I woke up bathed in sweat after dreaming I couldn’t breathe. The pain in my lungs, hot and searing, made me open my eyes and mouth wide as I sucked in air before coughing and struggling to get a grip. I reached out my arm, but the realization I was on the sofa, not my bed, and Jack was still missing, all sucker punched me right in the throat. Squinting at the clock I saw it was barely after 9:30 p.m., but I was wide awake and there was little point trying to get back to sleep for a few hours at least. I stood up, slipped on my shoes, grabbed my jacket and headed outside.

The winds and rain hadn’t stopped, and the air was laden with moisture, all of it dulling the crunching noise the gravel made beneath my feet. I got in my car and drove, unsure of my destination until my instincts took me to the beach. The cops had removed Jack’s truck, and there were no other vehicles in the lot, but I parked, got out and walked to the water, the wet sand squelching up into my shoes.

“Jack!” I screamed.

The waves crashed on the beach. Was he out there? Had he long slipped beneath the surface, his lungs filling with water, dragging him farther and farther to the depths and beyond? Stevens and Heron implied Jack might have taken his own life, but I couldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t. I knew him.

Do you? a little voice in my head sneered. Maybe you don’t know him at all.

I couldn’t stay at the beach with these terrible thoughts, alone and in the dark, and so I decided to go to Jack’s place to search for him, comfort, or anything to relieve the pain inside me. Sam’s Porsche sat in the driveway, but all the lights in his house were off, so I climbed the steps to Jack’s apartment without making a sound. Heron and Stevens had already checked the place for “clues,” which I’d interpreted as “suicide note,” but they’d found nothing, and while I hadn’t thought I’d be strong enough to come here, all I wanted now was to be surrounded by Jack’s things.

Using the flashlight on my phone, I searched for the spare key he left in an old flowerpot, but it wasn’t there, and when I lifted the mat, the space underneath was empty. Sam would understand if I rang his doorbell and asked him to let me into Jack’s, but as well-intentioned as he was, I couldn’t take another round of sympathetic looks and mother-hen clucking. I needed to be alone.