She kissed me softly. “I would prefer you to leave me temporarily rather than in an ambulance for God knows how long.”
I groaned. “Why do you always have to be so reasonable?”
She just smiled.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I climbed out of bed and redressed in my jeans and t-shirt, hooking the insulin pump up and blousing enough to start the downward slide. I grabbed my keys and wallet.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Be careful.”
She snuggled against the pillows as I headed for the door, looking for all the world like she was content to take an early evening nap. I paused in the doorway and watched her a moment, finding it difficult to actually walk away. But I did.
Fuck diabetes!
Chapter 22
Adrienne
The sound of the door slamming pulled me out of the light doze I’d settled into. He’d forgotten his CGM device, and the alarm continued to go off even though the huge number had fallen a little. I’d read some about diabetes when I wasn’t following him to his parents’ beach house or trying to figure how someone used his computer to send those emails. I knew that number was dangerous. But I also knew that Lucien had dealt with this condition long enough to know what to do in situations like this.
I grew restless after just a few minutes. I climbed out of bed and pulled on his t-shirt, one I’d taken from his bedroom a few nights ago, and wandered out into the sitting room. My cellphone was in the pocket of my jeans in the bathroom. I heard it buzzing despite the distance. I thought about ignoring it as I stood at the windows and looked down on the city, but decided it might be important.
And it was. It was a message from Robert.
“Text message from a phone registered to Callahan Biomedical. Not Montgomery or Callahan’s phones.”
The message was in reference to a text message I’d received last night that appeared to be from the same person who’d been emailing both Lucien and Jacob from Lucien’s computer. The fact that the text came from a phone other than Lucien’s or Jacob’s seemed to suggest what I’d been saying all along, that Lucien wasn’t orchestrating a hoax. I sent both the screen shot of the text messages on my phone and Robert’s message to my dad.
And then I remembered the camera I’d set up in Lucien’s office.
It’d only been a day, but I was hoping it had caught something. Or, more importantly, someone.
I tugged my laptop out of my overnight bag and curled up on the narrow couch in the sitting room to pull up the footage. There was nothing going on right now, but I rewound the footage to late last night and…was that…?
“Lucien!” I called as the door opened. “You’ll never believe who I caught on camera breaking into your office!”
But it wasn’t Lucien who walked through the door.
Chapter 23
Lucien
The line at the pharmacy was impossibly long. But when I finally reached the counter, it was only a matter of moments before the harried pharmacist handed me a vial of fast-acting insulin and a handful of needles. I didn’t even need a prescription.
God bless America.
I gave myself the shot in the elevator, eager to simply jump into bed with Adrienne and get back to what we’d been doing before my diabetes rudely interrupted us. I shoved the card key into the door lock and called her name, but she didn’t answer. I thought she was probably asleep. But when I stepped up to the door of the bedroom, my shirt already coming up over my head, I realized the bed was empty.
“Adrienne?”
I walked over, shifted the blankets a little, as though she were tiny enough to hide in the rumpled mess we’d left behind. The bathroom door was open, the light on, but she wasn’t in there, either.
Her bag was still sitting on a low bench in the corner of the room, her shoes tucked underneath. She—unlike my mother and sister when we traveled together—had only brought one pair of shoes. She wouldn’t have gone out without them, would she?
I went back to the sitting room, the cold fingers of fear beginning to dance in the depths of my belly.
“Adrienne?” I said again, aware that I’d checked every possible place she could be and that saying her name was useless. But I felt compelled to do it anyway.
And then a cellphone began to buzz loudly. I spun around, trying to find it.
There, on the couch.
The screen was brightly lit, announcing that there was a new text message.
I hesitated. This was Adrienne’s phone. Why was her phone here, but she was gone? Where had she gone? Why had she gone?
All her things were still here. Her bag, her shoes. Her cellphone.
She might have stepped out to get ice without her shoes. Might even have left without her phone. But she didn’t have a key to the door. And I was pretty sure she hadn’t put any pants on.
Where the hell…?
The phone buzzed again, the screen announcing another message.
I clicked it.
If you want to see your girlfriend again, you will do exactly as I tell you.
That was the first message.
Call the police and you will never hear from me again. Or see her again.