I’ve never been a violent person, despite my father’s best efforts.
He tried to make me as angry at the world as he was, tried to make me turn my own self-hatred into little bullets to fire at others, but it’s not really my style.
And yet, here I am, approximately two seconds away from putting my fist through my laptop screen.
I don’t understand how, in this day and age, in this era of technology, of CCTV and electronic banking and border controls, my father can have been completely untraceable for two months.
We were homing in, we thought, we had two possible sightings and a blurry CCTV of someone checking into a cheap bed and breakfast in Boston,notNew York, with fake documentation. But no. Neither turned out to be enough to determine whether it was him or not, and investigators found the bed and breakfast room empty, the fees paid in cash.
And now it’s been six days since we’ve had anything at all, widening our search once more to the entire fucking globe.
I shouldn’t be surprised. My father may be a nasty piece of work, but he’s a clever one, a resourceful one, a wealthy one—frozen bank accounts or not. All he’d need to do is pawn off a couple of his rarest Breitlings and he’d be able to pay his way out of anything.
“This issuchbullshit,” I say, leaning back in my office chair. “Such a load of shit.”
Mack rubs his stubble, shakily holding his phone in a car somewhere in Massachusetts. The FBI agent heading the case rubs her forehead. “We’re going to get him.”
She’s said that on every phone call since early January, as has Mack. Each time they do, there’s a little less belief in the words.
“What about the lead you had with Gerry Suarez?” One of my father’s slimy buddies moved a private jet from New York to Boston two days ago, seemingly for no reason at all.
“The jet hasn’t moved. They might know we’re onto that trail. I’d guess they’re holding their breath somewhere at the moment, but they’ll have to surface.”
I watch the time hit 2 p.m. in the corner of my screen. I’m going to be late to a hospital visit with my mother. She was admitted a few days ago, after one hell of an episode. The psychosis and the delusions we’re getting better at managing, but it’s the lack of eating, the painkillers, the pills, the side effects that have her shrinking into an unrecognizable woman.
Years of being picked at, poked at, told to be thinner. Catwalks and drug addiction and a son that appeared in her life earlier than she’d ever planned. A husband who let her down at every turn, six daughters in his desperate hope for a second son, abetterson.
Maybe if I wasn’t so—
“Alex? You with us?”
I scrub a hand over my mouth, steadying my breath. “I have to go. The next time we speak, you better have something more useful to tell me.”
I cut off theiryes, sirs by slamming my laptop lid shut, my mood sinking lower than I ever thought it could go.
Why am I in the office on a Saturday?
Depression may be a mental illness, but days like today it feels physical. Like it’s tied heavy weights to my limbs, dulled the nerve endings in my brain, shrunk my rib cage so it’s just alittletoo restrictive for my lungs.
But I have my mother’s appointment today, and spaghetti night with the girls tomorrow, so I know I have to survive the next two days at least. Then I’ll reassess.
I’ve never been a particularly anxious person, but I’m a nervous wreck as I make my way through the streets of lower Manhattan, sidewalks glossy with rain. I’ve never been religious, either, but I still find myself begging someone, anyone who is listening, to let my mother’s days get easier.
I’m running late, but I’m also about to fall asleep standing up, so I swing into the café beside the hospital, hoping my sunglasses are enough to not have someone’s phone pointed in my face and photos online by the time I pick up my order.
I bring up my emails and wait, staring at the long stream of unsent drafts to Ophelia.
I’ve got itbad.
A disturbance distracts my attention: a hooded figure shoving his way out the door.
He’s tall. My height. Lean and athletic, and when his head turns to the side for just a second, I catch a glimpse of graying blond hair andholy, shit, it’s him.
Discretion long abandoned, I push past the line of people waiting to order, flying out the doors and onto the street outside. It’s Saturday afternoon in Manhattan; the streets are busy, faces obscured by umbrellas. I look left, right, left again, scanning over what feels like an endless sea of people.
I spot the figure hurrying across a crosswalk and make a run for it, barging through groups of tourists and shoppers, and it all comes to the surface, the anger, the disgust, the bitter hatred. I clamp a palm onto his shoulder, forcing him to face me, forcing him to look me in the eyes when I—
Fuck.
