Except she doesn’t carry a bag. I didn’t give her one with the outfit.
My tension winds up a notch.
Micah wanders past, deep in thought, then does a double take when he sees me. “Lurking outside the bathroom. Not a great look.”
“Just waiting for someone.”
“Hm. Have you seen Ciprian Petrovic around? I’m trying to hunt him down but he’s remaining very elusive.”
Given Ciprian’s the one throwing the party, he must be hiding somewhere, but I shrug. I’m not even sure I’d know him by sight. I don’t associate much with the wider circle of our organisation.
“Just go in there if you’re that desperate,” Micah says, only half joking. “You know there’s a men’s opposite, don’t you?”
I lever up the edges of my lips but can’t stop the feeling creeping up my chest, tightening it so it’s hard to breathe.
“What are you worried about?”
Micah touches my arm and I flinch, unable to put words to the quiet unease that’s turning into an overarching sense of doom. Across the way, Andrej raises a glass of champagne to me with a mocking smile and I turn aside, not even bothering with a false pleasantry in return.
“Excuse me, Miss.” Micah waves before a passing couple, forcing them to stop. It’s one of the subsidiary heads and his wife. Urlich? Ulrick? “My friend’s companion is—”
“Fiancée.”
A raised eyebrow greets the news, but he doesn’t stall in his delivery. “His fiancée is in the bathroom, but she’s been a long time. Would you be able to pop inside and see if she’s all right?”
The woman only takes a second to duck inside, then returns shaking her head. “There’s no one in there. I heard there’s another bathroom on the other side of the kitchen.”
She points but I don’t turn to follow her direction. Micah thanks her and the couple continue into the restaurant.
“You go on,” I tell him, turning in a half-circle again as my eyes try to find her in the scattered guests.
He hesitates, then strides away, settling for one last concerned glance over his shoulder. My phone is out, dialling back to my home, breathing a sigh of relief when Feliks answers on the first ring.
“Yes?”
“Pull up the tracking information on Isabelle. She’s gone walkabout.”
It only takes a second before he’s back on the line. “It’s showing her near you. A few metres to your right?”
That leads back into the bathroom. With a hint of impatience, I knock on the door then, when nobody answers, walk inside myself. The cubicle doors all stand open, the stalls inside empty. No sign of disturbance or fuss in the pretty waiting room. Unless she’s discovered the power of invisibility, she’s not here.
I walk back outside, then retrace my steps when something tugs my attention. A few spots of blood on the counter. Nothing excessive. I touch my fingertip to one and find it still wet. Not even dried to the point of being tacky.
My heart kicks up a gear.
“Patch the feed through to my phone,” I order and disconnect the call as I stride out into the hall. Once the signal hits, I open the app and stand still while the screen revolves and resizes, pinpointing the location.
It directs me back to the bathroom but there’s no one there. Ignoring the suggestion, I walk out the back of the establishment, letting the screen resolve itself to accommodate the change, then round the corner into a dark alley. A man stands guard at the far end, instantly alert at my presence. I keep close to the building wall as I move towards him, stopping when it seems I’m right on top of the glowing dot on the screen.
Turning on the phone light, I scan the rough concrete of the alleyway. There are a multitude of cigarette filters, probably tossed from the bathroom window on overcast nights like tonight.
Bending, I train the torch onto the ground and perform a search pattern, painstakingly accounting for every bump and hollow in front of me. When a glint hits my eye, I scrape over the area with a fingertip, raising the tiny bead of the tracking device. The one that should be implanted inside my future wife.
“Help you, sir?” the guard from the corner asks having finally sidled along to get a closer look at my suspicious activities.
“Did you see a woman come out here?” I ask. “Black hair, black dress. Just over five feet tall? Probably limping.”
He steps back, frowning. “There was a car waiting.”
