“I have one lead. She’s not really in this for the money. All her jobs follow a trend.”
“Like?”
“In college she hacked into someone’s bank and wired the money to his wife. Turns out he’d been abusing her real bad. She mostly works for vulnerable women, women who’ve been let down.”
Like Ophelia.“Do we even know this was a request? Could she have stumbled across what happened to Ophelia’s parents and done it to get revenge for a mistreated woman?”
“It was a request. She’s told me that much.”
“It’s got to be someone we don’t know. That’s the only possibility I can imagine.”
Mack appears on the other half of the screen, a baseball cap pulled low over his tanned face. “What have I missed?”
“Alex thinks I’m a dick for playingMinecraft. And I’ve filled him in on the article leak.”
“Any ideas on who it could be, Alex? We’re tentatively narrowing it down to female, but it could still be anyone.”
“No idea. I’ll have to call Ophelia. Could be someone from her past.”
“Otherwise, the possible sighting of your father in the UK was false. It was some other guy on the run. I have a lead that would place him in New York.”
My nails dig into my palms beneath the desk. I’m furious, but I’m not surprised. My father has been expertly dodging the law in so many ways for so many years. He’s only doing what he does best.
There’s a small part of me that prays my father is here, far away from Ophelia, but another part of me wants him a long way from my family.
I hate that I can understand her logic, can understand why she suggested no strings.
Ophelia has known nothing but loneliness and isolation for her entire adult life. The man she deserves would be at her side right now, holding her, protecting her.
That isn’t me. I can’t be that man.
But I’d die trying to make it our reality.
I hang up on them and let my head rest in my hands. I’m surrounded by great people, and yet I’m desperate to feel anything that isn’t gray.
Orange would do.
Alex
Where are you?
Ophelia
Just got back from the pool. About to shower, why?
A sparse but steady string of texts between us has formed since I got back. She isn’t icing me out, but it’s going exactly how she predicted it would, an endless loop of:sorry, call you laters andsomething came up, let’s do tomorrows.I call her while she’s in a lecture, she calls me back while I’m getting Josie to bed, I call her back and she’s swimming.
A tempting sort of torture that I’d take over her silence any day.
I hit FaceTime on her contact, and her concerned face fills my screen after a few rings. She’s naked save for a towel that wraps over her chest. “What’s wrong?”
My brain short-circuits at the sight of her. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“You look beautiful.”
“And that’s what’s wrong?”
