont. Where would Brett show up next? All she knew about Brett was what he’d done in the past, not what he planned to do in the future.
A long reed jerked. Seneca tensed. A mouse shot out and disappeared into the grass. She exhaled, suddenly drained.
She and Brian ordered vanilla cones and took a seat under a filmy umbrella that provided little shelter from the punishing heat. “Well, you know what they say,” Brian said, “there are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Seneca licked the cone furiously to keep the ice cream from melting onto her hand, letting out a grunt.
“Maybe you need to go on a date,” Brian continued. “I might know someone.”
Seneca felt her cheeks blaze. “Brian, will you please drop it?” Love was the furthest thing from her mind.
Her phone beeped. As she rummaged in her messenger bag, Brian squinted at a Honda Civic in front of an antique shop across the street. “That bastard’s in a loading zone.” He reached for the ticket machine as though it was a semiautomatic weapon. “Not on my watch.”
“I’ll catch up with you in a sec.” Seneca found her phone and squinted at it, but the glare was so bright she had to curl her hands around the screen. When her vision adjusted, she saw the alert she’d set up months ago. Her breath caught.
BMoney60 has just posted on Case Not Closed!
Hands shaking, she clicked on the link. A Case Not Closed thread appeared, something about a girl named Chelsea Dawson disappearing from a party in Avignon, New Jersey, last night. BMoney60’s comment was four names down the list: Easy one. It’s gotta be her ex, right? I was at that party—saw them fighting. It was VICIOUS.
Whoa, read the responses from the eager amateur sleuths. Let’s dig in. The cops need to question him. But Seneca had gleaned something very different from the post. It was as though a tiny pinprick of sunlight had emerged in the sky after months of rain.
Brett Grady was back.