I don’t sayI can’t stop thinking about her.
I don’t sayshe looked at me like my hands could be safe.
I don’t sayI let her leave, and it has haunted me every morning since.
He taps his pen once. “You have a name?”
“No.”
A pause. Another small recalculation.
“She paid cash,” I say, because I remember the way she moved. Like leaving a paper trail was a sin.
His mouth tightens faintly. “Cash is more work. Not impossible.”
“I don’t want impossible,” I say. “I want quiet.”
He nods. “Then I’ll be quiet.”
I slide a card across his desk. Numbers, access, permission. A door opened in my own system.
His eyes flick to it. “This crosses a line.”
It isn’t judgment. It’s confirmation.
I meet his gaze. “Yes.”
He watches me for one long second, then picks up the card.
“As you wish.”
* * *
The manifest takes money. The rest takes time. Not much. That’s the grotesque part of it. People think disappearing is a cliff you jump from and vanish into the fog. They don’t understand the world is a grid. Airports. Cameras. Names on receipts. Phone pings. Credit cards. Transit systems. A thousand small fingerprints you never notice until someone chooses to read them.
I get the call two days later. I’m in my study when my phone buzzes. The room smells like leather and old whiskey and the paper rot of history. My father’s desk is still here. I kept it because power is a museum and we’re all trapped curators.
The investigator’s voice is smooth, contained. “I have three candidates,” he says.
My pulse tightens. A slow, deliberate fist around something vital. “Talk.”
“She traveled alone. One way. Minimal luggage.” A pause. “Cash purchase narrows it. Cash is rare now.”
I don’t breathe.
“Three women matched the general profile and movement patterns,” he continues. “Two don’t fit the timeline after arrival. One does.”
My hand curls around the phone. “Give me the address.”
He doesn’t immediately. I hear the shift in his breath. “You sure?”
I should say no. I should stop here. I should put the phone down and live with the ache like a man with a spine.
I don’t.
“Yes.”
He gives it to me. A building in my own city. I write the address on the back of an envelope with a pen that shakes so slightly, it infuriates me.
