Right in the middle of dinner, Liam suddenly put down his fork, looked at me, and asked, "Who is Jack Falcon?" My fork stopped in mid-air. My heart skipped a beat. Jack Falcon. That was a fake name my best friend, Chloe, and I had come up with one night when we were drunk. We made a pact. If either of us ever got into trouble and couldn't be reached, we would use "Jack Falcon" as our distress signal. Besides her and me, no one else in the entire world knew this name existed. And Chloe had been missing for exactly one month. She said she was taking a vacation to Thailand. She never came back. I looked at Liam's casual, unbothered face, and my heart sank inch by inch. How does he know that name? ... The name Jack Falcon was born the year Chloe and I graduated from college. After finishing a whole bottle of cheap red wine, we were lying on the roof of our apartment building, just talking nonsense. The moon was huge that night. Chloe threw her arm around my neck, slurring her words, "Harper, let's make up a secret code." "What kind of code?" "Like... if one of us ever gets into deep trouble and goes completely off the grid, and someone else brings up this specific name, the other one will know something is terribly wrong." I laughed at her for being so dramatic. But we still spent half an hour brainstorming until we finally landed on "Jack Falcon." Because the name was so incredibly cliché and fake, there was no way someone actually had that name. In the entire world, only two people knew the meaning of those two words. Me. And Chloe. And Chloe had been missing for exactly thirty-one days. She had told me she was going to Chiang Mai, Thailand, for a few days to unwind. Before her flight, she even FaceTimed me from the duty-free shop at the airport, yelling, "Harper! What do you want? I'll buy it for you!" That was the last time I saw her face. After that, my texts went unread. My calls went straight to voicemail. Her Instagram feed stopped updating after a single picture of a night market in Chiang Mai. I called the police. Her family called the police. The Thai authorities were supposedly investigating. But there was no trace of her. Alive or dead. It was like Chloe had completely evaporated from the face of the earth. And now. My husband, Liam. A man who theoretically had absolutely zero connection to Chloe. A man who wouldn't even "like" one of Chloe's Instagram posts. Just casually dropped those two words in the middle of dinner. "What's wrong?" Liam asked, noticing my frozen state. He gave a small smile. "Why do you look so weird?" "Nothing." I looked down and shoved a piece of chicken into my mouth, tasting absolutely nothing. "I've just never heard that name before. Where did you hear it?" "Oh, a friend mentioned it." Liam picked up his water glass and took a sip. "Just asking." He seamlessly changed the subject, moving on to talk about something happening at his firm. But I didn't hear a single word he said. There was only one thought screaming in my head. How does he know that name? How the hell does he know? After dinner, Liam went to take a shower. I sat on the living room sofa, my palms sweating. The sound of running water echoed from the bathroom. I glanced at the bathroom door, stood up, and walked over to his phone resting on the dining table. I knew his passcode. It was our wedding anniversary. I unlocked the phone, my fingers trembling as I scrolled through his texts, his call logs, his Notes app. Nothing. It was perfectly clean. Unnaturally clean. A normal person's phone is never this empty. I moved to his laptop. It was sitting on his desk in the study. I knew the password to that, too. Or rather, he had never bothered to hide it from me. I checked his browser history, his file folders, his downloads, scrutinizing everything one by one. Until I opened the cached data for a flight booking website. My hand froze on the mouse. One month ago. Liam told me he had to go to Chicago for a three-day business trip. I had even packed his suitcase for him. But the booking records showed a different story. He didn't buy a ticket to Chicago. He bought a ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand. His departure date was one day before Chloe's. His return date was two days after Chloe went missing. The shower stopped running. I immediately shut the laptop, rushed back to the living room, threw myself onto the sofa, and pretended to be mindlessly scrolling through TikTok. Liam walked out, drying his hair with a towel. He glanced at me. "Not asleep yet?" "Yeah, just gonna scroll a bit longer." I forced a smile. He walked into the bedroom and turned off the lights. I stared at the dark, closed door of the bedroom, my fingers slowly digging into the fabric of the sofa armrest. Liam. What were you doing in Thailand? The next morning, I told Liam my company had an emergency project and I needed to travel for a few days. He was tying his tie, not even turning around. "Where to?" "Seattle." "When are you back?" "Not sure. Maybe three or four days." He finally turned to look at me, flashing a gentle smile. "Be safe." I smiled back. It was a midday flight. I didn't go to Seattle. I flew to Chiang Mai. When the plane landed, it was 4:00 PM local time. The air in Chiang Mai was hot and sticky, and the unfamiliar scents hitting my face made me dizzy for a second. The last photo Chloe sent me was taken in this exact city. Night markets, neon lights, crowds of people. She was standing in front of a mango sticky rice stall, smiling like a kid. But I didn't have time to be sentimental. I took a cab straight to the hotel Chloe had booked. I had looked it up before leaving. She had sent me a screenshot of her booking confirmation before her trip. It was a boutique hotel called the Lotus Courtyard, right on the edge of the Old City. When I got to the front desk, I pulled out a picture of Chloe and asked the receptionist in English. "Did this girl stay at your hotel a month ago? Do you remember her?" The receptionist looked at the photo and shook her head. "Her name is Chloe. She's American," I added. The receptionist typed something into her computer, then nodded. "Yes, we have a record of her. She stayed for three nights. She didn't extend her stay, but she also never officially checked out. Her luggage is still in our storage room." My heart violently twisted. Her luggage was still here. But she was gone. I steadied my breathing and asked the question I was most terrified to ask. "A month ago... did this American man also stay at your hotel?" I slid a picture of Liam across the counter. The receptionist took a look, then typed into her computer again. When she looked up, her expression was hesitant. "Yes. He stayed for five nights." Five nights. Two nights longer than Chloe. "What room was he in?" "Room 312." "And Chloe?" "Room 315." The same floor. Separated by only two rooms. I stood frozen at the front desk, a loud ringing filling my ears. My first thought was the most cliché one: They were having an affair. Chloe and Liam, booking rooms next to each other in Thailand for a secret getaway. But the moment that thought surfaced, another voice in my head violently slapped it down. Impossible. Chloe despised Liam. It wasn't just a polite, behind-the-scenes kind of dislike. It was the kind of dislike where she would mercilessly roast him to his face. Whenever I dragged Liam to group hangouts, Chloe completely ignored him. Once, when she was drunk, she pointed right at him and said, "Harper is perfect in every way, except her taste in men is absolute garbage." Liam's face had turned green. Since that day, they had refused to even look at each other. How could two people who hated each other be sneaking off to Thailand for an affair? Then why was he staying right next door to her? What the hell was he doing? I took a deep breath and looked at the receptionist. "I need to see your hotel's security footage from that week." She looked extremely uncomfortable. "Um... we would need to get authorization from the manager for that." "Please ask." "And it might require a police warrant." "My best friend is missing." I cut her off. My voice was calm, but my hands were shaking violently. "It's been a month. No one has seen or heard from her. Your hotel might be the last place she was ever seen alive. Do you really think your manager is going to refuse to cooperate?" The receptionist stared at me, stunned into silence. Then, she picked up the phone. Twenty minutes later, the hotel's head of security took me to the surveillance room. It was a cramped room with screens covering three of the walls. The security chief pulled up the footage from a month ago, starting from the day Chloe checked in. I sat in the chair, staring at the screen, my palms slick with cold sweat. Day One. Chloe dragged her suitcase into the hotel lobby and checked in at the front desk. She was wearing a white sundress, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, chatting and laughing with the receptionist. My eyes suddenly burned with tears. Then, in the bottom right corner of the screen, at the lobby entrance. A man pushed through the doors. Dark blue t-shirt, a baseball cap pulled low, and a black face mask. I knew that posture. I knew that walk. It was Liam. He didn't go to the front desk. Instead, he sat down in the lounge area, picking up a magazine to shield his face. But his eyes were locked onto Chloe. From the moment she checked in, to when she grabbed her keycard, to when she stepped into the elevator. He watched her the entire time. A cold shiver crawled down my spine. "Fast forward," I said. The security chief increased the playback speed. Day One, Afternoon. Chloe left the hotel to go exploring. The camera switched to the exterior of the hotel. About two minutes after Chloe walked out, Liam followed her. Same baseball cap. Same mask. He kept a distance of about sixty feet. Day One, Evening. Chloe was eating dinner at the hotel's ground-floor restaurant. Liam was sitting in the darkest corner of the restaurant, ordering a single coffee. His seat offered a perfect, unobstructed view of Chloe's table. Chloe never noticed him. Day Two. Chloe went out to visit a temple. Liam followed her. Chloe went to a night market. Liam followed her. Chloe stopped by the side of the road to buy coconut water, crouching down to pet a stray cat. Liam stood across the street, pretending to be engrossed in his phone outside a convenience store. Every single camera angle. Every single frame. He was there. My hands started to shake violently. This wasn't an affair. People having an affair don't act like this. Wearing a mask, keeping a massive distance, tracking her every move. People having an affair walk side-by-side, eat together, touch each other. But he didn't. From start to finish, he never spoke a single word to her. From start to finish, Chloe had absolutely no idea he was there. This wasn't romance. It was stalking. "What about the third day?" I asked, my throat painfully dry. The security chief pulled up the footage for Day Three. On the morning of the third day, Chloe checked out. Or rather, she left the hotel with a backpack. She was holding a physical map, looking like she was in a great mood. The footage showed her walking out the main doors and heading east down the street. Two minutes later. Liam exited through the hotel's side door, walking in the exact same direction. And then, the screen went blank. The hotel's cameras only covered the immediate perimeter of the building. The world beyond those fifty yards was a blind spot. "Do you have any other cameras?" I asked. The security chief shook his head. "That's all we have. For street cameras, you'd have to go to the local police." I sat in silence for a very long time. Then I stood up, muttered a thank you, and walked out of the security room. Standing outside the hotel entrance, I opened the maps app on my phone. Chloe's final direction was east. If you kept walking east down that road, you'd pass a few residential streets, an outdoor market, and a gas station. And at the very end of that road, you hit the ocean. Specifically, a stretch of jagged cliffs overlooking the sea. I stared at that marker on the map, my fingers turning to ice. She went there. He followed her there. And then she disappeared. I rented a scooter and rode down that road for forty minutes. The road ended at an expansive, desolate coastline. The cliffs were terrifyingly high, with nothing but jagged rocks and violently crashing waves below. The wind was howling, so strong it was hard to stand still. This wasn't a tourist spot. There were no guardrails, no warning signs, just an overgrown dirt path leading right up to the precipice. I stood at the edge and looked down. Nothing but loose gravel, thick brush, and a narrow beach constantly battered by the tide. If someone fell from up here... I couldn't let myself think about it. I started knocking on doors in the area. There was a tiny, impoverished fishing village near the cliffs with a handful of scattered houses. I held up Chloe's picture, asking every single resident I could find. No one had seen her. I asked more than a dozen households. Nothing but head shakes. Just as I was about to give up and leave, I spotted a little boy sitting under a massive banyan tree at the edge of the village. He looked about seven or eight years old. He was wearing a filthy blue t-shirt, sitting barefoot in the dirt, playing with something in his hands. I squinted. It was a smartphone. With a pink case. And a pop-socket shaped like a cat's paw. My brain completely short-circuited. That phone case... I gave that exact case to Chloe for her birthday.
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