Page 56 of The Mood Board

“Your fiancée moved out. Why?” A young woman in the front of the pack was asking the question, her face serious and pinched as she held her phone out to record my answer.

“How do you know that?” My reply was sharper than I had meant it to be, but ice was rapidly spreading through my veins again, along with a sensation that something was compressing my chest until I could barely breathe.

“She left a day or so ago with several large suitcases” came the answer.

I stared at the reporter, limbs frozen.

“Didn’t you know?”

The reporter must have known from my expression that it was a rhetorical question. I almost thought I saw a flash of sympathy.

Bailey was gone? Moved out? And she hadn’t even told me? More questions came at me as I tried to wrestle with the facts and implications, but my mind felt like it had something stuck in its gears.

“Mr. Bradford, did you buy your way out of the charges?”

The question thrown at my back made me grit my teeth. Unable to ignore it and the implications, I turned, scowling at the crowd.

“The charges were dropped because they realized what I have been saying—I am innocent. My initial round of funding was clean, as my business and I remain. If you’ll excuse me—”

I knew I shouldn’t have responded, but after the past week with exhaustion and stress clinging to me and worried that the reporter wasn’t just telling stories to rile me up, I hadn’t been able to let it slide. But the answer given, I turned on my heel and marched to the door, where the sensor pad recognized me and unlocked. I closed it before any reporters still clamoring with questions behind me could rush forward and force their way in.

“Bailey?” I called, but the house was silent and still.

Empty.

“Bailey?” I went from room to room, calling her name, trying to deny that the house air felt stale, like it had been uninhabited for a few days. I ran upstairs, taking them two and three at a time, and into the bedroom, where I yanked open the closet door.

Bailey’s clothes were gone. So was her makeup, her stuff from the shower, and even her toothbrush. A few shoes and bags were toppled over like she had packed and run too hastily to right them.

The reporter had been right—Bailey was gone. She had moved out.

I stood there in the half-empty closet, trying to comprehend what had happened. How had we gone from happily engaged to Bailey moving out in a matter of weeks? It made absolutely no sense.

There was no way this was all about the press—there had to be something else going on. Bailey wasn’t that flighty or shallow. Had she really distrusted me that much? Had I sabotaged our relationship from the beginning by lying to her about the purpose of the houses she was designing? Had that always been in the back of her mind as someone who had already suffered damage at the hands of a liar?

I sank onto the bed and leaned forward, burying my head in my hands, trying to breathe through the despair burning my chest and throat. I felt torn and crushed. Prison had been bad enough, but losing Bailey was the thing that would shatter me.

I saw signs of her everywhere—she had been the interior designer to work the house, after all. From the curtain to the rug to the throw pillows on the bed, to the craftsman table in the sitting area that looked out over the garden—

My gaze stopped, flicking back to the table. To the tabletop, where my phone rested. And it wasn’t just sitting there—it was plugged in to charge.

I was on my feet instantly and across the room in only a few strides. I picked the phone up—it was fully charged, just sitting there, waiting for me.

Why would Bailey, rushing around for a hasty escape, take the time to plug my phone in? She hadn’t known I was going to be released.

Had she?

Why would she take the time to plug my phone in if she was leaving me? And when I checked the battery memory, she hadn’t plugged it in until, from what the reporter said, just before she left. Or as she was leaving.

A last, thoughtful gesture that I doubted she would have done if she were rushing out to leave me.

I searched, but there was no note. But also, there was no ring. Knowing Bailey as I did, if she had truly left me, she would have returned the ring, not just taken it with her.

I had to find her—to talk with her. This couldn’t be the end.

Calling the driver back, I told him to meet me on the next block and used the exit I should have used to enter the house in the first place. He was waiting for me right where he had promised to be, and I gave him the address where I was almost sure I would find Bailey. I was even more confident when I called Bailey’s office, and her assistant, Kristen, told me she wasn’t there.

The driver let me out at an apartment building, modern, a little sterile, and I jogged into the lobby, pushing the button for the floor I needed.