I’m midway through the comparison, clipping coupons and banging on the calculator, when my phone buzzes. It’s from Rambo, of all people, a text message. Why is my private investigator texting me? I open the message, all of three numbers: 911.

I pop out of the chair and head outside. I’ll want good reception. And more importantly, privacy.

—

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, walking into the parking lot outside the shelter, phone pressed against my ear, my feet crunching gravel. “Please, just—just tell me this is a joke.”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Rambo says to me. “It’s no joke.”

“When?” I say. “When did this happen?”

“They found the body five weeks ago. They identified her through DNA two days ago. The article was in the Register-Herald online. You can read it yourself.”

There’s no way in hell I’m looking up that article. Not on any phone or computer that can be connected to me.

“Where—where was the body found?” I ask, as if that matters.

“Bolt Mountain. You know that place?”

“Never heard of it. I’ve never even been to that part of the country.”

“Me neither,” he says. “It’s about a buck fifty, two hundred miles from where she lived.”

“And you’re sure it’s her?” I ask, flailing.

“I can only tell you what I’m reading, kiddo. ‘The skeletal remains of a woman found in August on Bolt Mountain have been identified as Vicky Lanier, who disappeared in 2003 from her home in Fairmont, West Virginia, at the age of seventeen.’ So that sure sounds right to me.”

God, that poor girl. Somebody killed her and buried her up in a mountain.

But also—poor me.

I look up at the sky. “So the missing person I picked as an alias is no longer a missing person. She’s no longer off the grid.”

“Well, she is in one sense, I suppose.”

“You’re not funny, Rambo. I’m totally screwed, in other words.”

No. No. Not when I’m this close. Not when I’m— This—this can’t be happening. Could my luck be any worse?

“Miss Vicky, Miss Vicky.” Rambo sighs. “I don’t know what you’re up to, and I don’t wanna know. But as of this moment, yes, if you’ve been telling everybody that you’re Vicky Lanier from Fairmont, West Virginia, who left at age seventeen in 2003, then a quick Google search will tell them one of two things. Either you’re lying, or a town of less than twenty thousand people had two girls named Vicky Lanier of the same age who went missing the same year.”

“Well, c’mon, help me out here, Rambo. Is there anything I can do? What would you do?”

“There’s nothing to do. You can’t make this news disappear. You wanna know what I’d do?” he says. “I’d pray nobody looks me up. Or whatever it was I was doing that relied on my alias—I’d stop doing it.”

No. Stopping is not an option. Not when I’ve gotten this far. Not when I’m so close. November is only seven weeks away.

I’ll just to have to pray that I’m not exposed in the next seven weeks. If I am, all of this comes crashing down.

36

Friday, September 16, 2022

Married. I’m getting married again! But where?!?

“Paris,” you said. “I always dreamed of getting married in Paris.”

Venice, maybe. Cabo. Maui. Anywhere. I would marry you anywhere, Lauren. I would marry you in a basement. I would marry you in a tub of ice water.

Vicky and I got married in Mexico on a whim. My parents were both gone by then, and Vicky hadn’t seen her parents since she left West Virginia as a teenager, so it’s not like we needed a big family wedding or anything. But still, I’m a homebody at heart, and I always wished we’d married in Chicago.

Vicky. Oh, Vicky. This won’t be easy. I’ll have to find the right way to break this to her. It will be hard, but eventually she’ll see that it’s for the best.

And I don’t have to tell her immediately, do I? After all, I have to wait to file for divorce until November 3—our tenth anniversary—so she gets her share of the money. Maybe that will be the best way to break it to her.

Bad news, we’re splitting up. Good news, here’s ten million dollars.