Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

tip. He and Tessa weren’t exactly flush with cash. If he was able to land VistaBuild, there’d be a sizable bump in his bonus come Christmas, but until then, they had to stay on budget.

They. Was that even real now? Or was it just him?

He careened his car onto Main Street and he made an illegal U-turn to go back to the bank. When he pulled into the lot, there were no other cars there. Where had Rosita gone?

Coffee in hand, he opened the front door with a passcode and secured it behind him—they didn’t open for walk-ins for another forty minutes. He flipped on the lights with his free hand and the fluorescents overhead stuttered for a moment as the bank buzzed to life, room by room. He swiveled his head left to right—it was definitely empty, yet he felt like someone was here. Was he being watched? Of course he was. The bank cameras were always watching. But it was something else. What?

Tessa being gone was making him uneasy. That must be it. Settling into his office, a twelve-by-twelve space with a big window facing east, he set down his coffee and bagel and dropped his wallet and money clip into his center drawer, looking at the chairs on the other side of his desk, reserved for clients, with a wistful glance. Tessa had decorated his office. He told her what type of look he wanted, and he let her “vibe out,” as she called it, in Home Goods. She’d returned with those two chairs, navy, sturdy, and comfortable, with rounded backs and black legs. The pictures on his wall were sloppy paint splatters in shades of blue, and he started to notice the little things. How the light-blue in the paint complemented the navy fabric on the chairs. How the penholder and his mainstay ceramic mug, both also blue, now fit the space. The fake palm tree in the corner of the room sat in a blue planter. Tessa’s mark was everywhere.

Wait.

The blue leather picture frame that held their wedding photo on the desk was missing.

Jace ducked beneath the desk to search the floor. Nothing. Yanked open his drawers, his discomfort growing with each empty space. It was nowhere. A tear stung behind his eyelid, but he blinked it back. He felt like a shit—he’d only noticed it now because she was gone, but how long was the picture missing? It wasn’t like he stared at it every day. And he knew it was there earlier in the week, because one of the guys from VistaBuild, Andy, commented on its simplicity when he was in the office earlier in the week and complained about how his wife forced him into all these elaborate shots.

But why would it disappear? Why now?

It was like Tessa was being erased from his life.

Jace turned on his computer and waited for Trey—he was going to have to tell him that he was taking a half day to try to sort this out, so he wanted to get a head start on his work.

Twenty minutes later, the door opened, and Rosita blew in wearing a fitted flower-patterned dress and another pair of what she privately called her “fuck me” pumps. Her huge emerald earrings didn’t match her outfit, but she never took them off. He looked away, but she stopped at Jace’s door.

“I thought you were coming in late?” she said. “Anything from the detectives?”

Jace looked up from the computer. “Nope.” He wasn’t going to divulge that they knew about Tessa’s fake Social Security number. How would that look for him? He knew it was fake too.

“That’s a shame.”

“Hey, were you here earlier? I passed to get coffee at Bean Addiction, and I swore I saw your car in the lot.”

Her eyes popped for a half a second before she forced out an answer. “Nope. Must’ve been someone turning around. Or using the ATM.”

He’d thought that for a minute too. “Did you speak to Solomon?”

“Left a message. Waiting for him to call me back.”

“Good,” Jace squared his shoulders toward the screen again.

Rosita hovered for a few beats, then turned to go to her smaller, windowless office.

That’s when it hit him. The smell. Her perfume.

That’s what was familiar to him in the entryway when he first got to the office. Rosita was there, and she lied.

“Hey, Rosita. Come back a second.”

She turned toward him, her lips pursed seductively. “Yes?”

“My wedding picture is missing.”

She shrugged. “And that has to do with me because . . . because why?”

His eyes narrowed. “No reason. I thought maybe you’d seen it. Are you sure you weren’t here earlier?”

Her expression was of a six-year-old caught with her hand in the candy jar. “I said I wasn’t. I—I have work to do.” She turned and left. Quickly.

Jace smelled that perfume this morning. She lied. Why? He was going to find out.

6

TESSA

It’s still light out after securing my ID card, so I walk to Walmart and buy a towel, a fitted sheet, a small pillow, and a large blanket. All together they cost less than forty bucks—gotta watch that bottom line—but I want to make sure I don’t have to touch anything in that hotel room when I’m sleeping, and I need a nap before I figure out what to do with the rest of the night.

The rest of my night. My time. My own time.

A skinny white man-boy with a greasy ponytail who stinks like his last shower was four days ago offers to assist carrying my packages into my room. I decline, and he curses at me. He has meth mouth and the shakes, and probably wants to rob me for a fix. When I get inside, I lock the door and grab one of the burner phones and google my ex.

Nothing is out yet about him or me being missing. Maybe he didn’t call the cops at all. I honestly never knew from one minute to the next how he’d react to any