He wasn’t there, which meant he couldn’t possibly be in the shot. There was nowhere else for a person to hide.
Still, I couldn’t help but search the enlarged photo, studying it edge to edge.
I finally found a shadow high in the corner of the frame, and fresh goose bumps danced up my arms.
I didn’t want to enlarge it. I didn’t want to look any closer … but I had to.
I zoomed in on the image one more time and focused on the shadow.
It was him.
He stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He lounged back on the wall of the cathedral, gazing thoughtfully off into the distance without a bit of tension in his body. Like he was waiting for a bus.
Except he was over a hundred feet in the air, and he stood on nothing.
Nothing.
The mouse rattled in my shaking hand and I let it go, but I couldn’t stop staring at the picture. Who was this man? What was he? Ideas bolted through my brain, but every one of them was impossible.
But so was standing in midair.
In a flash of wild inspiration, I grabbed my camera and snapped ten pictures, spinning around in my chair to get the bookcase, the closet, the bed …every section of the room. I frantically uploaded them onto the computer and started poring over them one at a time, enlarging them and straining my eyes to find any unusual shadow, any half-blurred image.
There was nothing.
My heart slowed as I kept scanning. Despite my crazy thoughts, it seemed like the man really was just a flesh-and-blood stalker. I was actually relieved.
Then I opened up the tenth photo and screamed out loud.
It was my darkened closet … with the man inside the door.
I STARED AT THE SCREEN, FROZEN.
Inwardly I chastised myself. I had expected to see him, right? It was what I imagined might happen. It was why I took the pictures of my room in the first place.
But imagining it and seeing it were two very different things. The theory I could chalk up to lack of sleep, but this …
I still hadn’t turned away from the computer screen to look at the closet. I couldn’t. I was fairly certain he wasn’t really there, but I couldn’t shake the idea that he was.
And I knew that if I turned and saw him, I’d come completely unhinged.
I heard footsteps and felt the rush of air as a hand reached out, grabbing at my throat.…
I screamed and wheeled to my right. There was nothing there.
But I could see the closet now. It was right in front of me, door ajar, same way it was two minutes ago when I’d taken its picture.
Still, I had to know for sure. My heart thudding in my ears, I walked to the closet door, reached for the knob, and flung it all the way open, half expecting the man to leap out at me.
But of course he didn’t. The closet was empty.
Which brought me back to the impossible: that the man with the clenched jaw hadn’t been in any of those places with Rayna and me … but had still appeared in my pictures.
But how?
I ripped the camera from my computer and clicked off the monitor. I needed to sleep. This would all make more sense after I slept. I staggered into my bed, pretending that it was perfectly normal for me to flick on every single light first. But when I lay down under the full blaze of every lamp in the room, my comforter wrapped tightly around me like a protective cocoon, I couldn’t do it. Every time I closed my eyes, the man’s face burned in my mind, and my eyes snapped open again.
Giving in to the sleepless night, I snaked my hand out of the covers to grab the remote, and searched for something innocuous.
The Food Network. Perfect.
I turned the volume all the way up to drown out my thoughts, propped myself up with a sea of pillows, and let myself zone out into a trancelike oblivion.
Somehow I fell asleep, but for the first time in ages, my dreams weren’t tortured. Quite the opposite.
I stood by the piano in a small, crowded speakeasy, my fringed dress and iris-charm necklace shimmying along with me as I belted out an impossibly high final note.
The room burst into whistles and applause when I finished, and I ate it up.
“Delia Rivers!” Eddie hollered proudly around the cigar in his mouth. His suit strained over his gut as he rose to put his arm around my shoulders.
Eddie owned the speakeasy. He owned most of Chicago, actually. He certainly owned me. He wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to cross—not if you valued your life.
But even as he planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek, I couldn’t resist glancing at the piano player. He bent low over his keyboard, but he peered up to meet my eyes and gave me a bittersweet smile that reached out and grabbed me by the heart.
Just then Eddie’s boy Richie burst in. “Boss!” he cried, but before he could finish, he caught the look between the piano player and me. Richie raised his eyebrows at me imploringly. He didn’t want me to get in trouble. He was a good friend, and he was right, but I was too far gone for that to matter.
“What is it?” Eddie roared.
“Sorry, Boss,” Richie said. “It’s a raid!”
Immediately the whole mess of us poured out the back of the speakeasy. We weren’t in any real danger: Eddie owned the cops, too. But part of the deal was we made it look good by skipping out at raid time. Only Eddie and his core crew stayed to make the place look like the respectable, alcohol-free establishment it was supposed to be.
Freedom. A whole hour, at least. I clicked down the streets until I knew I was alone, then made a beeline for the alley behind the closed-down theater. My piano player was already there, and the knots in my stomach grew and then disappeared as I ran the rest of the way and launched myself into his arms, kissing him like my life depended on it.
“It kills me to see you with him, Delia,” he said, pulling away just enough to pierce me with his soulful eyes. “Run away with me. We’ll go to Hollywood. You’ve always wanted to get into movies.”
I blushed and looked away. “Everyone wants to get into movies.”
“You’re not everyone. You’re talented. But it’s more than that. People can’t take their eyes off you when you perform.”
“I perform in a bar the size of a closet. There’s nowhere else to look.”
He gently lifted my chin so our eyes met. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you. You have no idea how special you are. You can have everything you ever dreamed of. We both can.”
His words gave me goose bumps, and for a second I believed it. I could even see it: the two of us running off, getting a little place together, singing and playing in little dives while we worked our way toward that big break …