“Fuck, you scared me,” Ash said, clutching one hand to his strawberry- covered heart, backing into a rake. Gasping and backing away from that too. “What, the reporters screaming my name didn’t give you any pre- warning?” Bel stepped carefully around the tarp-covered lawn mower. “So,”
she said, cradling the phone. “My dad’s missing.” “I saw on the news.”
His eyes clouded, catching hers when she glanced over, like he was hurt somehow, that she hadn’t told him first.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Went missing Saturday night. His phone is off. Looks like he packed a bag and his passport, but he didn’t leave because of the stress, he wouldn’t do that.” She didn’t pause, leaving no gap for dissent or Ash’s devil’s advocate, the devil playing for Rachel’s side. “Rachel is behind it, I know she is, and he’s in danger. We have to find the truth, we have to save my dad.”
“He’s really gone?”
“He’s gone.” Her deepest fear made real in two tiny words, bottomless and cruel. Her lip quivered, a bite behind the surface of her eyes. She held it back. Not here, not in front of Ash, for fuck’s sake. “Guess the Prices have a
thing for disappearing,” she said with a cynical sniff, hiding behind it. “Be my turn soon.”
“I’m sorry, Bel.”
He reached for her hand, but there was no time to hold hands, no reason it would help.
“Are you recording?” she asked, stepping back. “Should I be?”
Bel nodded, waiting as he flipped out the viewfinder, the beep as he pressed record, giving her a thumbs-up with his spare hand.
Bel held up the phone, showing the camera. “Rachel’s phone,” she said.
Ash’s eyes widened. “How?”
Bel enjoyed that look on his face. “Carter’s inside distracting her. We don’t have much time. Have to find whatever Rachel and Mr. Tripp are hiding. He knows something, why else would he lie, slam the door in our faces? He’s been sick off work all week; maybe he knows what Rachel did to my dad, maybe he helped her.”
“OK.” Ash stretched the word across a few trailing seconds. “So now you want me to capture evidence of you committing a crime?”
“I’ve done worse.” Bel blinked. “I’d do much worse to find him.”
She tapped the phone screen. The background lit up, an old photo they had in a frame; Rachel with baby Bel balanced on her hip, looking at each other, a smile creeping across Rachel’s younger face. It was that woman’s secrets Bel wanted, pre-disappeared Rachel, as well as the older one inside the house.
Bel swiped up. It tried Face ID first, the screen juddering when it didn’t recognize her, prompting for the passcode instead, bringing up the keypad. Bel’s thumb moved across, pressing 5, 6, 7 and 8.
The phone unlocked.
“I’m in,” she said, Ash drawing closer, pointing the camera down to record the screen.
Bel pressed the green speech bubble to open all of Rachel’s text conversations. An unopened message from Sherry ten minutes ago: Can you
make sure Carter is home for dinner, thx.
Moving down the list, she saw Carter, Jeff, a few notifications about Amazon deliveries. Bel’s name below those, and she was surprised to see that Rachel had entered it right, Bel, not Anna.
And then—bingo—Julian Tripp.
Bel opened the message thread, straightening the phone so the camera could see too. She scrolled up to the start, eyes circling.
The first was from Rachel, last Tuesday: Hi it’s Rachel Price, I got my new phone set up, just texting everyone so they have my number.
Mr. Tripp had replied four minutes later: Hi, Rachel. Was so nice to see you, pretty surreal actually. I hope you’re settling back into normal life, let me know if there’s anything I can do. Would be great to meet up, we’ve got sixteen years to catch up on. I was even married for a while!
“Sixteen years to catch up on,” Ash read out from the screen. “And he tells her he was married. Sounds like they weren’t in contact while she was disappeared, doesn’t it?”
“I guess. But…” She sharpened the word into a point. “He’s clearly hiding something about Rachel. About her disappearance.” She read out Rachel’s response: “Yes, we should catch up sometime.”
“Pretty blunt,” Ash said. “Like she doesn’t want to see him.”
Mr. Tripp texted again, two days later, a large gray bubble. Ash read it out: “Was great bumping into you at the store. Hope you’ve figured out that lock! I don’t want to bring this up again, but I do really need it back ASAP. I know things are probably complicated right now, but let me know.” Ash finished, staring down at the screen through the camera. “What’s he talking about? What does he want back?”
“I don’t want to bring this up again, but I do really need it back,” Bel read it out again, leaning on the words differently to see if the meaning was any clearer.
“Something he gave Rachel, before she disappeared?” Ash said. “And now he wants it back.”
Bel moved on to Rachel’s reply, her final message to him. “Let’s talk about this another time.”
Julian had sent one last message, Friday morning. “OK,” Ash read, “but it’s pretty desperate. Let me know.”
“Fuck sake,” Bel groaned. “This is it? Why can’t people label their cryptic conversations better? How are we going to find out what they’re talking about?”
“Text him?” Ash said uncertainly. “We could text him now, as Rachel. He won’t talk to you but he’ll talk to her. The old catfish routine.” He looked at her, over the camera, eyes glassy and wide, dropping for half a second to look at her mouth.
Bel thought about it. “No. He might take too long to reply. I have to head back soon or Rachel will think something’s wrong. And then if he replies later, when Rachel has the phone back, she’ll know I took it, what I did. She can’t know I’m onto her.” There was more to say, but she didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to put it into words and make it real that way. That Rachel was dangerous, that Rachel scared her, that Rachel had already taken too much and Bel didn’t want to give her a reason to take more.
But Ash nodded, as though she had said all those things and he understood. Which was stupid, really, because he didn’t know her at all and she wished he’d stop pretending. But still he kept nodding, a new glint in his eye.
“No, but you can call him,” he said. “Are you on crack?”
“No, listen. You’ll probably punch me for saying this, but you and Rachel sound almost exactly the same. You literally have the same voice. You can call him as Rachel, pretend to be Rachel, and he won’t know, as long as you play it right.”
“I can’t be Rachel.”
“Yes, you can, you can do this.” He sought out her eyes in the gloom. “You delete it from the call log after and Rachel will never know. There’s nothing to lose if he doesn’t buy it. But you only have a few minutes and you need these answers.”
She did need these answers, for Dad, but there was no way…
“Scared?” Ash said, pushing her and she knew it, but she was pushed all the same.
“I ain’t scared of shit.” She unlocked the sleeping phone. “I can be Rachel,” she said, more to herself, as she clicked on Julian Tripp’s contact info, thumb hovering over the blue call button. “I’m Rachel,” she whispered as she dared herself and thought of Dad, pressing her thumb down.
Calling Julian Tripp…
The double ring of the dial tone against her ear.
“Put it on speaker,” Ash hissed, steadying the camera. “It’ll help muffle your voice.”
Bel pressed it onto speakerphone, a click as she did, the dial tone cutting out. A buzzy silence in its wake.
“Hello, Rachel?” Mr. Tripp’s voice rattled from the speakers.
Bel cleared her throat, watching Ash as she became Rachel, taking her cues from him. “Hi, J-Julian. Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you yet, been a crazy few days. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Charlie—”
“I did hear about that, actually, I’m sorry. Any idea where he’s gone?”
That meant they could rule Mr. Tripp out, didn’t it, for having anything to do with Dad’s disappearance? Ash noted her pause, nodded her on.
“No,” she said, “I think it’s just been a very stressful situation for everyone. The police think he’ll come home soon.”
“Well, that’s something then, I guess,” Mr. Tripp replied, and it was working; he really thought she was Rachel. “So…,” he said, leaving a trail for her to pick up.
But Bel didn’t know how. She glanced at Ash, his lips parted, half formed around a word that might have been message.
“So about your message,” Bel said, “I thought it would be better to
actually talk it through.”
“No, I understand.” Mr. Tripp sniffed. “And I’m sorry to ask again so soon. It’s just, it’s a lot of money, you know.”
Bel’s heart thudded against her ribs, eyes snapping to Ash. Money, she mouthed. Mr. Tripp had given Rachel money before she disappeared. This changed everything.
How much? Ash mouthed back, jabbing his finger toward the phone. “Rachel, you OK?” Mr. Tripp’s voice chimed through.
“No, it’s fine,” Bel sniffed. “I understand. Um…it’s been a long time, a lot has happened, I can’t remember how much it was exactly…”
Ash screwed his eyes and Bel crossed her fingers that she hadn’t messed up already.
“It was three thousand bucks, Rachel.”
Her heart abandoned her ribs for her throat. She thumbed the mute button, hand shaking.
“Holy fucking shit!” she shouted, a laugh getting in the way, breaking up her voice.
Ash caught her laugh, stifled it. “Keep going,” he whispered, just as Mr. Tripp said:
“Rachel? You there?”
Bel unmuted it, wiped the smile off her face. “Sorry—” she said, but Mr. Tripp didn’t let her finish.
“I know it’s awkward…embarrassing to ask for it, but I always thought you’d pay me back when you could. Then I thought you were dead, like everyone else. But now you’re not…you know, life hasn’t been the easiest. I got medical bills to pay off. Debts. Borrowed a lot of money too. It would really help, if you could pay me back.”
“No, sure,” Bel said, “I understand,” even though she didn’t, even though a tiny part of her wanted to take Rachel’s side over his, a man more interested in getting his money than his old friend back from the dead. “Things are a bit complicated, I’ve only been back a week and a half. But you’ll get everything you’re owed, I promise.”
An intake of breath down the line, too deep, almost on the verge of tears. “God, that’s such a relief. Thank you.”
“Sure.” Bel bit back what she really wanted to say, what Rachel might have too. “You didn’t ever tell anyone, about the money, did you?”
Ash screwed his face again, eyes and mouth.
“No, course not. I didn’t tell the police, I was scared they’d think I had something to do with you going missing, which I obviously didn’t.
Especially as I’m the one who found your car, who found Bel. But it wouldn’t have helped anyway, the money had nothing to do with that man snatching you out of the car, right?”
“Right,” she said, running it over in her head, her thoughts becoming Rachel’s. “No, it’s good you never told them.” Bel took a breath, stepped out onto shakier ground. “When did you give me the money again, it wasn’t long before, was it?”
“That’s why I kept it secret. You asked me on the Friday, and I gave the cash to you after school on Monday, when I drove you home.”
That was it, the moment Aunt Sherry had seen, a line being crossed. But maybe she’d read it wrong, and the reason they’d looked cozy was because one was passing a huge amount of cash to the other, their little secret.
“That was only two days before sh—I went missing?” Bel said. Ash flapped his hands, and she flapped hers back, mouthing for him to shut up.
“Exactly,” Mr. Tripp said. “So you aren’t mad, that I didn’t tell anyone?”
“I’m not mad, Julian.” Bel pulled a face.
Silence, saliva ticking around his mouth, down the other end of the phone.
“Rachel?” The sound of her name cut through Bel. “Yes?” she answered to it.
“I know it’s not really important, after everything you’ve been through. But it’s always played on my mind, the not knowing. You never told me what the money was for. Only that you couldn’t access your own money, and you needed it, it was an emergency.” He sniffed. “When I gave it to you, you said I was a lifesaver, which I thought was just one of those things people say, a thank-you. But after you disappeared, I wondered if it meant something else, and that you’d been wrong, that the money hadn’t saved your life.”
Bel stalled, searching Ash’s eyes for what to say. He didn’t know either, shrugging behind the camera. “I can’t say.”
“Come on, Rachel.” Mr. Tripp sniffed. “I knew something wasn’t right. You hadn’t been yourself for weeks, months, even. Jumpy, paranoid. Losing weight, your clothes getting baggy. Stopped coming to Wednesday Wine
Night after school. You needed the money and you were scared. Who were you scared of, Rachel? You didn’t know the man that abducted you. I always thought it was Charlie, it made sense when he was arrested for killing you. I was so concerned that Monday, I put a tra—”
“You’re wrong,” Bel snapped, speaking from her own gut, not Rachel’s. “I was not scared of Charlie.”
Mr. Tripp paused. “Well, you were afraid of someone. Who was it?
Charlie’s brother?”
“Jeff?” Bel narrowed her eyes. “Why would I be afraid of Uncl—” She stopped herself, slapping a hand to her mouth.
Ash screwed his face, one eye open, staying very still. Bel tried: “I mean, I don’t think—”
“Annabel, is that you?” The speakers rattled with his voice, a dark, crackling edge to it.
Bel jabbed the red button to hang up, holding the phone away from her, like it was counting down to explode.
“Oh well,” Ash said, somehow out of breath, standing still. “You were bound to fuck up at some point.”
Bel navigated into the call log, deleting the top entry to Julian Tripp, disappearing all trace of what they just did, her skin alive and electric.
“You don’t think he’ll tell Rachel?”
“Probably not,” Ash said. “We just caught him, he admitted to withholding information from police so he wouldn’t look suspicious. I reckon he’ll want to keep this as quiet as we do.”
Bel felt some comfort in that we. A comfort she resented immediately, feeding it to the knot in her stomach. There was no we. Bel only had one person, and he was missing.
“Worth it,” she said, clicking the bones in her neck. “Three thousand dollars in cash two days before she disappeared. That’s a slam dunk, right? Enough to start a new life somewhere, isn’t it? To disappear yourself?”
Ash’s mouth twitched.
“We just proved it, didn’t we?” Bel’s eyes glittered in the dark. “That Rachel Price wasn’t abducted; she chose to leave. She planned her own
disappearance.”
Ash hesitated, chewed his lower lip. “Not enough for the police or a court of law. I actually think it’s illegal to record someone on the phone without their consent in the US. We’ll let Ramsey worry about that. But… yeah, I think we maybe just did.”
A smile pulled at the edges of Bel’s mouth. She gave in, shooting a wink at the camera in Ash’s hands. “I knew it.”
“But we still don’t know where she went. Why she left. How. Why she’s back.”
“We will. We have to, to find my dad,” Bel said, tucking Rachel’s phone up her sleeve. “I should go, already been too long.”
“OK.” His lips parted like he wanted to say more, but he stopped himself.
“See ya later, alligator.” Bel waved him off like he was anybody else, heading for the door.
“In a while, crocodile,” Ash responded, recording her as she walked out of the garage, into the low evening sun.
The reporters scrambled. “Annabel, please.” “Annabel, wait.”
She ignored them, unable to shift that smile, covering it with her other sleeve.
“Where’s your father gone?” CNN shouted.
Up the steps, Bel unlocked the front door and pushed it open.
A sweet vanilla smell wrapped her up as she walked through the house. “Back.” She hung in the kitchen doorway, watching as Rachel and
Carter both turned, a similar look in their eyes and warm flush in their cheeks. “Sorry,” she said, before anyone could ask. “Ms. Nelson wouldn’t shut up. Lonely, I think. How are the cookies?”
“Done,” Carter said stiffly. “Already in the oven.”
Bel shifted her face, pretending to look disappointed. Rachel smiled at her.
“Well, you didn’t miss out on the eating part,” she said.
“Or the cleaning up,” added Carter.
Bel took the hint, stepping into the room, edging toward the table. “How long do they have left?” she asked, hoping the right person would answer.
Rachel bent to look at the timer on the oven and Bel didn’t hesitate. She straightened her arm and slid Rachel’s phone out, placing it where she’d found it, shielded behind the Tupperware, rotating it to a diagonal.
Bel snatched her hand away just in time. “Four minutes,” Rachel said, turning back. “Smell amazing already.”
Bel joined Carter at the sink, rolling up her sleeves. Carter shot her a look, and Bel shot one back, blinks instead of words.
She heard a huff of air behind her, not quite a sigh, not quite a gasp, just a breath that hitched halfway through.
Bel turned back.
Rachel was standing beside the kitchen table, looking down at it. At her phone.
Bel stopped breathing.
Rachel’s fingers trailed along the wooden surface, over to her phone. And in one small movement, she spun the phone from one diagonal to the other, finger tapping beside, studying it.
Rachel glanced up without warning, catching Bel’s eyes. She gave her a smile, vanilla sweet and warm.
Bel smiled back, tight-lipped, without teeth.
