Chapter 2
I took a deep breath.
“I need to see the security footage from that week.”
The receptionist looked uncomfortable. “I… I’ll have to ask my manager.”
“Please do.”
“And we might need the police to authorize it—”
“My best friend is missing,” I cut her off, my voice calm but my hands shaking. “It’s been a month. No one has seen or heard from her. Your hotel may be one of the last places she was seen alive. Do you really think your manager won’t cooperate?”
She stared at me, then picked up the phone.
Twenty minutes later, the hotel’s head of security led me to a small surveillance room. Three walls were covered in monitors.
He pulled up the recordings from a month ago, starting from the day Cecilia checked in.
I sat down, my palms cold with sweat.
Day one.
Cecilia dragged her suitcase into the lobby and checked in at the front desk. She was wearing a white sundress, her hair in a ponytail, chatting happily with the receptionist.
My eyes burned with tears.
Then, in the bottom-right corner of the screen, a man walked in through the main entrance.
A dark blue T-shirt. A baseball cap. A face mask.
The way he walked. His posture.
It was Mark.
He didn’t go to the front desk. He sat down in the lobby lounge, picked up a magazine, and held it in front of his face.
But his eyes followed Cecilia from the moment she checked in to the moment she took her keycard and stepped into the elevator.
He watched her the entire time.
A chill ran down my spine.
“Fast forward,” I said.
The security chief sped up the playback.
That afternoon, Cecilia left the hotel to go sightseeing.
The camera angle switched to the entrance. Two minutes after she walked out, Mark followed.
Same cap. Same mask.
He stayed about twenty yards behind her.
That evening, Cecilia ate dinner at the hotel restaurant on the ground floor.
Mark sat in a corner, nursing a cup of coffee. His seat gave him a perfect view of her table.
Cecilia never noticed him.
Day two.
Cecilia visited a temple. Mark followed.
Cecilia went to a night market. Mark followed.
Cecilia bought a coconut from a street vendor and crouched down to pet a stray cat.
Mark stood across the street in front of a convenience store, pretending to look at his phone.
Every frame. Every shot.
He was there.
My hands started to tremble.
This wasn’t an affair.
People having an affair don’t act like this. They don’t wear masks and keep their distance. They walk side by side. They eat together. They touch.
He never spoke a word to her from start to finish.
Cecilia had no idea he was there.
This wasn’t a tryst.
This was stalking.
“What about the third day?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
The security chief pulled up the footage.
On the morning of the third day, Cecilia left the hotel. She had a backpack on and was holding a map, looking cheerful.
The camera showed her walking out the front door and heading east down the street.
Two minutes later, Mark emerged from a side exit and headed in the same direction.
And then the footage ended.
The hotel’s cameras only covered a short radius.
I couldn’t see what happened beyond that.
“Are there any other cameras?” I asked.
The security chief shook his head. “That’s all we have for the street coverage. You’d have to contact the local police.”
I sat in silence for a long time.
Then I stood up, thanked him, and walked out.
Standing in front of the hotel, I opened the map on my phone.
Cecilia had been heading east.
That road passed a few streets—a market, a gas station—and ended at the coast.
At a cliff.
I stared at the pin on the map, my fingers numb.
She went there.
He followed her.
And then… she disappeared.
I did not sleep that night.
I sat upright in the hotel room with every light on, staring at my phone as though it might suddenly explain everything. The air conditioner rattled in the wall, barely cutting through the heat. Outside, scooters buzzed past in bursts, and once in a while a dog barked somewhere in the distance. Every sound made me flinch.
Around midnight, my phone lit up.
A message from Mark.
How’s San Francisco?
I stared at the screen.
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone. I typed, erased, typed again, then settled on the safest lie I could manage.
Busy. Exhausted. Probably heading to bed soon.
He replied almost instantly.
Miss you.
I looked at those two words until they became grotesque.
Miss you.
As if he had not followed my missing best friend through a foreign city wearing a mask.
As if he had not lied to my face for a month.
As if I did not now know he had been in Chiang Mai while Cecilia vanished.
I put the phone face down and sat in silence until dawn.
The next morning, I contacted the local police station and asked to speak to the officer assigned to Cecilia’s case. That was how I met Inspector Naree.
She was in her late thirties, sharp-eyed, composed, and radiated the kind of controlled patience that made me trust her instantly. She listened without interrupting as I explained everything: the code word, Mark’s fake business trip, the hotel footage, the rooms on the same floor, the stalking.
When I finished, she was quiet for a few seconds.
Then she said, “You should have come to us the moment you found the booking records.”
“I know.”
“You came anyway. That matters now.”
She pulled Cecilia’s file from a cabinet and reopened parts of the investigation. By that afternoon, she had already obtained confirmation of Mark’s entry and exit records through immigration. She also found something else: during his stay, he had rented a motorbike under the name Marcus Hall.
Not Mark Holloway.
Marcus Hall.
A variation. A shield. Just enough to obscure himself if no one was looking too closely.
Naree laid the printed record on the desk between us.
“He was hiding,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “But not very well.”
The police also pulled limited traffic footage from an intersection east of the hotel. It showed Cecilia passing on foot that third morning. It showed Mark several minutes behind her.
And then, several minutes after Mark, another figure on a motorbike.
Helmeted. Male build. Long sleeves despite the heat.
A third person.
I stared at the still frame.
“Do you know who he is?”
“No,” Naree said. “But now we know your husband was not the only one following her.”
That changed everything.
Until then, I had been moving between two theories: affair or obsession. But this—this widened the story into something uglier. Something organized. Someone else was there. Someone else knew where Cecilia was going.
That afternoon, Naree arranged for us to examine Cecilia’s stored luggage.
The hotel brought it out to a back office: one cream suitcase, one carry-on, and a canvas tote with a cartoon lemon printed on the side.
My throat tightened when I saw them.
Normal luggage. Vacation luggage. No one packs sunscreen, sandals, and cute summer dresses planning to disappear.
Inside the tote, we found a notebook. Most of it was ordinary: food spots, temple names, small sketches, shopping lists, jokes to tell me later.
Then near the back, I noticed that one page had been torn out.
The sheet underneath held deep pen impressions.
Naree took out her phone, angled the notebook toward the light, then adjusted the contrast on a photo. Slowly, the indented writing became visible.
Meet 11:30. If he lies, go east. Cliff View Café. Bring copy, not original.
I felt a cold rush through my entire body.
“Copy of what?” I whispered.
Naree did not answer right away. She was staring at the words as if they were opening a door neither of us wanted to walk through.
When she finally spoke, her voice was calm.
“Whatever it was, she believed it was important enough to hide.”