Chapter 1
Although Zachary was a private investigator, there wasn’t usually any cloak-and-dagger involved. That was for spies, not private investigators, and even the spies he knew didn’t use that sort of thing. But his new client had insisted on absolute privacy, and Zachary understood why.
His client had checked in at a motel under a name that was not his own, probably paying cash. Even so, the motel manager had probably taken down his license plate number so he would have a way to trace him if he trashed the room or ran up long-distance charges. If the car was a rental, that was one more hurdle to overcome to find out who the man who had asked to meet Zachary really was.
Zachary knew who he was supposed to meet. They exchanged several emails before graduating to a phone call so that Zachary could talk to him in real-time and try to get his questions answered.
But Zachary would not take on the case until he knew for sure that the man was who he purported to be. It would not do for a private investigator to be hoodwinked by accepting a retainer from someone who was not who he said he was. A public scandal would not be good for business. People liked to think the person they were hiring knew what he was talking about.
Zachary parked down the street from the motel and walked in. If the new client had any shadows—reporters, law enforcement types, or rabid fans—Zachary did not want his car to be identified or targeted.
No one seeing Zachary would give him a second look. In fact, most would avoid taking even a first look. He was on the short side and skinny, having to work to keep his weight up to the low-healthy zone. His hair was dark and buzz-cut short, the epitome of easy to care for. He usually had several days’ growth of beard, making him look scruffy and unkempt.
People did not like being approached by a scruffy, possibly homeless man. They would cross to the other side of the street to avoid him. They would not look at him very closely and if asked to describe him, they probably wouldn’t be able to. That was how he kept his anonymity. Not with dark glasses, a hat, and a trench coat. Just social stigma.
He watched for anyone suspicious on the street. People hanging around who didn’t belong. Sitting in their cars for more than a minute or two. Anyone who was obviously watching the motel.
Everyone seemed to be minding their own business. No one watched Zachary’s progress as he made his way down the street, pausing occasionally by garbage cans as if he might be looking for bottles or discarded food.
Eventually, he had reached the motel. He looked at each car in the parking lot. No one was sitting in any of them. No one smoking and studiously looking in the other direction. Nothing of any note.
Zachary knocked on the door he had been told to, though there was no car in the parking spot assigned to that room. He’d been told to knock loudly, which seemed to contradict the client’s wish to remain unnoticed, but Zachary followed his instructions anyway.
A curtain twitched two motel rooms down. Zachary stood still, watching it, waiting for the door in front of him to open. Instead, the door two rooms down opened, and a young man stuck his head out the door.
“Mr. Goldman. Come down here.”
Zachary joined him. The man shut, locked, and chained the door. He closed the blinds and pulled the curtain straight so that there was no way for anyone outside to see in. The stale air inside the motel room was tinged with a faint scent of bleach and cigarette smoke.
The man turned to look at Zachary. He removed dark glasses, which had probably made him half-blind in the dim motel room.
“Well, you wanted to see me face-to-face,” he told Zachary. “Are you satisfied?”
Zachary was mildly surprised that the man was who he said he was. That he had told the truth about moving to Vermont and wanting to hire an obscure private investigator and have him investigate a case that, as far as the police were concerned, was not a crime. The file had been closed and life went on for the rest of the world. For everyone except Dain Porter and Elysse Allan.
Zachary held his hand out to Dain Porter to shake.
“Good to meet you, Mr. Porter.”
“Dain. And may I call you Zachary?”
He nodded. He always preferred that his clients call him by his first name. Mr. Goldman was just too formal.
“Have a seat.”
The motel room was provisioned with a small table and two straight wooden chairs, and Dain and Zachary both sat down. Dain stood again to fill a cup of coffee from the small motel room carafe. “Can I get you one?”
“Sure.” Zachary could always use another cup of coffee.
Dain brought both cups over to the table and sat down again. He looked around as if he thought he might have forgotten to do something else. Traffic hummed in the distance and there were occasional voices or the sounds of footsteps from the other motel rooms. Then he brought his gaze back to Zachary, studying him for a moment as if he weren’t sure he could trust him.
“I’m not much to look at,” Zachary told him. “But you wouldn’t want me attracting attention.”
“No,” Dain agreed. He looked at the window, confirming that no one could look in at them. This was what he had become. Someone who was hunted everywhere he went. He always had to be on the alert. Always looking over his shoulder, and in front of him, and on his flanks. He could never be sure that he hadn’t been seen and recognized.
“I didn’t see anyone suspicious,” Zachary confirmed. “I don’t think you were followed.”
“No. Of course not. That’s good.”
“I appreciate you meeting with me in person. I know this is probably not what you had in mind when you first emailed me.”
“No, that’s true. I figured I’d just be able to email you, and you would take the case.” He gave a crooked smile. “But I appreciate that you didn’t. I appreciate that you respected my privacy enough to ensure that it was actually me and not someone else using my name.”
“I suppose I could just have verified it was you via a video chat, but with all of the technology available these days… it wouldn’t be that hard to fake a video.”
Dain nodded. “I’ve seen some pretty convincing deepfakes. I appreciate your caution.”
“Good. Now that I know it is you, and you know my rates…”
Dain pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen a few times, and then Zachary’s vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out to see the notification that the e-transfer from Dain had been auto-deposited into his account.
That was the second matter taken care of.
“Thank you. So… why don’t you tell me exactly what you hope to get from this investigation?”
Dain rolled his eyes. He had, of course, already told Zachary what he wanted him to investigate. He didn’t see why he should go through it all again. But Zachary wanted to be clear on exactly what Dain wanted him to find out. What he wanted Zachary to do was no small undertaking. Zachary needed to know the exact parameters and when Dain would consider the job complete. What if what Zachary discovered wasn’t what Dain had hoped to find? What if the truth were something quite different?
“I want you to find out what happened to Elysse when she disappeared,” Dain said firmly. “What really happened, not the story she told the world.”
“What do you think happened?”
Dain looked away. “I don’t know. I wish I did. But the story Elysse told when she got back didn’t make any sense. It didn’t fit. She would never do something like that.”
Zachary nodded slowly. It was easy for one partner in a relationship to be wrong about who their partner was. It happened all the time. People who thought they knew each other found themselves incompatible. Or they discovered that their partner had been pretending and wasn’t who they said they were. People kept secrets, some of them buried deep until, one day, they wouldn’t stay buried any longer.
“Why don’t you tell me what you know?” he told Dain. “The full story from your point of view.”
“You already know my story; it was all over the media.”
“The media adds or omits things, gets things wrong. I want to hear it directly from you. Everything.”
Chapter 2
It’s not that complicated,” Dain sighed, raking a hand through his hair as frustration flickered across his face. “We had an argument. Elysse stomped off. It wasn’t the first time she’d done that. I knew that she would cool down, and then she would come back, we would make up, and… happily ever after.”
“Or at least until the next fight.”
Dain shrugged. “No relationship is perfect. People argue. Couples have different opinions. Personalities. Elysse and I are both… passionate people. We love each other. We have arguments. Sometimes yell at each other. And then it blows over. We make up… just as passionately.”
He actually blushed.
Zachary chuckled. “So that’s the summary, the short story. I’d like to hear more. If you want me to be able to figure out what happened, I need all the nuances, the little things that happened along the way. More about your relationship, your plans, and how they went off the rails.”
Dain rubbed a hand over his face. “That seems like a waste of time. I know what happened when we were together; I want to know what happened when she left.”
“How far have you gotten on that in the last six months?”
“I’m not a private investigator,” Dain snapped. “If I was, I wouldn’t have needed to hire you. I would have just figured it all out on my own.”
“Well, I am a private investigator and I need more information than you have given me. How did the two of you meet?”
“Why do we need to go back that far?”
“I need background. I need more details about your relationship. I need to start building a profile of Elysse that is not just based on her Instagram feed.”
Dain sighed. “Remember before Instagram was a big thing? We knew each other in school. Grew up together. Small community in Oregon. She was this cute girl who attended some of the same classes as me. Back when we were both awkward and gawky, before she was a social media influencer.”
“And you liked each other back then?”
“Sometimes yes and sometimes no.” Dane laughed. “You know kids… boys and girls fight, don’t want anything to do with each other in the younger grades. And then you start to grow up and the hormones and social pressure take over. Then suddenly, you’re looking at each other in a totally different light.”
“And eventually, the two of you got together.”
Dain nodded. “We started going out together… getting more serious… going steady… then her Instagrammer life took over. Suddenly, she’s one of the most recognizable people on the planet. She has millions of followers. Everything she posts is an instant hit. What started out as being something fun ended up taking over her life. She spent every waking minute planning her next post, getting it just right, obsessively monitoring her views.”
“That must have been hard on the relationship.”
“It took over the relationship. Instagram became her boyfriend. I was just this guy who showed up in some of the shots. But people loved the relationship stuff. She had to post about us some of the time if she wanted to keep her views up.”
Zachary nodded encouragingly.
“I just… sometimes I wished we could go back to the way it was. To be able just to be boyfriend and girlfriend in a small town, this little rural place… like it was idyllic. Of course, it wasn’t really; there are always challenges. You want to do different things and have to consider each other’s feelings, and their backgrounds, and their families. But it seemed like it was a lot simpler before she became a famous influencer.’”
“I have heard that it can be very stressful.”
Zachary didn’t know a lot of famous social media figures, but he did know one, Brittany “the bombshell” Blake. He had misjudged her initially, thinking that she had it all made. He thought she had a life of leisure, with everyone worshiping her, and all she had to do was post a few pictures. He hadn’t realized how hard she had to work to look good, stay healthy, and make all the appearances that her fans expected. He had thought she was snobby and stuck up when she was really down to earth, thoughtful, and cared about other people. Her fans had rescued them from a dire situation, and she had also helped Zachary on another case since then.
He wouldn’t ever judge someone by their popularity again. Being famous did not equate with a life of leisure and luxury.
“It was incredibly stressful,” Dain agreed. “You don’t know how many times I thought about leaving. Just let Elysse live her life online, being the darling of social media, and live my life outside the spotlight, without all those expectations. Only… I love her. How could I leave her because she’s too popular? It sounds… ridiculous and shallow.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t the reason you thought about leaving.”
“No. Not exactly, but that was what it would look like. For the rest of my life, I would be the guy who left Elysse Allan. I would be the villain. The jerk who broke Elysse Allan’s heart.” He grimaced and looked away.
“And what you got instead was…”
“For five days, I was the guy who murdered Elysse Allan.”
Dain swallowed hard. He stared at the window as if he could see it all playing out before him.
“Everyone was so sure of themselves. I was the one who reported her missing! I was the one looking for her, insisting that the police follow up on her disappearance. But the police and everyone else made me the prime suspect. They decided that I had murdered her and dumped her body somewhere it might never be discovered.”
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