Not because I'm afraid he'll come after me.
I'm scared that if I stayed one more second, I would have turned back. Let him pull me in again and pin me against the wall just so I could feel the steady thud of his heart against mine one last time.
For the plot, of course.
TWO
TRISTAN
Present
The coordinates don't match.
I stare at the screen, comparing the numbers Zara pulled from the Geneva lockbox against the satellite overlay Nick sent an hour ago.
They should match, but they fucking don't. Not even a little bit.
"Talk to me," I say, not looking up when my best friend Aaron walks through my office door.
"Pier 38C manifests came back redacted." He drops a folder on my desk. "Twelve months of ghost trucks. No logs, no drivers. Nothing."
I flip it open. Half the pages are blacked out like someone took a Sharpie to evidence they didn't want found. "Who authorized the redaction?"
"Couldn't find anything. We tried."
I close the folder. "That's not good enough."
"I know. But whoever's running interference has real reach. I haven't seen anything like it before."
Six months since Keira vanished, and every lead I've chased has hit the same dead end. Someone powerful is actively erasingher trail. Scrubbing security footage. Burning manifests. Silencing anyone who might've seen her.
People don't disappear this cleanly by accident.
Someone's shielding her.
The question I can't answer is why.
I lean back, studying the grainy surveillance photo taped above my monitors. A shadow that might be Keira moving through a hallway where the lights refuse to cooperate. I printed it too dark, too big. Some days I think I punish myself on purpose for letting her slip through my fingers in the first place.
But then I remember she set me up. She didn't want me.
Whatever arrangement she made, whatever deal she cut—she walked into it willingly. People like Keira don't get forced. She would never do something that wouldn't benefit her in some way. She's the type to trade one cage for another if the terms are good enough.
She was, anyway, when I knew her.
That was in the past, and it should stay there.
That's what I keep telling myself. But then I remember the lockbox.
It was delivered to my office, which means she knew exactly who she was sending it to. Inside was a useless dossier that led to a dead person, coordinates to literally nowhere, a DNA report.
And one single photo.
Keira in a sunlit apartment, hair twisted up, the soft edges of someone who didn't work for criminals. She's holding a baby boy in the crook of her arm, and he looks exactly like me. There's even a curl at his temple that refuses to obey.
Just like the one I have in the exact same spot.
I used to flatten it with spit before school because my grandfather said I looked undisciplined.
