I was eating cake when Derek suddenly put down his fork and looked at me. “Who’s Mike Hansen?” My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. My heart slammed against my ribs. Mike Hansen. That name was a code I’d made up with Sarah Mitchell one night in college, after way too many beers. We promised each other, if one of us ever went missing, if something was wrong, that name would be the signal. No one else in the world knew. And Sarah had been missing for thirty-two days. She said she was going to Sedona to clear her head. She never came back. I looked at Derek’s calm face, and my blood ran cold. How did he know that name? Mike Hansen was a name Sarah and I invented our senior year of college, sitting on the roof of our dorm with two cans of cheap beer. The stars were thick that night. Sarah threw her arm around my shoulders, half-drunk, and said, “Claire, we need a code word.” “A code word for what?” “For if something happens to one of us. If one of us disappears. You hear that name, you know something’s wrong.” I told her she was being dramatic. But I helped her come up with it anyway. We settled on Mike Hansen because it was so painfully common. No one would ever suspect it. Only two people in the world knew what those words meant. Me. And Sarah. And Sarah had been missing for thirty-two days. She said she was going to Sedona for a few days. Before she left, she sent me a voice message, her voice so excited: “Claire! What should I send you?” That was the last time I heard her voice. After that, her texts went unanswered. Her phone went straight to voicemail. Her Instagram stopped at a photo of Cathedral Rock. I filed a report. Her family filed a report. The police in Arizona were looking. But no body. No trace. Sarah had vanished like she never existed. And now. My husband Derek. A man who didn’t even have Sarah on social media. A man who’d only met her a handful of times. A man who nodded at her at parties and then walked away. He had just asked me, while eating cake, who Mike Hansen was. “You okay?” Derek raised an eyebrow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” “I’m fine.” I shoved a bite of cake into my mouth. Tasted like nothing. “Never heard that name. Where’d you see it?” “Oh, scrolling online.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Just curious.” He changed the subject. Started talking about his golf game this weekend. I didn’t hear a single word. My brain was stuck on one question. How did he know?
After dinner, Derek went to take a shower. I sat on the couch, my palms sweating. The sound of water came from the bathroom. I looked at the bathroom door. Then I looked at his phone on the coffee table. I knew the passcode. My birthday. I picked it up. My fingers were shaking. I went through his texts. His call log. His notes app. Nothing. Too clean. A normal person’s phone isn’t that clean. I went to his laptop in the study. Same passcode. He’d never hidden anything from me, or so I thought. Search history. Downloads. File folders. I checked everything. Then I opened his Uber trip history. My hand stopped moving. One month ago. Derek told me he had a business trip to San Diego for two days. I packed his suitcase. But the trip history showed something else. He didn’t go to San Diego. He went to Sedona. He left one day before Sarah arrived. He came back two days after she disappeared. The shower turned off. I closed the laptop. Walked back to the living room. Sat down. Picked up my phone and pretended to scroll. Derek came out drying his hair, glanced at me. “Coming to bed?” “In a minute.” I smiled. He walked into the bedroom and turned off the light. I stared at the bedroom door in the darkness, my fingers digging into the arm of the couch. Derek. What did you do in Sedona?
The next morning, I told Derek I had a work thing. A last-minute trip to Denver for a client meeting. Derek was buttoning his cuff. Didn’t look up. “How long?” “Three or four days.” He turned and looked at me. Smiled. “Be safe.” I smiled back. My flight wasn’t to Denver. It was to Sedona. The plane landed just after noon. Sedona was dry and hot, the sun so bright it made my head spin. The last photo Sarah ever posted was taken in this city. Red rocks. Blue sky. Clouds that looked painted on. She was standing in front of a crystal shop, smiling, her eyes all crinkled up. I didn’t have time to cry. I went straight to her hotel. Sarah had sent me the location before she left, a little boutique place near Oak Creek called The Desert Rose. I walked up to the front desk, pulled up Sarah’s photo on my phone, and asked in my most polite voice, “Do you remember this woman? She stayed here about a month ago.” The receptionist looked at the photo. Shook her head. “Her name is Sarah Mitchell. From Chicago.” The receptionist typed into her computer. Then her face shifted. “Yes. She stayed for two nights. But she never checked out. Her things are still in our storage room.” My chest tightened. Her things were still there. She wasn’t. I steadied my voice and asked the question I was terrified of. “About a month ago, did a man from Chicago also stay here?” I showed her Derek’s photo. The receptionist looked at it. Typed again. Then looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “Yes. He stayed for four nights.” Four nights. Longer than Sarah. “What room was he in?” “203.” “And Sarah Mitchell?” “205.” Same floor. One room apart. I stood at the front desk with my head buzzing. The obvious thought was the worst one. The one that makes your stomach drop. They were having an affair. Sarah and Derek. Hiding in Sedona. But I pushed that thought down as fast as it came. No. Sarah hated Derek. Not in a subtle way. Not in a polite behind-his-back way. She hated him to his face. Every time I brought him to a party, Sarah barely spoke. And once, after a few too many drinks, she looked right at him and said, “Claire has perfect taste in everything except men.” Derek’s face had gone purple. They’d barely seen each other after that. There was no way. So then why was he staying next door to her? What was he doing there? I took a breath and looked at the receptionist. “I need to see your security footage from that week.” The receptionist hesitated. “That’s… we’d need the owner’s permission.” “Then get it.” “And probably a police request.” “My best friend is missing.” My voice cracked, but I didn’t care. “She’s been gone for a month. No body. No trace. Your hotel might be the last place she was seen alive. Do you think your owner is going to say no?” The receptionist went quiet. Then she picked up the phone. Twenty minutes later, the hotel manager took me to the security room. Small space. One computer. Two monitors. The manager pulled up the footage from the week Sarah checked in. I sat in the chair, my hands cold, and watched. Day one. Sarah walked into the lobby with her suitcase. She checked in at the front desk. She was wearing a yellow sundress, her hair down, laughing with the receptionist. My eyes burned. Then, in the bottom corner of the screen. A man walked in. Black polo shirt. Baseball cap. Sunglasses. The way he moved. The way he stood. It was Derek. He didn’t go to the front desk. He went to the seating area. Picked up a magazine. Pretended to read. But his eyes weren’t on the magazine. They were on Sarah. From check-in. To room key. To elevator. He watched her the whole time. A cold shiver ran down my spine. “Fast forward,” I said. The manager sped up the footage. Day one, afternoon. Sarah left the hotel to walk into town. Three minutes later, Derek followed. Same hat. Same sunglasses. Staying about a hundred feet back. Day one, evening. Sarah ate dinner at a restaurant next to the hotel. Derek sat outside at a bar across the street. He ordered a drink. His table had a clear line of sight to Sarah’s window. She never noticed him. Day two. Sarah went to the red rock trails. Derek followed. Sarah went to Tlaquepaque. Derek followed. Sarah stopped at a food truck to buy fry bread. Derek stood at a souvenir shop across the street, pretending to read a postcard. Every frame. Every shot. He was there. My hands started shaking. This wasn’t an affair. Affair partners walk together. They eat together. They touch. He never once spoke to her. She never once looked at him. This wasn’t cheating. This was stalking. “What about day two after that?” I asked, my voice dry. The manager pulled up the rest of the footage. Day two, late afternoon. Sarah checked out of the hotel, or, she left. She had her backpack, her phone in her hand. She looked happy. The footage showed her walking out the front door and heading north. Three minutes later. Derek came out the side door. He walked the same direction. And then the footage ended. The hotel cameras only covered about fifty yards. Fifty yards beyond that, I couldn’t see. “Is there any other footage?” I asked. The manager shook her head. “Just what’s here. Street cameras would be with the police.” I sat there for a long moment. Then I stood up, said thank you, and walked out. I stood outside the hotel and pulled up a map on my phone. Sarah had walked north. North from here went past a few houses, some empty fields, a parking lot. And then it hit a dead end. The base of the mountains. A stretch of undeveloped land. Rugged. Steep. Unforgiving. I stared at the map, my fingers frozen. She went there. He followed. And then she disappeared.
I rented a car and drove north for about forty minutes. The road ended at a patch of empty, scrubby land. The mountains rose up, steep and raw. Loose rocks. Dry brush. The wind was strong enough to push you sideways. This wasn’t a hiking trail. There were no signs, no paths. Just a dirt track that led nowhere. I stood at the edge and looked down. Boulders. Dead grass. A ravine carved out by flash floods. If someone fell from here. I didn’t let myself finish the thought. I started walking to the nearest houses. A tiny cluster of trailers and old cabins, a few families living scattered among the juniper trees. I showed Sarah’s photo to everyone I saw. No one remembered her. Door after door. Head shake after head shake. I was ready to give up when I saw her. A little girl. Maybe six or seven years old. Sitting under a juniper tree in a faded pink T-shirt, barefoot, playing with stones in the dirt. She was holding something. A phone. A pink case. With a cartoon rabbit on the back. My brain went blank. That case. I gave Sarah that case for her birthday. Pink. Rabbit. Because Sarah loved rabbits. I walked over slowly and crouched down, trying to keep my voice soft. “Hey, sweetheart. Where did you get that phone?” The girl looked up at me and pulled the phone behind her back. “Is it yours?” “No,” she whispered. Her eyes darted away. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I stayed low. “That phone belongs to my best friend. She’s lost. I’m trying to find her. Can you tell me where you found it?” The girl pressed her lips together. Her eyes had something I rarely see in children. Fear. Not of me. Something older. “Did you see something scary?” I asked quietly. The girl’s lip trembled. She didn’t answer. I pulled out some cash and held it out to her. “If you tell me, I’ll give you this. You can buy anything you want.” The girl looked at the money. Then at me. Then she pointed toward the mountain. “Down there.” “Down where?” She pointed again. Toward the ravine. My heart dropped. “Did you find anything else?” The girl hesitated. Then slowly pulled something from behind her back. A crossbody bag. Fabric with little flowers. A small tassel hanging off the strap. Sarah’s bag. I knew this bag. She saw it at a mall in Chicago two years ago. Said it was too expensive. I bought it for her for Christmas. She cried. Now it was stained with mud and water. The fabric was starting to rot. I took it. My fingers were shaking. I opened it. Her lip balm. Her portable charger. A photo strip from a photo booth, the two of us, making stupid faces. Everything was still inside. If the bag was down there. If the phone was down there. Then where was Sarah? “Can you show me where you found these?” I asked. The girl shook her head hard. “I’ll give you more money.” She shook her head again. “Please.” My voice broke. “Please.” The girl looked at my face for a long time. Then she stood up, dusted off her shorts, and said, “Okay. I’ll show you.” She walked ahead. I followed. The path got narrower. The brush got thicker. The air started to smell wrong. My stomach turned. I kept repeating the same prayer in my head. I would rather she had slept with my husband. I would rather she had betrayed me. I would rather she had run off with him. Anything but this. The girl stopped. She turned around. Her face was pale. “What is it?” I asked. “That place.” She swallowed. “It smells bad.” I didn’t go any farther. I knew that if I kept going, if I found something, I wouldn’t be able to handle it alone. I needed professionals. I needed evidence. I took the girl’s hand, walked her back to the cabins, and called 911. It took two tries to get through. I explained everything. The missing person. The phone. The bag. The smell. The dispatcher said someone would come. But it would take time. I hung up and called a search and rescue team I’d looked up before I left Chicago. They worked with the county sheriff on mountain recoveries. They got there faster than the police. They said they’d be there by afternoon. Waiting was the worst part. I sat on a rock at the edge of the cabins, holding Sarah’s bag in my lap, not moving. I opened it and pulled out the photo strip. We were standing in front of our dorm, wearing our graduation gowns, arms around each other, laughing. Sarah was making a heart with her hands. We were twenty-two years old. Sarah was my college roommate. Four years. She had the bed on the left. I had the bed on the right. Every night we’d stay up talking across the gap until two or three in the morning. About the future. About boys. About everything. The night we graduated, we sat on the roof of our dorm with two beers and looked at the stars. That was the night she came up with the code. “Claire, we need a signal.” “If something ever happens to one of us, the other one hears that name and knows what to do.” I told her she was crazy. But I remembered. I never thought I’d actually use it. Now I was sitting in a patch of dirt in Arizona, holding her rotting bag, waiting for a search team to find her body.
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