It’s cold and snowing when I step outside, close to twenty degrees if I estimate right, which means there is no way Emily, who gets chilled even on warmer nights, is going to be lingering outside. I pull my hood over the top of my beanie and start walking, shoving my cold hands in my pockets, while scanning for Emily. She said I’d never find her, which could mean she’s already left the area. In fact, knowing we wouldn’t have yet found out she’d changed clothes, the most likely move would have been to leave the area.
That means a cab, a bus, or a train, which I have no doubt Seth will have covered, but then, he also thought Emily hadn’t left the hotel. Refusing to be defeated, I start jogging, covering the two blocks that lead me to the always busy 16th Street Mall area where the road is sealed to traffic, the sidewalks framing food booths and lined with shops and restaurants. Any of which she could be hiding inside. I start walking, looking in windows and at the random packs of people.
I cover four blocks, up and back, and despite the impossibility of this task, I know Emily more than any stranger looking for her. If she’s in the neighborhood, I have the best shot of finding her. My cell beeps with a text message and I glance down to find a text picture of Emily from a security picture along with a message: Emily leaving the hotel garage at exactly 8:52. I glance at my watch, to find it’s already nine forty-five. She’s long gone. My phone rings with Seth’s number, and I answer. “Tell me you have more than this photo.”
“I don’t,” he says grimly. “But she’ll have to use an ID to check into a hotel or travel. We just have to hope she didn’t have another fake ID on her.”
“She doesn’t,” I say with certainty. “I’m three blocks from her apartment. I’m going to go check it out. I’ll call you if I find any clues there.”
“I’ll meet you there,” he says, and I end the call, already starting to jog again, my mind going to her brother. Why would he do a half-ass job of setting up her identity? Even if he did it quickly, surely he’d have fixed it by now? My mind tracks back to the night I’d met her. She’d taken a call and been angry, playing it off as a maintenance issue at her apartment. Was that her brother? If not, who was it?
I blink and find myself covered in snow as I cross the parking lot to Emily’s apartment, but once I’m at the door, the realization that I don’t have a key hits me. I grab the frame on either side of me. “Damn it,” I murmur, deciding I’ll have to break the window.
“I’ve got it,” I hear Seth say from behind me.
Pushing off the door frame, I turn to find him approaching, now wearing a trench coat. “You have a key?” I ask.
He stops beside me, and pulls out some sort of tool from his pocket. “Close enough.” He inserts it into the lock and opens the door, but before he walks in, I grab his arm. Seth looks at me and nods his silent understanding, stepping aside. This is my woman and her personal space could contain my personal demons. I enter the apartment and tug down my hood, my heart sinking at the sight of an empty living room and kitchen.
I cross to the bedroom, the only other room in the apartment, and stop dead in my tracks in the frame of the open door. “Holy mother of Jesus,” I mutter, staring at the blow-up bed in the corner, and not another piece of furniture in the room. How did I not know she was living like this? I cross to the bed—if you can even call it that—and squat down next to it, the sweet floral scent of Emily everywhere, while she is nowhere I can seem to find her.
“I take it you haven’t seen this place before?” Seth asks from behind me.
I stand again and face him, hands on my hips. “If I had,” I say, “she would have already been living with me.” And while I have assumptions based on what I’m seeing here, I want to know what an ex-CIA operative thinks before I voice them. “What does this say to you about who and what she is?”
“My initial thoughts,” he says, pausing as if in thought, before continuing with, “This could be a wounded-princess routine meant to manipulate you, but I’d have thought she’d have made sure you saw it before now, if that were the case.”
“It’s not been all that long ago that we met.”
“Agreed, and I’m not saying that she didn’t have a long game that she was playing, but it’s doubtful at this point.”
“Why?”
“I still think she would have made sure you saw this apartment, if it was part of a setup. But that said, this doesn’t mean she told the truth on the phone, either.”
“She’s telling the truth,” I say, no hesitation in my voice.
“I accept your judgment, because I know your judgment as good, but I submit to you that she might have been desperate, on the run, and in need of money and/or her new identity. Therefore, she was ripe for the picking for your family or another enemy to use as a weapon against you.”
“Her brother set up her identity.”
“She says,” he argues. “Think about it, Shane. Who knows what she might tell you to keep you from finding out the truth, especially if she was threatened. Or maybe she regrets her choices and just doesn’t want you to know what they were. Maybe she was promised money she desperately needs, and she loses the money she was promised if you find out. Maybe—”
“Enough,” I snap. “I’m quite clear on the possibilities behind her actions but I’ve looked into her eyes, and you have not. Not like I have. She is running scared, but not from me.” Uninterested in anything but facts, I cut off the conversation. “Let’s search the apartment and get back on the streets.” I cross the room and enter the bathroom, finding a few toiletries and nothing more. The picture I’m getting of her being alone, and now on the run, is cuttingly clear.
I yank open the middle drawer, and stare down at the velvet box inside the otherwise empty space. I reach for it and open the top, staring down at the delicate chain of a bracelet, Emily’s words replaying in my mind: It’s all I have left of her.
“Shane.”
I shut the box and slip it inside my pocket, facing Seth.
“We located her.”
A mix of relief and dread washes over me that I don’t analyze or express. “Where?”
“At Union Square.”
“The train station,” I say in surprise, not because of the location, but rather the fact that she’s still here. “She could have been long gone by now. Why linger there and risk us finding her?”
“She didn’t,” he says. “We found her leaving it, which leads to the question, why go there and leave, without taking a train?”
“She must have thought paying cash would avoid her having to show identification. She didn’t want to be tracked.”