In the picture, the class was scattered about the room, making final touches to their canvases or mingling as they drank the last of their wine. In the back, standing next to an industrial-looking sink, Margot spotted a guy in an apron with a fistful of paintbrushes. From the way he seemed to be slipping quietly past a group, she guessed he was some sort of assistant. He was turned slightly, so she couldn’t see his face, but his hair was the same shade of brown as Jace’s in his mugshot. It was longer in this photo, past his chin and tucked behind his ears. She zoomed in, and his face blurred, but she could make out the shape of it, the coloring.
Margot’s heart beat fast. She hastily slid her laptop off her legs, then strode to her backpack, tugging out the pages she’d gotten at the courthouse. She clambered back onto the bed, her feet tucked beneath her, and held up Jace’s mugshot next to the blurred image of the guy on the screen. Her eyes flicked back and forth, studying the faces. Yes, Jace in the mugshot looked younger, and yes, his hair had been shorter then, but Margot was almost positive they were one and the same.
* * *
—
A few hours later, Margot peered through the glass door of Bottle & Brush. The long right-hand wall was filled with amateur paintings: grinning llamas in flower crowns, endless Starry Nights, still lifes of potted plants and olive-adorned martinis. The place was dark and empty.
Margot knew from their website that they had a Paint Your Dog! class tonight at seven. She’d gotten there a little after five, in hopes of catching the employees before the participants arrived, but it seemed she was too early. She knocked loudly on the door, then cupped her hands to the glass and peered through. Nothing. She waited, knocked again. In the far back was a door, an employee-only room, but it remained closed.
“Shit,” she said, turning to leave. She’d just have to wait in her car until people started to arrive. It was frustrating to spend hours on a lead she didn’t even know would pan out, but it was the only lead she had.
As she was stepping off the curb, she heard the sound of a door swinging open behind her. “Can I help you?”
Margot’s chest fluttered with hope. The business wasn’t big; surely all the employees would know each other. If Jace worked there, whoever was at the door now would know. She turned around, her mouth open to explain, but then she froze. Standing in front of her—brown hair, bright green eyes, and sharp features—was the male version of January Jacobs.
When he self-consciously tucked his hair behind his ears, Margot realized she’d been staring. “Yeah, hi.” Her voice sounded breathless. “Um…”
He cocked his head. “Are you interested in a class? We’re not open now and our class tonight is sold out, but I could give you a calendar.”
“Oh, thank you, but actually…” Her head was swimming. At the sight of him, vague memories of their childhood flooded her mind, images of running around in his backyard, playing hide-and-seek on the elementary school playground. “I’m actually here to see you.”
“Excuse me?”
She hesitated. “You’re Jace Jacobs, aren’t you?”
Panic darted across his face and he began to turn away.
“Wait! My name’s Margot Davies. I used to live across the street from you. I was friends with January.”
Jace hesitated, slowly turning back around. His eyes were wary. “Margot?”
She gave him a tentative smile. “Do you remember me?”
“I do, actually.”
This surprised her. He and January were branded on her brain because of the tragedy surrounding them, but she assumed she’d faded from his memory long ago.
“How did you find me?”
She lifted a shoulder. “It wasn’t easy.”
“And…why are you here?”
“Do you know what happened at your family’s farm last Saturday? The message written on the barn?” She studied his face, looking for some sign that she’d caught him out.
His jaw tensed and his eyes went flat as if he’d slammed a window shut. Suddenly, she could see his face from the mugshot. “Are you a reporter or something?”
“I just wanna talk.”
He let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“Jace, please—”
“I go by Jay now,” he snapped. “Or didn’t your research tell you that?”
“Jay. I’m just trying to understand if there’s a connection between that barn note and what happened to your sister. I just want to hear your version of what happened that night.”
“It was nice seeing you again, Margot,” he said as he turned to leave.
But Margot couldn’t let him. Not now when she was so close. She wanted a story, yes—she wanted to be a real, credentialed journalist again—but this was so much more than that. This was about understanding what had happened to her friend that night across the street from her bedroom window. This was about unraveling the thread that connected January to Natalie Clark. This was about making sure no more little girls got taken, then showed up a day later, their bodies cold with death. Margot made a fist, brushing her fingertips against her palm’s scattering of half-moon scars.
“Have you heard about Natalie Clark?”
Jace stopped, glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
“Natalie Clark,” she repeated, studying his face for any hint that the name meant something to him, but his expression remained neutral, almost blank. Was he acting or did he really not know anything about the little girl? To Margot, Natalie’s name was almost as familiar as January’s now, but that wasn’t normal. Most people didn’t pay half as much attention to the news as she did.
“She was from Nappanee,” she continued. “Five years old. She was taken from a playground a few days ago and police found her this morning, dead. She was murdered just like January.”
Jace stared at her. Had he had something to do with the death of his sister? With the death of Natalie? So many conflicting images of him swirled in Margot’s mind: Jace playing tag in the Jacobs backyard, Jace pushing his shoe into that dead bird, Jace beating up another kid, Jace putting flowers on his sister’s grave. Margot had no idea what to think about the man in front of her. All she knew was that she needed him to talk.
“Jace—Jay, what happened to your sister, it’s happening again. And I’m trying to figure out who’s behind it before any other girls show up dead.”
If he was innocent, or if he wanted to look innocent, refusing to talk to her now would look bad. Margot knew it and she knew he knew it too.
Jace stood still like that for a long moment, then finally he sighed and turned to face her. “I can’t talk now. I have to get the studio ready.”
“Okay.”
“What about after? Around ten-thirty?”
She nodded. “Do you have a place in mind? A restaurant or a bar or something?”
He glanced down the sidewalk in one direction then the other. “No. I don’t want to talk in public. You can come to my place.”
Margot hadn’t made up her mind about Jace yet, and she didn’t love the idea of going to his apartment alone at night in the middle of a city she didn’t know. But she’d text Pete the details. And anyway, it wouldn’t be her first time to sit across from a potentially dangerous man for a story. She smiled up at him. “Just give me your address.”
TWENTY
Margot, 2019
Margot knocked on Jace’s apartment door and waited. Her throat felt tight with anticipation, though whether that was because she felt she was on the brink of understanding January’s story or because she was nervous to be alone with Jace, she wasn’t sure.
When the door swung open, Margot tried not to stare, but it felt surreal to be standing in front of the boy from across the street after all these years. And Jace’s face was so like January’s. Though, unlike his sister, there was that unsettling blankness in his expression that he’d had earlier, the same one he got after he’d guessed she was a reporter.
“Hi,” he said. “Come in.”
When Margot passed through the doorway, she was hit with a smell—earthy and a bit floral. On the coffee table, she spotted a stick of incense slowly turning to ash alongside a lighter, a small glass pipe, and a paperback copy of The Bonfire of the Vanities.
“You want a drink or something?” he said. His cadence was slow and flat, almost as if he was taking the time to weigh out every word, as if he’d had a lifetime of holding things in. Perhaps he did.
“That’d be great, thanks. I’ll have whatever you have.”