“I’m not sure I want to know, but I suppose we should look.” Lifting one of the frozen packages, he picked at the edge of the plastic and began unrolling it. The Styrofoam meat package made him exhale in relief. “You have no idea how glad I am to see hamburger patties.”

“Right?” She picked up another and opened it. “Five pounds of chicken legs.”

Lance closed the lid and continued to inspect the space.

The motorcycle was equipped with the equivalent of saddlebags, two storage compartments behind the seat. Lance opened one. Empty. The second contained MREs and foul weather gear.

“Lance.” Morgan stared at the ceiling.

He followed her gaze. A rectangle had been cut into the ceiling. A slightly smaller rectangle was set inside. “Pull down steps?”

There was only one place they could lead: to Voss’s apartment.

“No string,” Morgan said.

Correction: the stairs led from the apartment above.

“I think they’re designed to be exit only.”

“Now what?” Morgan asked.

“I really want a look inside his apartment.”

“You can’t pick the lock to his front door. The neighbor will see.”

Lance bent over and laced his fingers together. “See if you can grab the edge of the board. I’ll give you a boost.”

She stepped into his hands and he lifted her. Once he straightened, she maintained her balance by leaning into him. Lance closed his eyes to the sight of her thighs at his eye level, mentally filing his idea under seemed like a good idea at the time.

“I’ve got it.” Morgan transferred some of her weight to the stairs and the platform descended, the steps unfolding.

Lance set her on the floor. He tested the steps, then climbed. His head poked through the opening into a dim space. A closet? He went all the way inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dim space, he found the door and opened it into a bedroom, or at least what was supposed to be a bedroom.

An unrolled sleeping bag occupied the space where a bed should have stood. A makeshift desk held a monitor showing the live surveillance camera feed from the back door and a second that appeared to be from inside the front entrance. Heavy blankets were nailed over the windows.

“Mr. Voss is more than a little paranoid.” Lance pivoted. “Shit.”

Voss had written on the walls. He’d covered every inch of white wallboard with a bizarre collage of mathematical equations, nonsensical phrases, hand-drawn maps, and lists of random objects.

Lance whistled softly. “Looks like the neighbor’s diagnosis is correct. Voss is crazy pants.”

“Voss was military.” Morgan walked the perimeter, taking pictures of the walls in sections. “He gathered provisions. Put in a back door. Had an escape plan, complete with a well-stocked secret vehicle.”

“So what the hell was he doing out in the woods?”

“Maybe his paranoia went into overdrive.”

“This is more than paranoia.” Lance scanned the drawings and annotations.

“Psychotic break?”

“Something like that. I don’t think we can assign rational explanations to Voss’s activity.”

“There’s a camera trained on the front door,” Lance said. “Stay out of its view.”

They went through the rest of the apartment, which consisted of a tiny living area and a kitchenette. A card table and four chairs were the only furnishings. The corners were crammed with stacks of books. Lance found a stack of packing slips on the table. He flipped through them. Most of Voss’s purchases were for home-monitoring equipment, nonperishable food items, and camping gear.

“Found his bills,” Morgan said from the kitchenette. “He’s maxed out his credit cards. Hasn’t paid a utility bill in ages. His rent is overdue. If he wasn’t in jail, he might not have a place to live soon.”

“Do you see a laptop?” Lance asked. Voss must have used a computer for his online ordering.

“No. I wonder if it was at the camp site.” Morgan continued to search the kitchen. “There’s a bit of dust in here, but not more than would accumulate in a week or two. The rest of the place seems relatively clean.”

“So he was tidy before he went over the edge,” Lance said. “You know what I don’t see? Any sign the police have been in here.”

“Maybe they haven’t gotten around to going through his apartment yet. They need a warrant, and he’s in custody, so I doubt they see any reason to rush.”

Lance went to the corner and began reading the book titles. Voss had paranoid taste in reading material. Conspiracy and spy thrillers, military memoirs, and how-to books about survival, prepping for doomsday, and staying off the radar. Lance considered the credit card bills. Maybe Voss hadn’t gotten around to reading the off-the-grid books yet.

Halfway down a high stack, Lance’s eye stopped on an odd-shaped hardcover bound in navy-blue leather. Gold script on the binding read SCARLET FALLS HIGH SCHOOL with last year’s date.

“What did you find?” Morgan peered over his shoulder. “A yearbook?”

Lance tugged it from the pile. He flipped through the pages. Voss had been considerate enough to flag his own pictures with Post-it Notes.

Morgan pointed to a photo of a large group of kids in athletic shorts. Several adults flanked the group. “Voss was an assistant track coach.”

“Was Tessa on the track team?”

“No.”

Lance went to the next bookmarked page. “He ran the video-gaming club. Tessa isn’t there either.” He turned to the next Post-it. “Bingo.”

The photo was labeled YEARBOOK COMMITTEE. Voss stood on one side of a group of twenty kids.

Morgan frowned and moisture glistened in her eyes as she pointed to a slim girl in the middle of the group. “There’s Tessa.”

“So Voss knew her.”

“Yes.”

“Do you see the girl who accused him of inappropriate behavior?” Morgan checked her notes. “Kimmie Blake. Or Ally Somers, the girl Kimmie claimed Voss kissed.”

“Neither are on the yearbook committee.” Lance went to the individual headshots section of the yearbook. “Here’s Kimmie Blake.” He turned pages. “And this is Ally Somers.”

Lance snapped a photo of the important pages, then returned the book to its original location. “We’ll get our own copy and look through it more thoroughly to see if we can find any connections between Kimmie, Ally, Jamie, and Tessa.”

“Do you need to see anything else?” Morgan asked, her eyes sweeping the room.

“What’s in the cabinets?”

“Normal kitchen stuff. I even checked the undersides of the drawers.”

“No secret compartments?”

“None that I could find,” she said.

Lance ducked into the only bathroom, a four-by-eight space with a pedestal sink, a narrow shower stall, and toilet. He opened the medicine chest over the sink. Clean spots on the shelves indicated missing pharmaceuticals.

“Was Voss taking any prescription meds?” Morgan asked from the doorway.

“If he wasn’t, he should have been.”

“Now that we’ve established that he knew Tessa, we can subpoena his medical records.”

“That’s progress.” Lance turned off the light and exited the bathroom. As they walked back to the bedroom closet, he ensured the apartment was exactly the way it had been before they’d entered.

They used Voss’s escape hatch. Lance folded the steps and eased the platform to the ceiling. It sprang back into place with a quick snap. Lance opened the exterior door an inch to find that the side yard was empty. They slipped out and walked around to the front of the garage. Looking up, Lance spotted a note taped to the front door.

“Hold on a second.” Lance went up the steps. “It’s a package delivery notification. I guess the credit card companies haven’t cut him off yet.”

Lance turned back to the stairs. Boom! Crack.

The stairway trembled. Light flashed under his feet. He grabbed for the railing. Too late! Wood splintered, and the stairs collapsed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine