The Lie Hidden in Roses Chapter 05

The Lie Hidden in Roses Chapter 05 The City He Never Visited

It wasn’t a note at all.

It was half of a boarding pass, torn clean through the middle.

I opened it with both hands, careful not to crease it any more than it already was. The moment my eyes landed on the flight details, my stomach turned cold.

The departure date was three days earlier-the exact day Rowan had supposedly flown out for his business trip.

But the destination was wrong.

It wasn’t the city he had told me about.

The return flight was scheduled for today.

So Rowan had never gone where he said he was going. For the last three days, he had been in Harrowbend Oregon. Then he had flown back here as if nothing had happened.

Why Harrowbend?

What was there for him?

Or who?

I took a photo of the boarding pass, then folded it along the same worn lines and slipped it back under the suitcase lining exactly where I had found it. After zipping the suitcase shut, I returned to bed without making a sound.

The moment I eased myself onto the mattress, Rowan moved.

His arm slid over my waist.

My whole body locked up.

I kept my breathing shallow and forced myself not to flinch. Behind me, his breath brushed warm against the back of my neck, slow and even, like he was sleeping peacefully in the dark..

I stayed awake until sunrise.

When morning came, I told him I had an early start at work and left the apartment before he could ask too many questions.

He didn’t seem suspicious.

He even packed me breakfast.

A sandwich, wrapped in plastic so smoothly the corners were folded down with the same careful precision Rowan always had. That almost made it worse. The normalcy of it. The quiet, ordinary tenderness from a man I was no longer sure I knew.

I drove to the HaleTech office building, but I didn’t go inside.

Instead, I sat in the parking lot with both hands gripping the steering wheel, staring through the windshield’ while the engine ticked faintly beneath the hood.

After several minutes, I picked up my phone and called Nolan.

“Nolan, it’s me.”

Nolan Price and I had gone to college together. Now he worked Major Crimes. We weren’t close anymore/ not exactly, but we still lingered at the edges of each other’s lives through birthday texts, liked photos, and the kind of holiday messages people send when they do not want a connection to disappear completely

“Maren?” His voice sounded rough with sleep. “Why are you calling me this early?”

“I need you to check someone for me.”

“Who?”

“Rowan Hale.”

Silence settled over the line.

“Your Rowan?” Nolan asked, suddenly much more awake. “Why do you want me looking into your boyfriend?”

“Because something is wrong with him.”

I didn’t try to explain everything. I couldn’t. Not yet.

Even I barely understood what was happening, and if I laid it all out, I knew exactly how it would sound.

Like I was grieving.

Like I was panicking.

Like I was losing my mind.

Nolan let out a slow breath. “Send me his full name, date of birth, and whatever basic information you have. I’ll see what I can access. But I’m telling you right now, Maren, I can only pull what I’m legally allowed to pull. If something is sealed or restricted, I may hit a wall.”

“Thank you.”

After we hung up, I sent him Rowan’s details.

Then I sent one more message.

Look into his father’s case too. Police officer killed in the line of duty fifteen years ago. Send me whatever you can find.

A second later, Nolan replied with a single question mark.

I didnt answer

I had somewhere else to go.

Years ago, Rowan had rented a small storage unit in the Northgate Historic District. He had told me it was just for things he didn’t use anymore: old college papers, books, winter blankets, spare kitchen supplies, the sort of clutter people keep because throwing it away feels too permanent.

I had a key.

He had handed it to me once like it meant nothing at all.

But he had never asked me to go there, and I had never cared enough to wonder why.

Now I was starting to think that unit had never been about clutter.

Northgate Storage sat at the end of a narrow alley in one of the oldest parts of the city. Brick apartment buildings pressed in from both sides, their paint peeling, their fire escapes rusted, their power lines drooping overhead like tangled black string.

I unlocked the unit and pushed the metal door up.

Stale dampness drifted out first.

Mildew.

Dust.

Old air.

The unit was small, maybe two hundred square feet, with cardboard boxes stacked along the walls. A soft film of dust covered nearly everything, thick enough to show the path of my fingers when I dragged them across the top of a box.

There was one narrow window near the ceiling, but it let in almost no daylight.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight.

For the next half hour, I went through every box I could reach.

Old textbooks.

Plastic-wrapped blankets.

A cracked picture frame.

Tax records.

Nothing that mattered.

I was beginning to think I had invented a connection out of fear when my hand brushed something flat beneath the lowest box.

A tile envelope

It had been tucked all the way at the bottom.

I pulled it free and opened it.

Several papers slid into my hands.

The first was an old investigation report, yellowed with age, its corners curled and brittle.

At the top of the page was my father’s name.

It was a report about his death.