Free The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel by Taylor Stevens

he’d turned her away. Yet he’d used her that day she’d come to his office and never allowed her to know it.
    She shoved against the hurt, trying to force the emotion into silence, but it wouldn’t stay; she sought detachment and couldn’t find it; she turned her thoughts toward Okada’s implications, toward the unanswered questions, but they rebelled, running back injured.
    Munroe exhaled imaginary smoke and studied an invisible point above Okada’s head, then picked up the thumb drive.
    “Thank you for this,” she said. “Why take the risk?”
    Okada emptied the last of the Asahi and tossed the can into a nearby garbage can. Without looking at her, without answering, he stood and returned to his car.

Time passed in the dark while the poison thickened, and when at last sitting and stillness became their own destructive force, Munroe returned to the bike and then to Bradford’s apartment. She’d expected to face a crime scene but found the hallway empty. Eventually the police would come, they’d have to come, violating Bradford’s home in a search for motive and corroborating evidence, but she’d be gone by then.
    She unlocked the door to quiet orderliness and the familiar fragrance of Bradford’s cologne lingering in the air, mixing the surreal into something only half-true. Munroe shut herself inside, closed her eyes, and leaned against the door. Then slammed the back of her head into the metal frame.
    The pain was distraction, a break from the denial and disbelief that threatened to swallow her whole. She’d spent years running from the hope of happiness because in emptiness she had nothing to lose. She’d stayed away from Bradford to protect him, and now, having finally given in and tasted peace, here they were again, unable to escape the orbit of loss.
    Munroe crossed the hall for the bedroom and paused in the doorway, mocked by the unmade bed, the clothes on the floor, the armoire doors still half open as Bradford had left them, in a rush to get to work after that early-morning call: fate’s cruel laughter at what was, and what wasn’t, and what had possibly never been.
    She grabbed the laptop from beneath the pillow and took the computer to the living room. She inserted the thumb drive and found surveillance footage as Okada had promised. She watched through multiples of what were mostly chronologically ordered viewpoints of the same thirty-minute time frame, but only when the body was removed from the stairwell did she begin to understand.
    The victim was one of the Chinese women that Bradford had pointed out over lunch. Tightened around her neck, presumably the weapon that had killed her, was a belt that Munroe would have recognized at any distance, no matter how grainy the footage. She paused the clip and leaned closer, staring at the black-and-white pixilated strip of leather and gaudy buckle. She traced her thumb against the image, replaying what Okada had said, correlating Bradford’s actions with what showed on-screen.
    Bradford had known he was trapped from the moment he saw the body. Even if he’d run, he never would have gotten off the island, and running would have only confirmed his guilt. So he’d waited for the police to come.
    And never called.
    Munroe stood and, fists clenched, strode to the bedroom.
    She threw open the armoire doors and tore through Bradford’s things.
    He’d obviously not been wearing the belt when he was arrested, but it wasn’t here either. God, he would never be that stupid.
    She slammed the doors and returned to the couch, closed her eyes and rubbed her palms over them. She walked backward through the days, attempting to account for the last time she’d seen the belt—a couple of weeks, perhaps—hating that she’d never thought to question where it was.
    She went through the footage again, searching for clues in what remained invisible. The murder itself had taken place off camera: a body left behind with only the smallest glimpse of the killer’s