I already know what Rachel will tell me.
“It’s gone,” she says. “Like magic. It’s there one moment, but when I look from the other side, it’s just…gone.”
“We’re talking about Avery Zayne here,” I say. “Of course, she is gone.”
I open the trash can and empty it onto the floor. There’s nothing but empty coffee cups in there.
I open the kitchen drawers and fridge. The only thing I find in there is ice and rosé wine. Nothing but wine glasses in the drawers. She really wasn’t joking about the wine thing.
I scoff.
“What?” asks Rachel, and I tell her what I just found.
Rachel laughs.
“One day, we’ll have a glass of wine and laugh about what a pain in the ass that woman was. A day when she’s locked up, and you finally have a head for something else again.
My mouth gets dry as she says it, followed by a hollowness, and only then do I realize I've maneuvered myself into such a fucking mess.
I kissed Avery Zayne. My CI, aka consultant, aka now once again thief on the loose. I kissed her twice. And if I ever catch her again, and I have to, I will be fucked beyond.
I have to get my mind off it, and I do so by searching every last inch of the studio. I take photos of everything. All the stolen art, her own art studio, where she apparently tried to forge the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, because I found the canvas in the trash can.
I almost missed the door to her art space, because it was behind a seamless door. Since then, I started pushing against every single thing I touch, every wall, and everything else I find: Mirrors, drawers, and art pieces.
My phone rings.
“Yes,” I say.
“They found the ankle, the alarm was going off at the entrance to the park, exactly where we had no surveillance,” Rachel tells me. “We have been asking around if anyone saw something, but no one really wants to talk, and most of them were asleep.”
“Of course,” I say with a groan. It’s Avery Zayne. What did I expect?
“I’m gonna check out the Weehawken with Emmett,” Rachel says.
“Alright,” I say. “Keep me in the loop.”
We hang up, and I go back to my search.
I shake figures, rattle on the bed, push it away, uncover it fully, search the bathroom, the AC outlet, but there is nothing of remote interest, and most of all, there is no Cleopatra’s bracelet.
I was so, so sure she had it. But when the night becomes a day, and I have been searching the entire studio for ten hours straight, I have to acknowledge she might never have had it.
At least not here. She might have brokered it to somewhere we couldn’t track.
I stand in the middle of all the chaos I made, and my eyes fall onto the wall. The wall she pushed me into?—
No,I tell myself. Focus on what’s relevant.
I stare at the wall.
The wall she gave me as a peace offering.
As a part of her.
Because whatever she tells herself, she does feel. It does matter. It matters so much that she scribbles on her wall. That she goes through all the length to find a hat. I mean, yes, it’s not just any hat, but still?—
She is obsessed.
