Page 49 of Just Now

Look at him, going through those slips in that leisurely way, busy deciding on his next victim. He could be stalking one of the women on the slips right now. He could be waiting for her to get home. He could have found his way into her house, just like he’d done with the others.

How could she tell? Was there a way?

Cami let out a shaky sigh. There were too many customers in the diner to warn all of them right now, although she guessed they could all be warned over time. He wasn’t fussy in terms of age, and he’d been hunting for probably nearly as long as they’d been doing this prize drawing.

But still, she couldn’t stop herself from scrolling back through the footage, looking at his actions, wondering frantically if she could somehow stop him from taking one more. Just one. Who was he looking at here? Who was he planning on stalking?

There he was, paging through the slips with intent. She could see it in his body language. It was as if he was focusing on something he wanted to find. One woman, one in particular. She felt sure of it. As if she was tuning in to his mind.

And then he paused, and he picked the page up. Held it, reading it. And then he shoved it into his pocket, turned, and disappeared from the camera’s eye.

She let out a deep, stressed sigh. This had been two nights ago. He’d been planning. He’d been on the hunt. And she was sure that by now, he would have researched his latest victim and be ready to take her.

“There has to be some way I can stop this,” Cami said. “Who was that woman? Which form was it? I have all the information here. Surely I can find something?”

She looked again. What was on this slip? She scrolled through, frame by frame. She magnified the footage. It was blurry, but for one split second, the page was in the glow of the restaurant’s light.

Cami narrowed her eyes. She had an app that might be able to make more sense of those blurred pixels. She isolated the photo and ran it through her app.

It couldn’t tell her much. The camera was too far away, and the lettering much too hazy. The only thing she could see, from this clearer image, was that it was a longer piece of writing on the second line. That was the address line. Cami could see that the address almost filled the field. So it was a long address.

And the name line above? That was very short.

The blurry text, magnified fifty times, didn’t allow for any more clarity than that. Out of all the women who’d been there that night, this was as much as she had. Could she tell from the records?

Cami went into the records to see if there was anything that compared to this from that night.

“Long address. Short name.” She scrolled down the list, looking for those two variables that were all she had, her only hope of knowing which slip of paper the killer had so unerringly singled out.

There were two possibilities from that night’s list.

“It could be this one.” Sue Jack, of 91 Middlefields Close, Amber Road. “Or it could be this one.” Vera Dann, of 103 Pleasant View Street North.

The other names were all longer. Apart from that, she had nothing more to go on. But Cami decided it would be wisest to call both of them.

With her heart racing, Cami dialed the cell number for Sue Jack.

It rang and rang. She started to feel sick with the tension. And then, a sharp, impatient voice answered.

“Hello. Sue here.”

“Sue, my name is Cami Lark. Listen, I need to speak to you urgently. It’s—”

“I’m sitting on an airplane and we’re about to take off! If it’s anything to do with spa bookings, I’ll be back after the weekend and you can contact the main office. If it’s anything else, can you text me?”

“An airplane?” The gist of the conversation sank in. Sue was okay. She was flying out of Boston. By the time she got back, Cami hoped, they would have caught the killer.

“I’ll call you back,” she said, feeling relieved.

She hung up and focused on the next name on the list. Vera Dann.

She called that number, feeling even more nervous than when she’d called Sue. Hopefully she’d be in time to warn this woman.

“Hello?” An impatient voice answered.

“Hello, Vera?” Cami felt breathless. She had only a moment to give this warning. “Listen, my name is Cami Lark, and I’m working with the FBI. You may be in danger. Please, are you home?”

“Just getting there. Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said. Signal’s bad here.”

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