Chapter Fifteen
"This is fucking absurd," I mumbled to myself.
I'd had several hours' drive to talk myself out of this endeavor but when I arrived in the alley behind the bakery, I was as determined as ever. I had a strong idea what I was going to find before I started picking the loft apartment's lock, but that didn't stop me either.
It was as if I needed to prove to myself that I wasn't susceptible to this kind of manipulation. I could tolerate Jocelyn hooking up with Renner but I couldn't reconcile falling for a woman in possession of better spy gadgets than my shop. This wasmygame, and I wasn't prepared to admit that I'd been played until I could fill my hands with the truth and grind it all to dust.
A small, selfish part of me was still hoping that the version of April I'd known was real, and everything I'd experienced with her was real, too.
But reality came at me hard when the lock clicked open and emptiness greeted me. The apartment that was once charmingly cluttered was now dim and vacant. Gone were the sun-bleached curtains and old trunks, the stacks of worn paperback books, the mismatched bedside tables. It was all gone.
I stepped inside, determined to touch the absence of her and bring it into my consciousness. I let my fingers graze the windowsills and walls, tracing the faint discolorations where artwork once hung. The tiny kitchen was scrubbed clean and the hanging fruit basket was already home to a spider web. Only the lobster magnet remained on the refrigerator, with "Montauk" scrawled on the shell. I plucked it off, turning it over in my palm as if it could reveal all of April's secrets.
Humid summer air moved over me as it raced to escape the confined space, and with it went my hope. I couldn't pretend there was any explanation other than the one dead ahead. April wasn't a sweet, sexy, silly woman who'd captured my heart in the crash of a wave. She wasn't a challenge, a mystery to uncover and explore.
April was a cover, and nothing more.
