Is it the baby? Images surface unbidden. Avery at the designer’s studio after her faint. The fluorescent hell of the emergency room afterward.
Did it happen again?
But that doesn't track. Avery would call me, not text. Someone—whoever she's apparently with right now—surely, would call me.
She wouldn't send a fragmented text that cuts off mid-word like something stopped her from finishing. Or someone.
I'm scared.
Those two words sear me. This is a woman who survived things that would’ve destroyed someone weaker. She doesn't reach for that language unless the fear is real.
In Chelsea with Na—
Who the fuck?
I hit Avery's contact. Her phone rings once. Twice. Three times. Her voicemail picks up, and her recorded voice tells me to leave a message.
Damn it. I end the call. Try again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
She's out there somewhere, afraid, and I can't fucking reach her.
I vault out of my chair on a low curse. Cold floods the base of my skull and spreads downward through my chest, my arms, settling into my hands until my fingers feel thick and clumsy on the phone. Not panic—I don't have the luxury of panic right now. This is something worse. The slow, spreading certainty that my entire world has tilted under my feet while I wasn't looking, and I'm the last one to feel it move.
I pull up the contact for the Chelsea rec center's art building. My thumb finds the number and I'm already listening to it ring before I've consciously decided to call.
"Elizabeth Xavier Center, this is Carla speaking."
"Carla. It's Nick Baine." I don't have time for pleasantries, for the warmth she usually greets me with when I visit the center. "Is Avery there?"
A pause. I can hear her recalibrating, adjusting to the edge in my voice. The edge that's scraping against my throat like broken glass.
"Um, no, sir. She came by earlier and dropped off some supplies for the art program." She's trying to give me more than I asked for, the way people often do when they're either facing me or have my voice in their ear. "That was maybe an hour ago now. Is… Is anything wrong, Mr. Baine?"
An hour ago. Anything could have happened in sixty minutes' time.
"Was she with anyone?"
Another pause. Longer this time. I can practically hear the woman thinking, rifling through her memory.
"She came in alone." Carla's sounds concerned now too, which only heightens my dread. "But now that I'm thinking about it… I did see her talking with someone. A woman with a little boy."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know, Mr. Baine. I didn't recognize them as members of the program."
Shit. "Did she leave with them?"
"I... I'm not sure. But Jason at the front desk might have seen more. Let me go check with him now—hold on."
I hear her breathing faster. Swift footsteps on hard flooring. A muffled question, the words indistinct. Then her voice returns, pulled tight as wire.
"Jason saw them leave together. A woman—he thinks maybe late thirties or early forties, Middle Eastern, he says—and a young child. Jason is saying they seemed friendly with each other, like they knew each other."
