Night Edge by Jessica Hawkins

wanted him to find her. That maybe, somehow, she wasn’t really on the run. She was just drifting. “When?”
    “This afternoon, right after the storm let up. Not too long ago. That’s weird she didn’t mention it to you, especially since she had to work today. What’d you say she does, anyway?”
    Beau closed his eyes. He pictured her running away from him through Middle-American wheat fields, her head over her shoulder as she smiled, waved at him. Ha. Gotcha. Not knowing where she was had been torture, but just missing her by a few hours was almost worse. If he’d flown to Dallas right when he’d arrived at the airport. If he’d driven twice as fast.
    “Did she leave a note?” he asked evenly. “Anything behind?”
    “I didn’t check her out, but I haven’t seen—”
    “How about lost and found?”
    The girl looked up at her dad.
    “Why don’t you just call her?” he suggested, watching Beau carefully. “Maybe she went back home or moved to another hotel in the area.”
    Beau opened his mouth to make his demands. He wanted to speak to whoever’d checked her out. To see surveillance footage. To check the room she’d stayed in for clues. He took a deep breath and walked outside, leaving behind two suspicious expressions. With the time difference, he’d lost two hours between California and there, and it was almost six o’clock at night.
    Beau extracted his cell phone from his suit pocket, cringing as if it were painful. He called Bragg and spoke first. “She’s gone. Are there any new charges?”
    “Not since last night.”
    “Check again.” Beau ignored the detective’s sigh and waited on the line. He could still catch her, no matter where she was. If she was driving, he would fly. If she moved fast, he would move faster.
    “Nothing, boss,” Bragg said into the phone. “You going to stay out there or come back?”
    Beau hung up the phone and stared at the black screen. He didn’t know where to go from here or if he could go through this again another night. How the fuck could she do this to him? Toy with him this way? He purposely chose not to see the irony in the situation.
    He needed to think—to be in a clean, uncluttered place, alone with his thoughts—and to sleep. He’d stayed at The Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis before. He wasn’t sure how far it was. There had to be a nearby city with something upscale. But Lola had stayed at the Moose Lodge last night, and suddenly, feeling close to her seemed more important.
    He returned to the front office. “I’m sorry if I seemed angry,” he said and, to his surprise, he meant it. By not giving Beau information, the young girl had been protecting Lola. No matter how mad he was, Beau could only hope everyone else Lola had encountered so far had done the same. “It’s just, my wife—” He practically choked on it. My wife.
    “Poor thing. You can’t even spend a night without her,” the girl said—alone again, a hopeless romantic again. “Are you going to be all right?”
    Beau nodded. He took his wallet out once more. “Can I get a room for the night?” he asked, holding out his credit card.
    She withdrew as though he’d just sneezed on it. “I don’t know.”
    “Please,” he said, too exhausted for anything other than begging.
    She sighed and took it. “Oh, all right.”
    “Any room is fine.”
    She shrugged. “They’re all the same, unless you want to be by the icemaker or something.”
    “Any room is fine,” he repeated.
    He took his key, then crossed the street to the liquor store. The man in camo was gone. Beau bought the most expensive Scotch they had, a brand he’d never heard of and didn’t plan on remembering.
    He returned to his room at the Moose Lodge, where there was no minibar, no luxury showerhead, not even a robe. He sat on the edge of the bed with a drink in his hand and stared at a crack in the wall that ran out from behind the midsized TV. There’d been many cracks throughout his life, but very few the