“I GOT US ADJOINING rooms,” Zora said, walking away from the front desk of the Residence Inn just across the river in New Jersey.
“Who’s rooming?” I asked.
For a second, I thought she was going to say the two of us. That would have been awkward. But when she pointed at herself and Miracle, it somehow felt more so. It made perfect sense, in a way. But I remembered the way Zora had taken Miracle’s hand.
“You two?” I asked.
“I’m not rooming with you,” Zora said harshly.
“Yeah …” I let it go, for the moment. “What’s that running us?”
“You can write it off.”
I followed her to the elevator and to the room without saying another word. Honestly, a severe annoyance had been growing since we’d talked at the crosswalk. It wasn’t just that conversation; it was everything. Things were out of control. In the silence, it was all piling up. Miracle, Zora, Cassandra. Bender and Pepper. I was on the run. That maniac had been in my building. Broken into my apartment. Stolen all my stuff. He’d left that damn book. Could one man, no matter how notorious, be behind all of that?
Then there was Miracle. Ever since we’d spoken, something had been gnawing at me. Maybe even before that. When she walked into my apartment, I had expected a victim. A scared, traumatized young woman. Instead she had seemed relaxed, or oblivious. Then there was what she’d said—He was lying. That’s all he does. She knew Jasper. She’d spoken to him. Yet when I called her on it, she’d lied to me.
Lost in thought, I stepped through the door behind Miracle. Zora turned, a hand on her hip.
“You’re next door,” she said.
“Oh, I thought we were going to talk.”
She smiled. “We will, but first you need to sleep.”
“I do?”
“Look.”
She pointed at the mirrored closet door. I took another step and turned. It would be totally cliché to say I didn’t recognize the face that stared back at me. But I certainly looked awful. Even the bags under my eyes had turned a sickly gray. Veins nearly filled the whites of my eyes. For some reason, I stuck my tongue out. It seemed fine.
As I stood there, the exhaustion hit me, hard. I shuffled back toward the hallway.
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”
Zora’s head shook as she handed me the key card. “You’ll need this.”
The call tore me out of a deep, surprisingly dreamless sleep. My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I swiped at it, knocking it to the floor. I had to slide off the bed to find it. With a quick glance at the unfamiliar number, I answered.
“This is Theo Snyder.”
I heard the hiss of breath before his voice filled my head. “Hello, Theodore.”
“Jasper!” I scurried across the floor until my back pressed against the bed. “Where are you?”
“Now that’s a strange question,” he said.
My head spun. I pulled back the phone and checked the screen again. I’d never seen the number before, but it was a Manhattan exchange. At the same time, his voice sounded strange, distant.
“Are you on speaker?” I asked, distracted.
“Theodore, follow me, please.”
“I want my stuff back! My files. My corkboard. I don’t give a shit about the furniture.”
Jasper didn’t say anything right away. When he did, I swear he sounded concerned.
“You’re not well,” he said softly. “I think you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know,” he said.
I rubbed at my eyes, digging into the sockets like I might mine the confusion from my head. Nothing made sense.
“I need my stuff, Jasper,” I said instead.
“I don’t have anything of yours,” he said. “I owe you the conclusion to a story, however.”
“What?” I asked, unable to hide the hunger I felt.
“Don’t you remember our first conversation? I didn’t finish that time. You’ll find that I am a man of my word.”
“Jasper, I—”
He didn’t let me get another word out.
ACT TWO/SCENE 13
EXT. BEACH—NIGHT
We return to where our story began. The dark figure on the dune is the Halo Killer. His senses are keen, focused on his prey. Seemingly unaware, a woman moves along the surf, dangerously close to her fate. In the pale light of the moon, we see a neon yellow Sony Walkman on her head. A CHYRON appears on the screen: AUGUST 12, 2016.
Jasper stood among the daylilies at the top of the dune, watching her. The moon hung in the lightening sky, casting a pale shine around his long, dark shadow. The woman neared, moving along the surf line, her head down. He blinked, and as his eyes closed, Jasper could have sworn he heard the faint echo of classical music floating across the beach from her neon-yellow earphones.
In that moment, he forgot the other one. At the time, he didn’t know her name was Barbara Yost. Nor did he care about that. But he’d never forgotten one in the middle of the process. Before the question was even asked. He’d never skipped a single step, no matter how minor. He needed to get back. Shape and freeze the daylily. Secure the building for the night. Incinerate the clothes he wore.
Instead, his intricate plans slipped away. Jasper took a step down the dune. He angled to cut this new target off, without even a thought of how he would take her. How unplanned it would be. How much evidence he would leave behind. Nothing seemed to matter. Nothing but an overwhelming need to lay his hands on her. To wrap his fingers around her wrist. To pull her out of her world and into his. To ask her. To hear her answer.
His pace quickened, and a new realization dawned. It came out of the darkest corners of his past. Like a crack of warm light under the door of a lonely closet. Like the soft whisper of a mother never heard. The feeling filled him at once with hope and searing need. After all the others, Jasper knew somehow that this one had the answer. Maybe it was finally over.
He stared at her. There was no subtlety to his hunt this time. Only a shining lust. And she never looked up. She never seemed to notice. She moved ever closer, oblivious to her starring role in the final act.
To his surprise, saliva filled Jasper’s mouth. The muscles in both of his forearms cramped. He did not flinch. He didn’t slow as she came to him. As she …
The woman stopped, carelessly turning and heading back the way she came. Her movement, so sudden yet so benign, startled him. He froze, his toes digging into the soft, pale sand. His body reacted first, spinning and following her, cutting the angle to intercept her. Speeding up. But his mind faltered.
Did she see me?
Does she know?
In all the years, Jasper had never questioned himself. He’d never doubted. His life churned like some faultless machine, ever forward, never changing. The questions that plagued him seemed so foreign. As if they belonged to someone else. As he closed the distance between them, he had time to consider it all. She was just a woman walking on the beach. Like all the others.
Then he saw it. Maybe he had before. It hung in a soft arc from her left hand, a freshly cut daylily. It was perfect. The yellow as bright as flame. The stem cut to the exact length. His heart seemed to stiffen behind his breastbone, like it might never beat again. The air left his lungs in a rush, and he couldn’t find the strength to take more in to replace it. Jasper’s step faltered, the tip of his sandal catching in the dry sand. He reached the edge of the surf, but she moved faster than he would have thought. He still wasn’t close.
Overwhelmed, he stopped. The ocean hissed closer, reaching for his feet. He didn’t move as the water kissed his skin. At the same time, the woman turned again. She moved up onto the drier sand, cutting across the beach toward a path over the dunes. The flower casually dangling at her side.
Jasper needed to follow. He needed to hurry. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t believe it was real. That this woman existed. It had to be a dream. The flower had to be a figment of the past, an omen to the end. She had to be a ghost. The first. That woman, Abbie Henshaw, the one he had just read about in the news.
Impossible. He stood still as the cool water washed back over his feet. His eyes shut, and he kept them closed for a beat. Taking in a deep breath, he opened them again.
She was still there, still moving toward the winding path. He stared as her head turned. Through the predawn gloom, her eyes met his. Jasper was sure of it. She looked at him. And he saw her. He saw through her dark eyes. He saw inside her. And he needed more.
Jasper broke into an awkward sprint. His hands flapped at his side as he dug into the softening sand. Within a second, he was panting. His cheeks burned. Sweat dotted every inch of his smooth skin. He moaned, gasped, pushing himself, willing himself to move faster. To catch her. To have her.
The woman disappeared over the dune. Jasper stumbled, falling to his knees. But he sprang back up. Staggering, fighting to keep his balance. He cursed under his breath, something he never did. When he reached the dune, his heart beat painfully against his bones. Gasping, he reached the crest in time to see a nondescript sedan rolling out of the small parking lot.
Jasper stopped at the top of the rise. His eyes locked on to the car until it disappeared, heading north on the highway. Then he doubled over, almost falling to the ground. He heaved and groaned again. Unable to catch his breath, he sank to the sand. Sitting, hard, he hung his head between his knees. His vision swirled and darkened at the edges. For a minute, he was sure he would lose consciousness. That he would pass out, only to be awakened by the hand of a police officer. A stranger who would expose his world, lay it bare before everyone’s judgement. And, for a flash, he had no fight left inside to stop it.
Jasper hurried down the dune and into the lot. Slowing, he walked to the spot from which he’d seen the car pull out. He knelt, even before he noticed the light from the rising sun striking the shining surface of a plastic card lying in the gravel like a calling card. His fingers pinched the corner and picked it up before he registered it as the key to a motel room. He read the name on the front in flowing script, and recognized it. Yet his brain made no connection, not at first. Instead, it drowned under the most basic of realizations—that nothing would ever be the same again.