“Like I said, he’s at work. He’s an orthopedist. I know he had surgery this morning, but he should be back in his office by now.” I gave the detective the address of James’s office, a building located a block away from the hospital. He wrote it down in a pocket-sized spiral notebook. “Is there a problem?”

The detective gave me a strange look, which I couldn’t read.

“Did you know a woman named Hannah Nilsson?” he asked.

Hannah Nilsson. Just hearing her name after all these years still made me uneasy. I struggled to keep my expression blank, to not give him whatever reaction he must’ve been watching for.

“No. I never met Hannah. James and I started dating years after all that.”

The detective continued to gaze at me far longer than I was comfortable with. Finally, he nodded.

“Thank you for your help.” He nodded at Stella. “Cute dog.”

He turned and left, and I went back into the house. I shut the door and set Stella down.

Then I did something I rarely bothered with in our small seaside town: I locked the deadbolt on the front door.

Chapter Two

James had, of course, told me about Hannah Nilsson. He filled me in on the details during our third date. James had taken me to a steak house, and over medium-rare filets, creamed spinach, and large goblets of Pinot Noir, we’d started discussing our past relationships.

“You actually broke up with someone because he had bad table manners?” James had asked.

“They weren’t just bad,” I’d said, laughing. “He licked his fingers after every bite of food. It was disgusting. All I could think was I can’t possibly spend the rest of my life sitting across the table from someone who licks his fingers.”

“That is pretty gross.”

“What about you? What was your worst break-up?”

James had stopped smiling then. “Actually . . . my last girlfriend disappeared.”

“Disappeared? What do you mean?”

So, James told me. He and Hannah had dated for around seven months while he was finishing his residency in Miami. She’d been an aspiring model and was starting to find some modest success. When they met, her picture was already featured on a box of at-home hair coloring, she’d done a few small magazine shoots—that sort of thing. But then she was tapped to model in a series of Guess jeans print ads. Similar campaigns had launched models like Claudia Schiffer and Anna Nicole Smith into stardom. All of a sudden, Hannah was poised for real fame, and she knew it.

She disappeared the weekend before the photo shoot was scheduled.