The answer was the Notorious B.I.G.
She hung up on the caller. “Oops,” she said, hearing her voice shake inside her headphones. “The call dropped.”
Nessa stared at the blinking phone lines, which now looked urgent and sinister to her.
She tentatively reached for the buttons and pushed one.
“This is Nessa, and you’re on the air.”
“The answer,” said the same masked voice, “is the Notorious B.I.G.” The same person was on two phone lines, obviously calling in from multiple cell phones. “You look really good in that black shirt.”
Nessa stood up so fast that her face bumped the microphone, setting off a screech of feedback.
She looked out the window, through the three consecutive panes of glass. He was out there. He could see her. He knew what she was wearing.
Nessa sat back down with a thud and clicked the next song button, then yanked the headphones off her head and ran out of the studio. Looking through just two panes of glass now, she could see nothing but the amorphous shapes made by the light reflecting back on itself into infinity.
Nessa turned off the lights as “The Prey” by the Dead Kennedys played in the background. Great. Only one of the creepiest songs ever recorded. Nessa pressed her face against the glass, her hands making a wide telescope around her eyes, straining to see into the dark nothingness of the field beyond the station.
Was he out there in the tall weeds? Nessa mashed her fists into her eyes, trying to clear her vision, distorted from light and reflection and now dark. She squinted back out into the windy night and couldn’t see the figure anymore.
Nessa flipped the dead--bolt lock and crept out into the dark, looking around wildly.
“I know who you are,” Nessa shouted.
Nothing but hot wind and darkness. She couldn’t see anyone or anything.
“What do you want?”
Her fear was turning into something else. She wasn’t afraid. She was livid, and it drowned out everything else. Who did this guy think he was, terrorizing her and her son like this? Trying to frame her for murder? This aggression would not stand.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she yelled. “If I catch you, I’m going to kick your pathetic, rapey ass!”
No sound, no movement.
But someone was out there. Someone was watching.
Friday, June 17
NESSA KNEW BETTER than to call the cops for this one. What would they do? Nothing except lose a little more respect for her. But she was definitely going to call them to ask whether they could determine Nathan’s whereabouts. That, she could do.
Although she slept little after the disturbing night she’d had at the station, she decided to take Daltrey and Isabeau to the Sunset Zoo in Manhattan. Spending the day outdoors, watching Daltrey delight over the animals, was just what she needed.
When they returned home after lunch, Daltrey took a nap, Isabeau worked on cataloging Nessa’s music collection, and Nessa managed to bang out a blog post about the band Quasi. Then she went downstairs and looked out the back door. Isabeau was watching Daltrey run through the sprinklers.
Nessa tried to decide what to do about dinner. She was looking up the pizza delivery phone number when the doorbell rang.
This made her sad, because there was no Declan MacManus to announce an arrival. She went to the door, and there stood Otto, a cooler on the porch next to him and bags of groceries in his arms.
He looked sheepish. “Sorry for just showing up like this, but—-”
“How did you know where I lived?”
He looked taken aback by her sharp tone. He stammered, “I just—-I looked you up online.”
“No, you didn’t,” Nessa said. “My address isn’t online.”
His face reddened and he stuttered some more. “I used to be a reporter—-and I—-I—-I . . . covered public records and that kind of thing. I still have some friends at the courthouse and I . . . looked up your property records there.”
Stunned, Nessa started hyperventilating. She leaned forward, trying to regulate her breathing. “Can . . . can anyone do that?”
“Well, yeah,” Otto said. “But it’s not a big deal—-you don’t need to—-”
So anyone could find out where she lived. Why hadn’t she known this? Now she cursed the day she and John had bought this huge property in the middle of nowhere.
“Hey,” Otto said gently. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I should have called you and asked if I could come by. I just . . . wanted to make it up to you for missing my shift. I’m sorry.”
Nessa realized she’d just given her professional adversary a salacious glimpse into the peep show that was her anxiety and stress. Into her weakness.
She stood straight and gave him the most imperious look she could manage. “Right,” she said, folding her arms in front of her. “No need to let me know that you weren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
He grinned a little. “You were worried about me?”