Lucy hands me tea. "Drink. Not vodka. Actual tea."
I drink. It tastes like hope and disappointment.
Marcus settles into the chair across from me, something coiled and dangerous in his posture. "The papers are still outside."
"Let them wait."
"They're having a field day. 'Mystery Author's Mysterious Meltdown.'" He shakes his head. "Vultures."
"Let them write what they want," I say. "I have my car back. That's what matters."
Lucy sits beside me, pulls the blanket tighter around my shoulders. "You're going to be okay, babe. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will."
"The car will be okay," I correct. "That's enough for now."
Marcus leans forward, elbows on his knees, fists clenched. When he speaks, his voice is low—pit fighter low, the tone that means he's hunting. "We're still looking for him. Every contact I have. Every lead. Something doesn't add up about all this."
"Marcus—"
"I'm serious, Alena." His fist hits his knee once, controlled violence barely leashed. "Drogo doesn't just vanish. Seventeen years I've known him. He doesn't run. He doesn't abandon. And that note you got? That 'found somethingbetter' bullshit?" He shakes his head. "The handwriting was off. The phrasing was wrong. That wasn't him."
I stare into my tea. "Maybe you didn't know him as well as you thought."
"Maybe," Marcus says. "Or maybe something happened to him and we're sitting here mourning while he needs help."
The thought sits heavy in the room, thick and suffocating.
I don't want to hope. Hope is what's been killing me for six months. Hope is what drove me into bottles and through walls.
"The car," I say quietly. "Focus on the car. That I can fix."
Lucy squeezes my hand. "Okay. We focus on the car."
Marcus nods. "And I keep looking. Quietly. Just in case."
I don't argue. Because part of me—the part that's not completely broken—still wants him found. Even if he doesn't want to be.
After they leave—Lucy reluctantly, Marcus with one last warning look—I sit alone in the quiet flat. The shadows pool in the corners like they always do. But they're different now. Quieter. Almost… waiting.
For six months they've been changing. Less demanding. More questioning. Like they're as confused as I am about what happened.
The face I saw in the rearview mirror wasn't trying to hurt me. It was trying to show me something.
I stand. Walk to the bathroom. Look in the mirror.
The woman staring back is battered. Bruised. Broken. But her eyes are clearer than they've been in months.
"If Marcus is right," I whisper to my reflection, to the shadows listening in the corners, "if something happened to him…"
The shadows shift. Closer. Attentive.
"Then I'm going to find out what."
Not hope. Not anymore.
Planning. I turn my eyes to the woman behind me. Maybe she can help.
29
