My shoulders slumped, and I relaxed my pose a little while still gripping the bat. I tried to get my breathing to return to normal, hoped my heart would slide back down out of my throat and into my chest.

I nearly yelped when my phone started to ring. I silenced it.

Something on the desk caught my eye. Or the absence of something.

The computer was gone. Along with Blake, the computer was gone.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

I put the bat down, leaning it against my desk.

The phone rang and rang in my pocket.

I impressed myself by feeling calmer than I should have. My computer was gone. All my work. All my photos and personal items. Passwords, financial records.

Maybe I was numb. Maybe I expected so little from Blake, this was just one more disappointment.

I didn’t expect it to be Blake on the phone. And I was right. Amanda’s name was spelled out on the ID screen.

“He’s not here,” I said. “He’s gone. My laptop is gone. He took my laptop.”

“Ryan—”

“He’s always been a loyal friend, but I think he’s involved with something I can’t understand. I think this might be more than I can understand.”

“Ryan. Listen. Rountree is here and—”

“There’s something else happening, something that doesn’t involve Jennifer—”

“Ryan, I’ve got to tell you something.”

Amanda spoke with such a harsh, almost frantic edge to her voice it froze me in place, cutting off my worries about Blake. My mind jumped tracks to worry about her. Had something happened there? Had the man shown up again?

But she had mentioned Rountree. She had said the police were there at Karen and Bill’s house.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“The police are here,” she said. “They’re asking a lot of questions. Ryan, where were you last night? And I need you to tell the truth. The absolute truth. You said you were going to play basketball at the Y, and I called you there. It didn’t sound like you were at a basketball game. Where were you?”

I stood in the center of my office, in the middle of my house. A house we’d lived in for several years. Perhaps the most like home anyplace had ever felt, with Amanda and Henry and the entire life we’d made there.

But as I looked around at the walls and the furniture, it shifted and became unfamiliar to me, almost unrecognizable, as though I’d stumbled into a stranger’s life and house by mistake. Or else woken up there with no knowledge of how I’d arrived.

Amanda’s voice, that tether that held me to the ground, sounded different as well. Her question, so sharp, so pointed, could only mean bad things for me. If the police were there and she was asking that question . . .