“I found something.”
He brought up the footage on the screen.
Emily.
At the bus station.
A hood up, a bag over her shoulder, head down, walking with quick purpose toward the departure gates.
Olivero swore softly.
My father watched the screen in silence.
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” he said at last, “then at some point you have to consider it may in fact be a duck.”
I turned to look at him slowly.
“No,” I said, voice far too calm.
That was how they all knew I was getting worse.
“No, this is not a duck. This is a fucking zebra.”
Neither man said anything.
I knew I was right.
It was in the angle of her shoulders, too tense. The speed of her walk, fractionally off. The way the bag sat wrong on her frame. And more than any of that, it was in the certainty living under my skin like a second pulse.
This had to do with me.
With my life.
With the world I had brought her toward while convincing myself I could keep the damage contained if I loved her carefully enough.
Now I was standing in her apartment, holding a worthless bracelet more valuable than anything in the room, staring at doctored evidence of her disappearance, and for the first time I could no longer dress the truth up as strategy or timing or unfortunate complications.
I was looking straight at the danger of having Emily in my life.
And my spectacular, unforgivable inability to keep her safe.
I turned the bracelet once between my fingers, steadying myself on the small, breakable thing that never left her wrist by accident.
“Stay strong, sweetheart,” I said, more to the empty room than to myself. “I’m on my way.”
Then I slipped it into my pocket and let the rest of me go cold.
Whoever had done this had just made the most expensive mistake of their life.
CHAPTER 21
EMILY
Iwasn’t entirely sure how I ended up here.
It wasn’t a proper room. More like a sectioned-off space inside something larger, colder, and unfinished. The concrete walls gave that away immediately, as did the faint damp smell in the air and the way every small noise seemed to travel farther than it should.
A warehouse or some kind of industrial unit.
