*
The sum I’m now offering Allan is exorbitant, even by my standards. Even so, Saint continues to elude us. Days turn into a week. A week turns into two. I think of nothing else. I jump every time my phone pings on the off chance it’s a message from Allan. I check in with him several times per day.
“Do you have anything for me?” I can hear the desperation in my voice and it’s only getting worse with each day that passes.
Every time, the answer is the same. “Not yet, but I won’t stop till I find him.”
I go through the motions at work. Thank God, I’ve spent years working on my plan. It isn’t all that hard to get what I need into place. Three BeckIT directors resign on the spot when I make the internal announcement. Two others burst into tears. Ordinarily, this would make me incredibly happy. Right now, I hardly feel it.
At night, I sit in my room, in the armchair he sat in. It’s a Danish piece. Bought for its looks, rather than comfort. That doesn’t stop me. I sit in it for hours, wondering how long Saint sat in it, waiting for me.
Every night, when I’m lying in bed, I tell myself the same thing. I tell myself over and over.
You have to stop this. It’s an obsession. It’s unhealthy.
*
Almost three weeks to the day after my birthday party, my phone pings. As usual, the sound makes me jump. I fumble around, trying to get my hands on my phone so fast, my haste slows me down.
It’s a message. A message from Allan.
I have a name and an address. He had an appointment at Coiffe fifteen minutes after you had your hair done in April.
Blood pumps so hard, I can’t tell if I feel hot or cold. I frantically press every part of my phone screen that could possibly lead to a call being made.
“I don’t want a name and an address. I want it all.I wanteverythingyou can find on him, and I want itnow.”
“Give me a few hours, and I’ll get something meaningful to you.”
It’s Friday afternoon. I’m at work but I cancel my plans for tonight. I was supposed to be at some sort of meet and greet. I say I can’t make it and I don’t give a reason. I leave work the second my last meeting ends and I pace up and down the foyer of my apartment as night draws in.
It’s been three and a half hours since Allan called.
How the fuck long can something like this possibly take?
At last, a call from Allan.
“Check your email,” he says. “I’ve sent through what I have. It’s not much. He’s squeaky clean. Almost too clean. He has no vices, no arrests, doesn’t even watch porn. If I hadn’t seen for myself that he’s living and breathing, I’d suspect he was a ghost.”
“There’salwaysporn, Allan, and I want to see it.” I flush with fury when I think of him snooping in my life. Watching. Waiting. Taking me when he wanted. Making me throb and making beat because he knew things about me he had no right to know.”
“I’ll look again. Keep an eye on your email, I’ll send what I find.”
I hang up and head to my study. It’s the kind of study that was designed mostly for show. I usually work in bed, on my laptop. But this feels momentous. Official. And to make it more so, I power up my computer and sit at the too-big desk as the file prints out. I pour myself a very large whisky, but I don’t drink it. I start paging through the file, paper still warm in my hands. My heart beats so savagely it makes me feel nauseous.
The report is brief and to the point. It’s pretty much as he described. There’s a photograph of him when he was twelve or thirteen. It’s from a police report. The lighting is harsh, emphasizing the shadows under his eyes. He’s little and skinny. His ribs are bruised black and blue, and his nose looks freshly broken. It looks like they tried to clean him up for the photograph, but there’s still a smear of blood from his nose to his cheek. In the photo his eyes look almost black. He looks angry. But mainly, he looks afraid.
I flick through the rest in a frenzy. Photographs of his mother. Looking like an upstanding member of society in one picture and then looking the exact opposite in the next. There’s a picture of his father. Deceased, the report says. Killed in an alleyway. His nose was broken in two places, and he was stabbed in the neck with his own knife. The police report indicates that it was a mugging gone wrong. No one was ever arrested.
Saint was fifteen when he died.
There’s another photograph of him on his eighteenth birthday. The day he joined the military. His hair is shorn off in a fresh crew cut. He's still skinny. His eyes are dark. Angry, but not scared anymore. There are other pictures too. One of him with a group of his army buddies, arms slung loosely over each other’s shoulders. One when he started his career as a security consultant. He’s twenty-five in that photograph. No longer skinny and sporting a deep scar sliced into one eyebrow. The scar looks new in the photograph. Healed, but still raised and red.
Security consultant, my ass.
His consulting business does pretty well, judging by his financial records. He’s never missed a bill payment or filed a tax report so much as a day late. There’s a recent picture of him, too. It could have been taken yesterday, or earlier today. He’s running in Central Park. He’s wearing athletic shorts and a cap drawn down low. The picture is a little blurry, but it’s him. No doubt about it. It’s him.
I have his social security number, his bank details, and his insurance information.
