He’d written something there, just as he had in the copy she’d found in his apartment. The handwriting was the same. She knew it all too well. This message was no more helpful than the name – Alison – she’d found on the same page in the book she’d given him.

The message said: You already know the truth.

Peach shook her head. ‘No, I don’t know,’ she said aloud. ‘Justin, I really don’t know anything.’

In frustration, she threw the book against the wall, where the binding broke and yellow pages floated to the floor. She was sick of his mysteries. She was sick of his enigmas and codes. He hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her what he was doing, and now she was left to pick up the pieces.

She sat down on the sofa again and opened the cover of Curtis Ritchie’s laptop. She booted it up on battery power. The thumbnail for Ritchie’s username on the login screen was a close-up photograph of a woman’s breast. That pig. Frowning, she clicked on the thumbnail, and it asked her for a password. Peach swore. She knew nothing about the man, and she had no idea what he might have used as his password. Randomly, she picked things out of her head. 12345. ABCDEF. 00000. After ten unsuccessful tries, she slapped the lid shut.

This was getting her nowhere. She wondered again: Where was Annalie? She glanced toward the lonely street, which was drowning under the assault of the storm. A finger of worry crept up her spine.

She grabbed Ritchie’s digital camera. There was only a single bar of power left on the battery indicator; she didn’t have much time to examine it. She opened the file of photographs on the Micro SD card, which consisted of hundreds of pictures, and scrolled to the beginning.

The first picture she saw was of Justin.

He was on the beach behind his condominium. He wore ridiculously long swim trunks, and his feet were in the calm surf. He wore headphones connected to a white iPod in his hand. Probably listening to Mozart. Peach clicked to the next photograph. Justin again. And again. Ritchie had been stalking Justin everywhere he went. She saw Justin getting into his car in the office parking lot. Justin eating a Cuban sandwich at the Kooky Coconut. Justin at a St Pete antique mall. She saw herself, too. Ritchie had plenty of photographs of the two of them together. It made her heart ache, because scrolling through the pictures was like looking at a travel album of the final weeks they’d spent together.