I was pathetically relieved to hear from her. I’d been wearing the mahogany obsidian so much lately; I hadn’t realized how much I missed her. “From a security perspective, it’s not exactly a great idea,” I argued, “and who knows if I can even find her.”
But I was already pulling out my phone.
Social media was never my forte—I had a Facebook account, but I only logged in when one of my family members mentioned a post they wanted me to see—so it took me a little while to download Instagram and create an account under a fake name. Then I spent a few more minutes searching until I found the account I was looking for: Holly Noelle Quinlin in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Quinn had changed his name, but not by much.
The young woman in the photos looked so much like him that I let out a little gasp. She had his ruddy cheeks, blond hair, and angular features. On Quinn they were craggy and handsome in a skiwear-model way, but they made Holly’s face too fierce and sharp to be conventionally pretty. It was a great face.
Most of the photos were of Holly out with her friends, or pictures of just the friends, usually with a massive mug of coffee in front of them. I peered closer, tilting the phone so it wouldn’t catch the sunlight. There were an awful lot of pictures of lattes with those foam designs on top. I scrolled back through her account again until I was certain that all the coffee-related photos seemed to be at the same location. On a few of the foam-art shots, she’d tagged another profile, for a coffee shop called Bobby Cat’s.
“I could use some coffee,” I said out loud. The odds that Holly would be there at the exact right moment weren’t great, but I still had time to kill. Besides, it would drive me nuts later if I didn’t at least try. I put the rental car in gear.
Milledgeville, Georgia, definitely had more of an “antebellum South” vibe than I was used to, but it was still a college town. I almost felt at home as I drove past the kinds of businesses that appealed to students—bars, convenience stores, and of course, a disproportionately high number of coffee shops.
Once I got inside Bobby Cat’s, however, the layout had little in common with the labyrinthine organization of Magic Beans. The whole place consisted of a single large room with very high ceilings; colorful, painted wood trimmings; and tables that looked like they’d been scrounged from a wide variety of estate sales. An enormous, industrial-looking coffee grinder took up one whole corner of the space near the cash register, in case there was any doubt about how much Bobby Cat’s valued its tea drinkers.
There was a line of small tables along the opposite wall, and bigger tables in the center of the room. All the one- or two-person tables were occupied by coeds with a familiar frazzled look, and I wondered if Georgia College was also on the verge of midterms.
A tinkling bell had sounded as I walked in the door. The counter was off to my right, and it appeared to be empty, but at the sound of the bell, a young woman straightened up from where she’d been bent down under the counter. She turned around, and I nearly stumbled. It was Holly.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, smiling and pushing back some of the hair that had come loose from her bun. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Just looking for some extra lids.”
“Right. Cool,” I said stupidly. She worked here. Duh, Lex. No wonder she had so many photos.
There was a long chalkboard above the counter, and I glanced quickly at the list of drinks. “Can I get a large dead-eye, please?”
Her eyes twinkled as she pushed buttons on the cash register. “Studying not going well, huh?”
I just stared at her for a moment before my brain kicked in and reminded me that I looked young. “Something like that. I just needed a break.” There, that explained why I didn’t have any actual study materials with me.
Holly gave me a little placard with a number on it, and I turned and set it on a table near the counter. Then I wound my way through the other tables to a bookshelf jammed against the back wall, underneath some watercolors that were, a sign informed me, done by local artists. I grabbed the first book I saw, something with spaceships on