“It has to be it,” I answer.
“Jersey,” Sibby says. “Why would they bring him here?”
“Cam did this movie once about witness protection,” Lark says. “Maybe it’s that.”
“He’s not going into witness protection,” I say, but I guess I don’t really know. “Anyway, they’d take him farther away than Jersey for that.”Barely two hours, I reassure myself, thinking back over the drive here.I’m sure he’squitesafe.
I unbuckle my seat belt and open my door, but Sibby stops me with a hand on my forearm. “Want to check your hair first?”
I roll my eyes, but also I flip down my visor and check my reflection in the tiny, cloudy mirror there. Listen, it is definitely not great, but it’s also not as though Reid cited normal-sized eyelids or brushed hair as a reason he loves me.
He loves me.
I quickly smooth my unruly hair, mostly to assuage Sibby’s concerns, and start to get out again.
“Meggie,” Sibby says, and I look over at her again. “You’re good, right?”
It’s not the first time she—or Lark—has asked since I’d flung myself through the apartment door, the pages of Reid’s letter clutched tight in my hand, my mind already racing toward what I needed to do next. Both of them, in their own ways, had made sure I slowed down, had made sure I’d thought it through. Sibby, who’d seen me through the revelation of another big scandal once upon a time, had furrowed her brow in worry. “This is a lot to handle, Meg. This kind of secret from someone you—” She broke off, apparently cautious about repeating everything I’d told her on Friday night. “Someone you felt so strongly about.”
Lark, too, had been tentative. Maybe she’d been optimistic yesterday—with our girl-power sleepover on the horizon—about how I could salvage my business, but in the light of day, she’d been more hard-nosed about it. “Being in the news, Meg,” she’d said with the serious expression of someone who knows what it’s like to be in the news. “It can be a lot to navigate. And if it’s between your work and him . . .”
She’d trailed off then, pressing her lips together, and I think Sibby and I both had gotten the sense that Lark had her own choices in mind, too.
“I’m good,” I tell them both now, keeping my voice firm, the same way it’d been when I’d answered them back in the apartment. When I’d told them how determined I was to do this.
How certain I was.
“Want us to go in with you?” Lark says hopefully. Now that we’ve taken this drive together, talking through it the whole way, they seem certain, too. As invested in this as I am.
I stand, turning back to them with one hand on the open car door, ducking so I can see them both.
“I love you guys for driving here with me, but I think I need to go in there alone.”
They both look crestfallen, but Sibby says, “Understood. We’ll wait right here. We’ll come up with something to kill the time.”
I smile. “Play a game,” I say, tossing her the keys. “There are signs everywhere around here. I’ll call you.”
I hear them callGood luck!to me in unison as I head toward the entrance, my palms sweaty with nerves. No matter how certain I am about this, it’s still going to be a fight. Maybe to get to him, and maybe once Idoget to him, too. And after—after, there are still so many fights to have, against all of the enemies that Reid’s amassed over the last forty-eight hours.
The lobby is as bland as the exterior—mostly neutral, with those awful punctuations of standard hotel lobby maroon. In a small, clean, open dining room off to my right, a few guests sip coffee and read newspapers, and I can only hope all of them are completely skipping the financial section. I head over to the front desk, steeling myself.
The man behind the counter is named Gregory—notGreg, a fact about which he will be clear if you slip up—and his attitude does not match hisMay I Help You?name tag. Still, I can’t say I blame him, what with how insistent I’m being.
“Young lady,” he says, after we’ve already gone back and forth a few times. “I’ve told you, there’s no one here by that name.”
“Old man,” I say, even though Gregory ismaybeonly a decade or so older than me. But he can try it again with thisyoung ladyshit. “Iknowthere is.”
Isn’t there?I keep my head held up, determined not to falter. I picture the numbers in my head. Iknowwhat they meant.
“Ma’am,” a man’s voice says from behind me, and it is not a nice-soundingma’am.It’s sort of a you’re-about-to-be-arrestedma’am,and for a second all the numbers fly out of my brain. I see those twoa’s like a pair of handcuffs, that apostrophe transformed into a chain.
Well, so be it. I’m in the news already.
I turn to face the voice.
“Yikes,” I say without thinking, my head tipping back to look at the massive man standing in front of me. He’s wearing a black suit, a dark tie, the same as the men on television who surrounded Reid. But unlike those men on television, he’s significantly older, maybe in his late fifties. He is cue-ball bald, but he has the thickest gray mustache I’ve ever seen in my life. I am almost certain he carries handcuffs.
“Ma’am,” he says again, as though to remind me. “I’m going to need you to step away from this counter.”
