Page 131 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I dial. Then the automated voice comes on, telling me the number I have reached is no longer in service.

I hang up. Dial again, like the second time might get a different result.

Same recording. No longer in service.

I lower the phone and just stand there with it in my hand.

That’s why she had a flip phone. It was a burner.

How do you find someone who made herself impossible to find on purpose?

I don’t stop to think. I’m out from under the Four Seasons awning and moving before the valet finishes asking if I need a car.

“I’m good,” I say, already three steps past him. I sprint the four blocks to Erica’s loft as fast as I can, which I now realize isn’t an Airbnb, but probably some kind of heist headquarters.

By the time I hit the brick sidewalk on the loft’s block, my lungs are on fire and my legs feel like spaghetti. Four blocks is usually nothing for me, but I’m starting to feel the sleep deprivation. I should have listened to Coach and had my protein.

I stop in front of the building with my hands on my knees, chest heaving, sweat running down the back of my collar, and for a second all I can hear is my own pulse slamming in my ears.

I straighten up and pound my fist against the door. Three times, hard enough to sting.

“Erica.” Nothing. I hit it again. “It’s me. Open up.”

I jab the buzzer next, hold it down, listen for footsteps, for the deadbolt, for anything. The building gives me back silence. I bang on the door a third time with the flat of my hand until my palm goes hot. Somewhere in the back of my head a voice that sounds like Badaszek tells me to get it together. I ignore it.

The window’s the only other option, and it’s not built for looking through. It’s tiny, and set high in the brick above a low iron railing. I haul myself up onto the railing, with one hand flat against the wall for balance, and finally get level with the glass.

I look inside. The place is gutted. No couch. No rug. Nothing on the walls. Bare floor.

It’s completely abandoned.

I stay up on that railing longer than I should, both hands pressed to the glass. A jogger slows on the sidewalk, watching a grown man propped up to look into an empty building.

“Forgot my keys,” I say, like that explains anything. He shakes his head and picks his pace back up, already deciding this isn’t his problem.

I climb down. Then I see it.

FOR LEASE.

The air leaves me like I’ve been checked into the boards. My knees give out from under me, so I sit down hard on the stoop and don’t move.

She’s gone.

27

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

I Did Something Bad — Taylor Swift

These Boots Are Made for Walking — Loni Lovato

When I was a kid, my dad used to watch the show called the A-Team, and at the end of every episode, the guy with the cigar would always say something like, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

I feel like the man with a cigar right now.

After Zoe and I took a couple days to hang low in the safehouse, I took a day trip to Brooklyn to pay Sal a visit.