We drove the rest of the way in silence. He didn’t press.
“Be ready to leave the second I figure out where she is,” I said as he exited the elevator on his floor of our building.
He nodded. “Understood.”
Every floor ticked past in slow motion as my brain ran through potential scenarios, each one darker than the last—Lyla gagged and bound beneath some building, her hands bloodied, eyes wide and terrified, some MS-13 soldier carving his name into her skin just to send a message.
I clenched my fists.
She had no business being in this world. No fucking clue about the danger she was in.
As soon as the elevator opened, I stalked through the darkened living room to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Stoli from the fridge, taking a tumbler from the shelf. I didn’t bother with ice.
I stepped into my IT room and let the door seal behind me.
The monitors flickered to life.
I began pulling everything up again—every file, every feed. I scrutinized her apartment building. The theater. The street cams. Retail security. Anything that had eyes on that block.
I’d already gone through it once, frame by frame. I’d logged every movement, tracked her last steps.
But I had to be missing something.
I started over.
Went back to the beginning, searching for some detail I might’ve missed.
Except I didn’t miss things. Not me. Not when it mattered.
After another hour, still nothing.
No Lyla.
Fuck.
She’d disappeared into thin air, and I had no idea how.
For her sake…
I hoped I found her first.
Chapter twenty-three
Isat hidden in the wings as Jenny McMasterson, the actress playing Ruby Vance, and the rest of the cast ran through Act I again. I’d been attentively studying her every movement and carefully listening to each line she delivered, learning the part. She and all the cast members were amazing; I couldn’t help but feel starstruck as I watched the rehearsal unfold.
I was tucked off to the side of the stage, sitting on a battered wooden stool, my back pressed against a fly-rail post, clutching my script. I hadn’t spoken to anyone except the cast and crew all day. Hadn’t dared wander too far from the shadows.
I was still the new girl, the understudy, trying to catch up and stay out of trouble. Just another warm body in black dance pants, a white tee, and dance shoes. I was hanging out in the wings, blending in exactly as I had hoped.
I hadn’t slept well. The hard floor beneath the stage was unforgiving, and there were too many thoughts crowding my head. But I’d survived the night. That had to count for something. No men with dark coats or threatening voices hadcome searching for me, and there had been no glint of Mr. Stalker’s pale eyes in the dark. I’d just awakened a little cold, with stiff joints and a thin layer of grime clinging to my skin.
I’d left the hiding spot only three times before coming to rehearsal—once to sneak to the bodega for food and water, and twice to use the tiny restroom two doors down from my storage nook. Every step had felt dangerous, like someone might pop out from the shadows and grab me.
I knew I was being paranoid.
But paranoia was what kept people alive.
Looking back, my grand escape hadn’t been that well thought out. One minute, I’d been working my normal shift at Cipher; the next, I’d been disappearing into the recesses of the building behind Playwrights Haven, hunting for the perfect place to hide. The Midtown Performance and Rehearsal Studios building was a maze of rented rehearsal spaces, cheap offices, and small theaters—but to me, it was a temporary sanctuary.
