I start making calls, pulling on every thread I have. The cab company confirms the route, but the driver didn’t take her to an address. He dropped her at a bus terminal.
A fucking bus.
The information lands like an insult.
“She bought a one-way ticket,” my contact tells me. “Paid cash.”
I dig deeper, pushing harder, until the rest of it comes together and it only makes things worse. She boarded a bus headed for New York City. Which means she didn’t want to be found and that she knew exactly what she was doing.
I rake a hand through my hair, pacing the length of my office as frustration coils tighter in my chest. New York isn’t Chicago. It isn’t Kansas City. It’s a city layered with territory and history and men who don’t appreciate surprises.
I’ll have to make calls. Careful ones. The kind that come with favors owed and expectations attached.
By five, I’m back on my jet, the engines roaring to life beneath my feet as the city blurs outside the window. The skyline drops away, replaced by clouds and cold, empty sky.
Somewhere between here and New York, Elizabeth isdisappearing one mile at a time. And I don’t know which thought unsettles me more. That she’s running from me. Or that I’m about to cross lines I can’t uncross to bring her back.
Days pass.
Then more.
New York gives me nothing but noise and shadows. My contacts dig hard. Bus terminals, ticket stubs, security cameras that should’ve caught her face and somehow didn’t. Grainy footage. Blurred angles. A scarf pulled low. A woman who could be Elizabeth… or could be anyone. Every lead fractures into another dead end.
I follow ghosts.
She vanishes somewhere between the Port Authority and a street that no longer has cameras. Cash transactions. No phone pings. No credit cards. No hotel check-ins under her name or any variation of it.
It’s like she stepped off the map.
By the third day, my patience is gone.
By the fourth, my temper is legend.
I sleep in snatches on the jet, in back rooms, in borrowed penthouses that don’t feel like mine. Every city smells wrong without her. Every bed feels too big. Empty.
Cesaro stops asking if I want updates and just gives them to me, his voice growing more cautious with each report.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I expand the search. New Jersey. Boston. Philly. Las Vegas. Los Angeles. Seattle. Detroit. I send men west and south, pull favors I’ll regret later, lean on people who owe me and people who fear me.
Still nothing.
By the end of the week, even my enemies are quiet.
That’s when it hits me.
This isn’t panic. This isn’t a woman running blindly. This is someone who planned.
Someone helped her disappear.
The realization sits heavy and cold in my chest as I stare out over another unfamiliar skyline, the city lights blurring together like they all belong to the same nightmare.
Elizabeth vanished on purpose.
