Callum's Mulholland house at 4 a.m. has the lights off in the living room. He's sitting on the long velvet sectional like he's been put there by a set decorator. On the marble coffee table: a glass of room-temperature water, a sleeve of waterproof bandages, his vintage Saint Laurent jacket folded once.
"Your hand," he says.
I look down. The Rimowa pull handle has rubbed a strip raw across the meat of my palm. I hadn't noticed.
He takes my hand. He drops his eyes to the cut. He peels a bandage off the paper backing with a thumbnail and lays it down with the careful symmetry of someone who's been gentle on camera his entire life.
I stare at his eyelashes and let my face go slack. Adoring. Stunned by him.
"Callum. Will you only see me, after this. No one else."
He looks up.
"Yes."
His phone lights up on the coffee table.
Bryce.
He doesn't move the phone away from my sightline. He picks it up and answers in front of me.
Bryce's voice comes through. Wet, the way an actress's voice is wet when she's trained herself out of ugly-crying.
"Callum. Where the fuck are you. I've called you twenty-seven times."
He's still looking at me.
"Handling something."
A beat.
"It's her again, isn't it. The Avara girl."
I let my fingernails press half-moons into my own palm.
He smiles, just for me.
"She's useful."
Three words. Worse than anything he could have called me.
He hangs up. He drops the phone face-down.
"Don't be sad."
I lift my face.
"I'm not sad. As long as I can help you, I'll do anything."
He's pleased. He smooths my hair back from my temple.
He pats my head. Like a good dog.
Marco comes down the floating staircase with a black garment bag and drops it on the rug at my feet.
"Change. Your jacket's getting burned. Your shoes too."
I unzip the bag. Inside: an oxblood Khaite slip dress. Wolford tights. A pair of Aquazzura heels.
The dress is a size four. I'm a size eight.
It's Bryce's.
I clutch the dress against my chest and make my voice shake.
"This is Bryce's."
Callum stands up. He adjusts the collar of the slip dress where I'm holding it.
"You'll look good in her things."
Marco snorts from the bar.
"Don't get high on it, kid. You're a temp dumpster."
Callum doesn't correct him. He wants to see whether I'll still love him after I've been stepped on in his own living room.
I let a tear drop onto the silk.
"I know."
I am, in fact, counting.
Three cameras. Northwest corner of the living room, above the kitchen pass-through, on the upper landing where the stairs turn. He thinks his security feed runs only to a private NAS in the wine cellar.
His crimes need a stage too.
By morning the trending tabs eat themselves alive.
#WhereIsBryce #BryceHallowayMissing #QuinnAvaraChateau3am
The TMZ lead photo is me wheeling the Rimowa out the service exit. My face is the color of skim milk. My eyes are sliding off the frame.
The Page Six caption writers do their job.
Stalker fan reportedly clashed with Halloway hours before disappearance. Sources say Halloway warned Avara to stay away from Wren multiple times.
The reply count goes past three hundred thousand before lunch.
she actually did it didn't she. ARREST HER. don't let her flee the country. Callum doesn't deserve this i'm sobbing.
I sit on the floor of my walk-up off Hollywood and Western with my laptop on a milk crate and screenshot every single reply. Folder labeled 01-baseline. I have folders going back four months.
At 9:12 a.m. the LAPD knock.
The detective they send is named Wes Halloran. Robbery-Homicide, Hollywood Bureau. Mid-thirties. The kind of jaw a casting director would call unfussy.
He shows the badge.
"Quinn Avara. Bryce Halloway is unaccounted for. We'd like you at the station for a conversation."
I go without a fuss. The neighbor across the hall, a screenwriter who has never spoken to me, is filming through her cracked door.
The interview room has a Coke machine humming in the wall. Halloran sets a photo down between us. The Rimowa, the back exit, my hand on the pull handle.
"What's in the bag, Quinn."
"Clothes."
"Whose clothes."
"Mine."
He watches me.
"Why were you at the Chateau Marmont last night."
I don't answer.
The detective beside him, a woman with a buzz cut named Reyes, knuckle-raps the table.
"Quinn. Silence isn't your friend. Halloway is missing. You're the last identifiable person near her boyfriend's hotel."
I look up. I let my eyes fill.
"I just wanted to see him."
Reyes presses her tongue against her cheek.
"You understand what you're doing is illegal."
I nod.
Halloran says, casually, "Do you know a woman named Tessa Avara."
My breath stops for a quarter-second. I get it back fast but he sees it.
"Your sister. Disappeared three years ago off Point Dume. Is the reason you're around Callum Wren something to do with her."
I do not answer.
The door opens. Marco walks in with an attorney in a Brioni suit. The attorney sets a printed agreement on the table.
"Mr. Wren is declining to press trespass or stalking charges. Our client believes Ms. Avara is in a serious mental health crisis. We're offering to facilitate care."
I look at the paper.
Help me.
Help him nail unstable into the file so that word fits before any other word can fit.
Marco leans in. His breath is sour with cold brew.
"Sign it and walk. He's still willing to keep you alive."
I sign.
The pen makes a soft scratch. Halloran's eyes go a degree colder when I lift the cap back on.
He thinks I just got scared.
I'm waiting for Callum to hand me the knife. If he doesn't, I can't take it by the handle.
His blacked-out Range Rover is at the curb on Wilcox when I come out the station's side door. Tinted to the legal edge.
He opens the back door himself. Anywhere else, anywhere with a single fan camera, that gesture would set the internet on fire.
I slide in. He hands me a paper cup of milky tea. Still warm.
"Rough morning."
I curl my fingers around the cup. My eyes flood on cue.
"They asked me what was in the suitcase. I didn't say."
He reaches over and catches a tear on his knuckle.
"Such a good girl."
I tilt my temple into his palm.
The interior smells of Le Labo Santal 33. Cedarwood and cardamom and a top note of something sweet that doesn't belong in this state. Tessa's journal — the one I read on the storage-unit floor — had a line on it.
He always smells like Santal 33. Like a fireplace in a season we don't get out here.
I swallow against my own stomach.
He tells the driver, "PCH. Point Dume."
The Range Rover climbs over Sepulveda and out toward the ocean. He doesn't speak the whole way. I drink the tea. I let my head rest against the window.
He parks at the overlook below the bluff. The exact overlook the deputy walked down to bag the sandal.
He turns the engine off.
"You afraid of water, Quinn."
The cup is cold in my hands.
"No."
"Your sister wasn't either."
I turn my head so fast I feel my neck pop.
He is looking at the water. Calm. Conversational, the way he talks about a movie he saw on a plane.
"She was a strong swimmer, your sister. Pity about the swell that day."
My fingers crush the paper cup. The lukewarm tea pours out and scalds the back of my hand red.
He takes my wet hand and holds it.
"Does that sting."
I stare at the side of his face.
"You knew my sister."
He laughs once, quiet.
"You don't look like her. But your eyes are the same. Both of you sure you can save someone."
The mic in my left earring is still recording. I can feel its faint warmth.
But this line. This line is not enough. Not even close.
He pulls me suddenly into his shoulder. His other hand rests, almost paternal, on the back of my neck.
"Stop digging, Quinn. The thing with Tessa wasn't what you think."
My voice comes out small.
"Then where is she."
He bends and puts his mouth at my ear.
"She didn't scream your name at the end. She screamed mine."
I go rigid all the way down to the small bones of my feet.
He lets me go. He pats the back of my hand once and turns the engine on.
"We should get back. I've got call sheets at six."
I look at his profile against the bright Pacific.
This time, I don't fake the tears.
I'm just afraid of what I'll do with my teeth if I open my mouth.
On the fifth day of Where Is Bryce, Bryce posts a video.
White cashmere turtleneck. Her publicist's living room in the background, lightly dressed to look like a cabin. Her cheekbones too sharp; whoever sat her in the chair didn't have time to fix the weight loss.
"Hi, you guys. Thank you so much for the love. I haven't been well, and I needed a few days off-grid. Please — please — stop hurting people who haven't done anything wrong."
People who haven't done anything wrong. Singular. Callum.
The fans melt down with relief. The trending tab flips inside an hour.
#BryceIsBack #ProtectCallum #ArrestQuinn
Eleven minutes after the video posts, Bryce likes a tweet.
The tweet is from a verified gossip aggregator. The text reads: honestly @ a stalker like quinn avara just needs to be committed before she does it again.
The like is a small blue notification at the corner of my screen, but in PR terms it's a state-sponsored execution. The fan armies pivot mid-stride.
Bryce is the bigger person. Sue her, Callum. stalker stay away from my MAN.
I scrub the video back and freeze on a frame of her left hand on the armrest.
Her ring finger is bare. Smooth. No indent, no tan line. Untouched skin all the way to the cuticle.
So the dead woman at the Chateau was not Bryce.
But Bryce knows everything.
That night a text comes in from a number I don't recognize.
If you want to know how Tessa really died, North Berth warehouse 4, 11 p.m. Tonight.
I type back one word.
Yes.
At 10:35 I shoulder my bag and lock the apartment.
A black SUV is parked across the street, half on the sidewalk, engine running. Back window down two inches.
Callum's face, in the dark.
"Going somewhere."
I hold up my phone.
"Walgreens."
He extends a hand through the window.
"Get in. I'll drive you."
I count three seconds. I climb in.
The door locks the moment my hip clears the frame.
He does not ask the driver for the address. He says, "San Pedro. North Berth."
My stomach folds.
The text came from his number.
The warehouse is exactly what the cliché says it should be. Empty lot, water smell, sodium light. He walks me in past a sliding bay door. Inside, one halogen lamp hangs from a chain.
Bryce is zip-tied to a wooden chair under it. Hands behind her back, ankles to the legs, a strip of gaffer tape across her mouth. She sees me and her whole head goes to one side in a violent no.
Callum presses a folding tactical knife into my right hand. He flicks the blade open for me. The hilt is warm from his palm.
"She looks down on you, baby. She was going to go to the police. You hate her, don't you."
Bryce's eyes overflow.
I close my hand on the knife. My fingers are shaking so hard the blade catches the halogen.
He steps behind me. His chest against my back. His hand at my elbow. Like he's leading me through a slow dance.
"Cut her, and I'll believe you."