Page 66 of Wells

And I can't stop.

The investigator in me does not care about the rule. The investigator sees the aggregate of it all and refuses to look away. Pattern recognition doesn't have a conscience. It only has logic, and the logic here screams loud enough for me to pay attention.

I tell myself the lie that makes the betrayal possible. I am only ruling it out, proving it means nothing.

The fifth layer cracks, and her real IP blooms on the screen.

I freeze.

The address does not resolve to Peoria, Arizona. It resolves to New Orleans, in Mid-City. It pings on a residential block not ten minutes from my penthouse.

I pull the geolocation tighter, narrowing the radius. The ping settles on a street I know well, a stretch of renovated doubles and shotgun apartments between North Broad and the Ponchatrain Expressway.

I pull up a map and drop the pin, and it lands a few doors from the address on Cera's onboarding file. The woman behind the mask lives three miles from my office, on the same street as Cera.

My hands stop moving. My breath stops moving. The room goes quiet except for the hum of the tower and the faint rush of blood in my ears.

She's here, not across the country in a city I will never visit. Not safely distant and unreachable. Here. In New Orleans. Close enough that I could drive to her building in under ten minutes if I wanted to.

I close my eyes and see Cera at her desk Monday, humming the same tune that filtered through my speakers an hour ago.

I already know. I've known for longer than I care to admit.

I just didn't want to accept it.

SEVENTEEN

Cera

The Doubloon: Krewes mint their own doubloons, coins stamped with an emblem and flung to the crowd, valuable only inside the world that made them. The money still landed in her account, stamped with a silence she could not spend.

I pull the wig on and tuck the last of my brown hair under the cap. The platinum falls around my shoulders, smooth and cold against my collarbone. I lean closer to the mirror and slide the first contact into place. Blue replaces the reflection I know.

Foundation next. I blend it over the line of my chin and down my throat, smoothing the color into something camera-ready.

I step back and check the full picture. Mask in place, camisole on, and Peoria stares back at me.

The laptop sits open at my desk, the screen dim in the half-sleep mode. I wake it up with the mouse and log into OnlyFans. It's 9:57, three minutes until our scheduled call.

I adjust the angle of the camera and test the lighting. Everything looks right. I smooth my hands down the black silk on my chest and wait.

The clock ticks over to 10:00.

I refresh the call interface. The connection shows green on my end, ready to receive. The indicator light on his side stays red.

I sit back and cross my arms, knowing he'll be on any second. Midnight is never late. He'll join any second now.

10:07.

I refresh again, still nothing.

A car passes outside, and headlights sweep across my bedroom wall. I tap my nails against the desk, then stop because the sound is too loud in my otherwise quiet apartment.

10:16.

I open the app on my phone and check to see if I missed a message. Nothing.

Maybe he forgot. We've been doing the same three days, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, for months and he's never forgotten.