Page 41 of You Can Trust Me
“What if she didn’t say no? What if they left the bar and something happened between them? And what if, after that, Mr. Barlowe found out about it? Or what if she woke him up when she came to the room that night and he followed her and saw them together?”
“He would never have hurt her,” I mutter breathlessly, running his words through my head again.
“Mrs. Barlowe left the bar with Zach Carter at just after four thirty in the morning. It wasn’t until just before nine that we were notified of her disappearance. That’s plenty of time for something to have happened, for her to have gone back to her room to be confronted by her husband, and for him to have lashed out.”
“Lashed out, as in killed her?”
He doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t need to.
“No. No, that’s ridiculous. Impossible. You don’t know them. Blake is… He’s not like that. He’s not jealous. He’s patient. And you haven’t seen him today. He’s completely broken over this.”
“Could he not be completely broken over what he did?”
“I’m telling you, you’ve got it wrong.”
“Maybe I do. I’ve been wrong before. I’ll be wrong again. But for now, Miss Hart, until he proves me wrong, I don’t think I am.”
“He loves her.”
“All the more reason.”
I shake my head, backing away as if to distance myself from the theory. “I get how this looks, but he didn’t do this. There’s no way he’s this good of an actor. I’ve been with him all day. I would know. I would sense it. Whatever happened, Blake wouldn’t do this.”
He gives me a look full of pity. “All I’m saying is that you should be careful. Try not to spend too much time with him alone. We never know what people are capable of.”
Well, that much, I’m learning, is certainly true.
Once he leaves my room, I check to see that Patton is still sleeping peacefully as I process what I’ve just learned. Zach Carter, the boy my best friend first loved, who grew into a man, is not only on this ship, he was the last person to see her before she disappeared.
The two most likely suspects in her disappearance are Zach and Blake. It’s just a fact.
I consider Blake to be one of my best friends. I’d trust him with my life. My darkest secrets. I don’t believe he’s capable of this, but I need to prove it. Which means I need to tell him what I know.
I leave the room and rush down the hallway, hoping I’m not making a terrible mistake when I knock on his door again. It takes him several minutes to open the door, and when he does, his hair is disheveled, his eyes bloodshot. He’s been crying again.
“Hey, I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah. Sure. Just…give me a sec.” He darts into the bathroom and flicks on the light, shutting the door behind him seconds before I hear him start to vomit. I walk away from the door, stepping near the bed to give him as much privacy as possible.
On the small vanity in front of the mirror are tiny bottles of her beauty products. I pick one up, lifting it to my nose. It’s a face cream we discovered accidentally while looking for something else in Ulta. When the beauty associate recommended it, she told us it smelled like candy.
I can still remember the way Mae giggled when she squirted a small drop onto her fingers and sniffed.“Oh my god, it really does!”She’d pushed her hand forward to let me smell at the same time I’d leaned in, and it smeared across the end of my nose, sending us both into a fit of laughter.
Now, the scent brings tears to my eyes. I place it down and take in the rest of the room. It’s still neat and proper, a sign that Blake hasn’t touched much since Mae was here. He’s always been a little bit messier than her. It drove Mae crazy the way he would use kitchen towels and lay them on the counter instead of hanging them back up or how his shoes were always sitting wherever he’d taken them off rather than put away in the closet.
If this room just belonged to Blake, it would be much less neat, that’s for sure.
Curiosity blooms in my stomach as Diego’s warnings repeat in my head. I carefully comb over each of her things, looking for any signs that things are amiss. I check the trash can next, but it’s empty, cleaned up by the room steward.
I bend down, running my hands under the edge of the bed, when I hear the toilet flush.
My hand connects with something soft, and I freeze. Pulling it out, I run my hands over the fabric in disbelief. It’s not possible.
It can’t…
He wouldn’t.
No.