“Nathan—”
“No.” My voice is brittle. “I’ve had cops. Detectives. Private investigators. Three years of professionals and nothing. And suddenly my neighbor has answers?”
“Ella doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would lie about something like that,” he says carefully.
“I thought that too,” I say. “For about five seconds.”
I look at him.
“If someone actually knew where my daughter was, Bishop, they’d go to the police. Not me.”
He goes quiet.
“They wouldn’t use it like… like a lifeline they could throw when things are falling apart.”
He nods slowly. “Yeah. You’re right. They would.”
“I blocked her,” I say. “Her number. Her email. Everything.”
He doesn’t argue. Instead, he leans forward. “This isn’t the end. We’ve had dead ends before. We always find another way. We don’t stop.”
I swallow. “And I think,” I add, “I need to move out of this building.”
He looks up. “Move?”
“I came here to be close,” I say. “To where she disappeared. I thought proximity meant something.” My throat catches. “All it’s doing is killing me.”
He watches me for a long moment. Then he nods. “Okay,” he says. “If that’s what you need, we’ll do it.”
I finally meet his eyes.
“But we’re not stopping,” he says. “Not now. Not ever.”
The words don’t fix anything.
But they keep the ground from completely disappearing.
Chapter 40
Ella
It’s been a week since I sent the email.
A week of silence.
No response. Nothing.
My texts to him are bouncing back undeliverable. And I’m ninety-nine percent sure he takes the stairs now, because I haven’t seen him in the elevator once. The only thread left between us is the weekly coffee run to Reign Management Agency, and even then… it feels like I’m chasing a ghost.
This morning, everything seemed to unravel at once.
First, I couldn’t find the keys to the delivery van, so I spent twenty minutes tearing apart my apartment until I finally spotted them under the couch cushion. I had planned to go early, hoping maybe his office would still be quiet, maybe he’d talk to me if it wasn’t so crowded.
But by the time I got on the road, the city had already swallowed every parking spot near his building. I circled the block once. Twice. Gave up and parked two streets down. By then, my nerves were already buzzing.
Halfway to the office, my phone vibrates in my pocket. A flicker of hope.
I set down the pastry bags and cardboard coffee tray on a bench, fumbling to unlock the screen.
