“Cleaned,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.

He nodded. “Not surprising. I tried to get them to at least release the property to me, but they said there wasn’t any. Wouldn’t have even if there was. Just like I told you.”

“Dude, I never doubted you. I just needed you to distract them while I went in. But I know you well enough to know that you would never agree to that, even if you knew I was going to bring back something.”

“I thought you said there was nothing.”

“I said it was clean. But there was this.” I pulled what I’d found beneath the seat out of my waistband and held it up.

He eyed it skeptically. “An empty notepad.”

“Correct.”

“Is there something on the other pages?” he asked.

“Nope. Just this one.”

He looked at the notepad harder, glancing back and forth between the road and the pad. “There’s nothing there.”

“Wrong,” I said. I tipped it so the light could catch it just right. “There are indentations.”

He pulled to the side of the highway, hit his hazard lights, and took the notepad from me. He studied it, turning it this way and that. He shook his head and handed it back to me.

“It’s nonsense. So many pages going through that it looks like a jumble. This isn’t a clue to anything, Nikki.”

“You’ve said that to me before,” I said. “And you were wrong before.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You have any other choice?”

He gave an eye roll and turned off his hazards, then pulled onto the highway. “Whatever you say. It’s your wheels that you’re spinning. Not mine.” He drove for a moment, and then said, “It was a painting, wasn’t it? The clue that you found before?”

I paused in surprise. “Among other things. And I bought it. At an auction. You were with me. We almost got run over.”

“I think I remember that,” he said softly.

The air between us grew thick, and he seemed to be a million miles away as he navigated us along the highway. I tried to ignore my heartbeat, which sped up as I willed him to remember more. Remember everything. Remember how it felt to be there together, how it felt to be tangled on the ground, watching the van speed away. Not just recall the events that happened, but the way we felt when they were happening.

I clutched the notepad in my lap, wondering if maybe this time he was right. Maybe this time it really wasn’t a clue.