"Hi, am I speaking to Shanice Williams?"
Tahlia's voice flowed, laced with the most honeyed tone possible, her fingers anxiously twirling themselves around the plastic cord of the payphone.
"Yes this is she."
"Yeah hi, I was calling to ask about one of the people you had rented your apartment out to, his name was Jordy Miller."
"Who am I speaking to again?"
The lady's voice came out chary, making Tahlia bite down on her lower lip, before exhaling sharply to speak her lie,
"I'm his niece Jess. I was wondering if I could swing by the place to pick up some stuff."
"Oh? I didn't know Jordy had any family."
"Yeah, he was..kind of a..a private person." Tahlia blurted, "So is it okay if I come by this evening? I'm not in town for too long."
"Sure hun, drop by at 6, we'll see."
Muttering a small thanks, Tahlia hung up the phone quickly, her gaze lingering over the speaker for a second.
Between lying to the police, to her friends, to Michelle and now this; Tahlia was pretty sure she was on her way to becoming a pathological liar.
But then, her quest for the truth was proving to be way too consuming to be held back by small things like that, especially considering how she hadn't had a wink of sleep in the last however many months as she could remember. She was lagging behind in her studies, and her health was probably at an all time low. The truth was the only thing that could quite possibly be her only saving grace in ruinous times like this.
And it so happens to be that the path to the truth is paved with lies.
Finally exiting the booth, she made her way back into the bookstore adjacent to the payphone swiftly, hoping not to run into Chuck the clerk.
But there he stood, arms crossed, behind the counter in her place.
"You know, I'm not paying you to take extended bathroom breaks." He said sardonically. "The new shipment is not just going to arrange itself on the shelf."
Tahlia nodded her head promptly, "I-I'll be right on that."
"Yeah you better. Listen, something's come up, I'm leaving. Don't forget to lock up after you." He said begrudgingly.
Tahlia could only let out a small sigh of exasperation. With that, she briskly walked over to the cardboard boxes kept neatly aligned under a pair of empty shelves.
As soon as her hand brushed over the sealed box, she couldn't help but flinch inadvertently.
Memories of her opening a similar cardboard box only to be met by the sight of a mangled animal, creeped up her shoulders, twining it's lecherous limbs around her lungs as if.
Breathe in, Breathe out.
She shook her head, steadying herself.
Any bouts of PTSD will have to wait, she told herself jokingly, as she glimpsed at the hundred books that had to be all accounted for and arranged.
An agonizingly tedious hour and a half of systematizing and lining up books later, Tahlia was finished at last, putting the last hard jacketed copy into place in a wooden rack.
Tahlia could feel the little beads of sweat rolling down her neck, trickling onto the nooks of her back and collarbones.
She stretched lazily, feeling the muscles pulsate as she flexed her stiff arms.
The door to the bookstore was suddenly opened, making Tahlia sink her hands down by her side quickly, tearing her gaze towards the direction of the door.
Her eyes almost widened.
"Jace?"
There he was. She hadn't seen him at all in the two weeks since they'd had their little disagreement.
"Hey." He muttered passively, not making any sort of eye contact with her.
With no words spoken further, he quietly walked over to the Classical Literature section.
Tahlia was thrown by his demeanor to say the least. She couldn't figure out why he was being so cold, so suddenly.
As she worked on working up the courage to go up to him, she spotted him walking over to the counter.
Wordlessly, he put a book on the wooden table, along with some money.
"What are you doing?" Tahlia asked forthright.
"Buying a book." He deadpanned.
"No, I mean, what are you doing not answering my texts or calls, ignoring me in class and now pretending like I don't exist?"
Finally he drew his eyes up to hers, "What do you want me to say Tal? 'It's all cool'? Not to sound pansy but you kinda did hurt my feelings."
With a vexed breath of inhale she began candidly, "I am sorry Jace, I really am; I shouldn't have said what I said. I- I was just having a bad day, I was stressed and then you said that stuff and it got to me, which is not your fault. I will apologize a million times if that's what it takes to make this right." She paused to breathe, "You're my only friend Jace."
He stared at her for a second, "Damn it." He mumbled, sighing.
"Okay. But an apology won't cut it."
Tahlia's eyes sparkled, "Whatever you say."
"How about..You help me study for the exams."
"Done." She smiled ear to ear, happy to have her friend back. Before she knew it, she was pulled into a spine crushing hug.
She couldn't help but bury her face into the back of his neck. This was her home.
As she pulled away, her eyes met his bright sapphire ones.
'You do know he has the biggest crush on you right?' Dean's words came cascading back into her mind.
Did he?
She quickly broke away from the hug, lowering her gaze, tucking a loose strand of curly hair behind her ears.
"Tal?" Jace began, still looking at her.
"What?" She questioned gingerly, heart thudding against her chest.
"Uh..the book."
She looked up immediately, "Oh, right. Yeah, just a second."
She billed it quickly, handing it over to him. Wanting to change the atmosphere of uneasiness, she began,
"So, The Picture of Dorian Gray? I didn't know you read classics." She motioned towards the book in his hands. "I didn't know you read."
Jace snickered, "I was watching T.V. yesterday and the Colin Firth movie came on and I thought it was pretty damn interesting. So I just..I don't know, thought I'd check out the book."
"Good choice." She smiled plainly.
Suddenly, as if remembering something, Jace glanced at his phone.
"Oh shit, it's 5:30 already, I gotta be somewhere." He started heading out, "I'll text you Tal."
She muttered a soft goodbye, and looked at the clock for herself.
She too had somewhere to be.
――――
"I've gotta say, this is a real surprise."
The sound of keys jingling against the lock on the front door meshed strangely well with the silence that surrounded the hallway.
"Jordy never said anything about his family, I mean of course he kept to himself mostly, but yeah."
"Well, my mom and him had a little fight and he's not been in contact with us for a long time. We got the news of his passing from the hospital." Tahlia's throat felt unmistakably dry as she lied straight through her teeth.
Mrs. Williams looked at her, "Poor Jordy, he was such a good guy, all I could ask for in a tenant; Paid his rent on time, no complaints from neighbors.. It's a shame."
With that the door unlocked, flowing ajar.
"You take your time dear, call me when you're done."
Tahlia thanked her, making sure she was gone as she entered the apartment.
It was a fairly small one bedroom accommodation, giving Tahlia not a lot of ground to cover.
Perhaps everything Tahlia had ever learned about profiling had led up to this very moment.
The interior was a soft gray color, the decor being very minimal. He had only the bare minimum furniture, no photos or other objects of sentimental value displayed anywhere. She looked around, realizing everything was super neat and clean.
'White male in his 50s, kept to himself, an introvert, likely to not be in a relationship',
Tahlia made a mental note.
She walked over to the modular kitchen, looking for anything that stuck out of the ordinary.
Tahlia then made her way over to the bedroom, doing a quick once over of the place as she looked under the mattress, in the pillowcases, under the bed for something, anything.
She looked through a cupboard full of books, flickering through the pages to see if he'd hidden something in between.
Nothing.
Maybe he really just was a guy doing his job at the wrong time in the wrong place.
But deep down Tahlia could feel it, her gut screaming at her to delve deeper, that everything was not what it seemed.
She walked out of the bedroom, sinking onto the couch, deep in thought.
Even if Jordy did help Logan escape, there's no point in digging into this further.
He's dead and Logan's still out there.
She ran a hand through her hair, groaning in frustration. Out of unbefitting exasperation, she flung a pack of cards kept niftily on the couch, right onto the floor.
"Shit." She cursed as the cards flew everywhere, scatteredly covering the once speckless carpet. She couldn't leave the apartment like that.
She bent down at once, picking up the cards that had dispersed all over the floor.
She thought she had gathered almost all of them, until she spotted two cards peeking out from underneath the wooden coffee table.
She had to lay down on the floor to reach them, exhaling harshly as she gripped them in between her fingers.
And then she felt it.
Her eyebrows furrowed, perplexed, before her eyes widened in bewilderment.
It was something supple, but bulky.
She stretched her arm as far as she could, grabbing the thing, pulling it out from under at once.
A diary.
A small, black, leather-jacketed diary.
She opened it quickly, flickering to the front page.
It was entirely blank.
Fluttering through more empty pages, Tahlia finally saw a flash of black ink.
silverdoor306agpym
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