Ryan Vance's POV
Della froze with her hand on the brass doorknob.
"What did you just say?" she asked. Her voice dropped to a harsh, scraping whisper.
She turned around slowly. Her knuckles were stark white where she gripped the silver pocket watch. The exhaustion that had drained her face seconds ago vanished completely. A feverish, desperate energy replaced it.
"I asked a question," I said, keeping my tone perfectly level. "Is his last name Beckett?"
"Why would you ask that?" She let go of the doorknob. She took a slow, measured step back into my living room. "How do you know that name?"
I did not answer her right away. I needed to verify what I thought I remembered. I walked past her, heading toward the small oak desk pushed against the far wall. My heavy boots thudded against the floorboards.
"Answer me," Della demanded. She trailed right behind me, her sneakers silent on the wood.
"Give me a second," I told her.
I reached the desk and pulled open the top drawer. A mess of old receipts, loose batteries, and folded documents filled the cramped space. I dug past the junk, pushing aside a tangled mess of charging cables. My fingers brushed against a yellowed file folder.
Three years ago, I shot a maritime logistics documentary off the coast of Nova Scotia. The production company handed me a thick communications roster on the first day. Halfway through the shoot, a severe squall hit the area. A surveying vessel went down in the storm.
I pulled the folder out and flipped it open.
My thumb traced the edge of the printed spreadsheet. I scanned the columns. Crew names. Radio frequencies. Emergency contacts.
And at the very bottom, under a section marked Unaccounted For.
Beckett, Samuel. Deck Engineer.
I stared at the black ink. My chest tightened. I remembered the absolute chaos on the radio that night. I remembered the Coast Guard cutters slicing through the freezing rain, their spotlights cutting through the dark water. I never met the guy. I just pinned up a piece of B-roll reference footage on my wall to match the visual tone of the project. A random guy standing on a dock.
"Ryan," Della said.
I looked up. She stood two feet away. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot. She looked like a stiff breeze would snap her in half. Her mother was paying actors to pretend to be her boyfriend. Her family treated her like a mental patient. She was clinging to a pocket watch like it was a life raft.
If I told her the truth right now, she would break. If I handed her a piece of paper confirming her fiancé was on a missing persons list from a wreck I documented, she would not just cry. She would shatter into a million pieces right here on my floor.
"Where is the paper?" she asked. She stretched her neck, trying to look over my forearm.
I snapped the folder shut.
"Nowhere," I said.
I shoved the folder back into the drawer and slammed it closed. The wood rattled loudly against the desk frame.
"You found something," Della insisted. She reached for the drawer handle.
I stepped in front of her, blocking the desk entirely with my body. "I made a mistake."
"Do not lie to me." She shoved her hands against my chest. Her palms felt cold through my cotton shirt. "You just said his name!"
"I worked with a sound technician named Beckett last year," I lied. I kept my voice flat and unyielding. "I got my wires crossed. I thought maybe I heard you mention the name in the hallway the other day."
"I never said his last name in the hallway."
"Then I guessed," I said. "It is a common name."
"You do not just guess a name like that!" she yelled. Her voice cracked on the final word, echoing off the bare walls of my apartment.
"I remembered it wrong, Della." I crossed my arms over my chest. I forced myself to look down into her frantic eyes without flinching. "I am sorry. I do not know your fiancé. I do not know what happened to him. I just remembered a guy from a sound crew."
She stared at me. Her chest heaved with rapid, shallow breaths. She searched my face for any sign of deception. She watched the corners of my eyes. She tracked the steady rise and fall of my shoulders.
I gave her nothing. I kept my jaw relaxed and my eyes dull. I gave her the same exhausted, unbothered look I gave producers when a shoot ran twelve hours overtime.
"You are hiding something," she whispered. Her voice trembled.
"I am unpacking boxes," I replied. "And you are trespassing."
She looked past me. She stared at the closed drawer for a long, heavy moment. Then she looked at the corkboard on the wall. She stared at the photograph of the man on the dock.
"He is out there," she said. It was not a plea this time. It was a promise.
"Then you should go find him," I told her. "Because he is not in my apartment."
Della backed away. She did not break eye contact until she reached the threshold. She stepped out into the hallway and pulled the heavy door shut behind her.
The brass latch clicked into place.
Silence flooded the room.
I let out a harsh exhale and ran a hand over my face. My muscles ached from the tension. I turned away from the desk and walked over to the front door. I pressed my shoulder against the solid wood, listening for any sound in the corridor. I heard the faint, heavy thud of her apartment door closing across the hall.
I stayed by the door for a long time.
My eyes drifted back to the wall. The red string. The eight-by-ten glossy print hanging in the center of the chaos.
The man on the dock faced the ocean. The wind whipped his dark hair. The camera angle caught the sharp line of his jaw.
I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the rigid cords of muscle. The resemblance was uncanny. I shot that footage from a moving ferry. The guy was just a shape in the distance, a nameless extra in a documentary about shipping lanes. But the roster in my desk proved he was real. And he was missing.
I needed to check the dates on that spreadsheet. If the squall hit before she lost contact with him, the timeline did not make sense. I needed the exact dates.
I pushed off the door and walked back to the desk.
I reached down and grabbed the brass handle of the top drawer. I pulled it open.
The yellowed file folder was gone.
I froze. I stared into the cluttered space. Receipts. Loose batteries. A tangled phone charger.
The communications roster was missing.
Sitting precisely where the folder had been just five minutes ago was a smooth, gold-plated metal tube.
I reached in and picked it up. The casing felt heavy and cold against my palm. I pulled the cap off.
A stick of bright, glossy crimson lipstick twisted up from the base.
Della wore no makeup. Her lips were pale and chapped. She had not come anywhere near this drawer while I was blocking it.
And this color was brand new.
