What Lies in the Woods

Naomi drives back to Chester and goes straight to see Ethan, who is startled by her bruises and injuries. He urges her to go to the police, but she refuses: “[A]s soon as I know who’s responsible for all of this, I’ll hand everything we have over to the police. But I don’t trust them. They got the wrong man before. And Liv died” (190). Ethan finally calms her down; when she wakes up, he explains that he has started to track her phone. However, it’s currently off, and he also can’t find any photos of AJ Stahl to tell if he resembles the man from her hotel room.

Eventually, Naomi gets a brief ping from her phone and tracks the address to an office called Jessup Consulting. They offer private investigative services, so Naomi wonders if someone paid a private investigator to follow her. As she thinks more about it, she realizes that the man lunged to get out of the room but never attempted to hurt her until she hit him. She concludes that the man was looking for information, not waiting to harm or kill her.