“I’m not blaming you. At all, I promise. I just . . . I didn’t know what to do. I could see how it would look. They’d ask all kinds of questions about who I am, where I came from, what I know. It was everything you warned me about when I moved.” Her shoulders shook as she began to cry. “I didn’t want to drag you into this until I at least figured out what was going on. I thought all I had to do was keep myself safe until I could figure out whatever connection I must have had to this guy. I have no idea why he’d start following me around town, or what kind of game he was accusing me of playing.”

That asshole, Carter Decker, had pretended to be on Lindsay’s side, to want her to make nice with him. She replayed the conversation in her head, realizing the damage she had inflicted.

We took a fishing guide trip. I was surprised she wanted to go.

So it was her idea?

She wanted to jump back in time to tell herself to stop talking.

“And you haven’t seen Alex since you left him at the Stansfield house?”

“Not once. I swear.”

“Did his face spark any kind of recognition? Maybe shake something loose from the past?”

She shook her head.

“What about the idea of Wichita, Kansas? Do you think it’s possible you used to live there?”

“Why would you— Oh, wait. Whoa, this is bizarre.”

“What? Are you remembering something?”

“Don’t ask me why, but when you said Wichita, I immediately thought, Doo Dah. What does that even mean?”

Lindsay reached for her laptop on the coffee table and searched online for “Wichita Doo Dah.”

“It says here that’s what locals call their city. ‘Doo Dah.’ Origins unknown.”

Hope’s brow furrowed. “How in the world would I know that?”

“If you grew up there,” Lindsay said, “which is what I think. It’s a long story, but Alex Lopez definitely used to live there as a child. You two must have known each other.”

Hope reached into her back pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “These are the phone numbers I jotted down from Alex’s cell—every number in the log since we went on that boat trip. There actually aren’t that many. Looks like he did most of his guide business by email. I googled all the numbers to see what I could find. This is the one I was most interested in: three calls back and forth to some number with a Chicago area code. I tried calling it using the landline at the rental after hitting star six seven, but now the number’s disconnected.”

“Okay, that’s weird.” Lindsay could see that Hope had scribbled three different dates and the note “disc-x” next to a number with an 873 prefix.