“Business slipped a little since February, but he’s not a one-man show, and his staff are still completing projects, so the company is still doing okay. He’s not married. Never married. No children.”
Not married. I look down at my hand, at the ring finger on my left. “Good.”
“His parents are still alive, still healthy and independent. He has two brothers, both married, both with young kids. He’s the youngest of the three.”
“Rap sheet?” Ollie rasps. “Anything worth mentioning?”
“No record. No prints. No arrests. Not even a speeding ticket. He pays his taxes on time, every time, pays his employees above board, and, when I looked into his company, the reviews are all positive. There are no blemishes attached to his name. Not even a post-it note cops are apt to leave for the next uniform to read.”
“W-what’s his name?” I question. Blinking, blinking, blinking, I bring my eyes back to the man on the other side of the glass. “Do you know it?”
“Bisek.” He peeks down at the file in front of him. “Darcy Bisek.”
Ollie drops his head back and groans. “Fuck.”
“Darcy,” I whisper, each sound, each syllable shaking on my tongue. “H-his name is Darcy?”
“He says he’s your fiancé, Rose.” Ramone comes around and settles on the lip of the window, his back to the glass separating us fromDarcy. “Hesays you’ve been together for seven years, got engaged late last year, and you were set to marry next winter.”
Heavy, boiling tears spill onto my cheek, scorching a line all the way to my jaw, then dripping off the sharp edge to splash on my shirt. On my hand. On Poppy.
“He brought proof.” Exhaling a long sigh, Billy flips through his file and organizes a small stack of photographs. “He gave us his phone and full permission to search it. Told us to check the photo albums to see that he was telling the truth.”
He offers the pictures, but I don’t take them. I can’t. I’m holding Poppy in one hand and clinging to my sanity with the other, anchoring myself to Ollie’s hip. But Ollie takes them. Exhaling a shaking breath, he clears his throat and turns the stack over.
Immediately, I’m assaulted with an image ofme… laughing, mouth open, eyes squinting, and my arms wrapped around the man on the other side of the glass.
The next picture is of the two of us posing on a beach. Him in green and yellow board shorts, me in a blood red bikini. His lips pressed to my temple while I smiled for whoever was snapping the photo.
In another picture, I’m wearing a shimmering silver gown that stretches all the way to the floor, my hair tied back, but with sections of it curled so the ends delicately kiss my shoulders. And he… Darcy, stands right beside me in a suit and a black bow tie.
I’m happy in every picture. Smiling. Hugging him with my hand…God. My hand anchored to his hip.
“I think I’m going to puke.” I step out from beneath Ollie’s arm and walk to the back wall, turning and sliding all the way to the floor. Folding my legs up, tucking my heels as close to my butt as I can, I hug my knees and drift into a world where just Poppy and I exist. Where there are no fiancés, or memory loss, or a man just feet away, claiming I love him.
It’s not possible. Because I love Ollie.
“Do we know if the photos are real?” Cliff strides across the room and stares down at the pictures. “With technology these days, and all that AI bullshit flinging around, how can we know?—”
“They’re coming up legit for us so far,” Ramone cuts in. “We’ll send them away for testing so we know for sure, but time-stamps confirm what he’s saying. Geo-stamps, too. There’s one picture in there of them in Paris.”
I choke on my tears, clamping my lips shut to trap the sound inside.
“His passport confirms he was traveling through Europe at the same time. He was in Paris on the date the photo was taken, and he was with a woman named Rosaline Valera.”
Whimpering, I look up in time to watch him pass a new sheet of paper across to Ollie.
“Rosaline Valera is twenty-five years old. February twenty-eighth birthday.”
“February?” Ollie groans, his shimmering eyes stopping on mine. “You had a birthday and we didn’t even know it?”
“He was here by seven o’clock this morning,” Ramone adds. “Polite. Dressed well. Speaks well. We put him in observation and left him for an hour without explaining where we were going or when we’d be back.”
“He hasn’t lost his temper,” Billy continues. “Hasn’t demanded anything. Hasn’t dropped his composure. An hour in a small room inside the police station is enough to make a lot of guys shake. Their stories change. Their bravado flees. But not him. He just wants to see her.” He looks to me. “He just wants to see you, Rose. He wants to know you’re okay.”
“Hedidsee her,” Cliff snarls. “Yesterday! He swung by the warehouse and smiled at her. Didn’t say shit about being her fiancé. Didn’t say her name. Didn’t rush forward and declare his love for this woman he claims to be marrying.”
“That’s suspicious, right?” I swallow the aching lump in my throat, inhaling and shuddering, then exhaling again and burying my face in Poppy’s fur. “Why would he do all that yesterday, and ask Cliff questions, if he is who he says he is?”
