Page 50 of Plain Sight

And that wasn’t a dream.

It felt like a dream, except for the sex. That was real. And good.

And Jameson’s gone.

I call his cell phone. It rings three times and goes to voicemail with a click.

I call again.

Same thing.

A step from the bedroom door, the air conditioning registers. It’s cooler than usual because I’m naked. If I can’t get Jameson on the phone, then I need to find his brothers.

Really, the only thing he’s talked about is the kidnapper. Walsh. And the Good Samaritan.

Is that where he went tonight? Which time? He was coming from somewhere when that sound woke me up because he smelled like outside. He hadn’t been sitting in the living room.

And now⁠—

Now I don’t know where he might be. I’m barely awake. I throw on a pair of sleep shorts and one of Jameson’s shirts and then, when the goosebumps tingle on my arms, I pull one of Jameson’s long-sleeved shirts out of a pile of laundry and tug that over my head, too.

In the hall outside the bedroom, I shake my head, trying to clear the sleep. Is his sister—? No, I shouldn’t wake Remy, and I don’t want to bang on Mason’s bedroom door, in case I disturb the baby.

Light comes from the end of the hall.

I follow to the big sitting room slash dining room area of the apartment and across to the living room. There are voices. Somebody’s already awake.

Mason and Gabriel are in the living room, their pajamas soft in the lamplight. Gabriel rubs his eyes, then shoves a hand through his hair, trying to fix his bedhead. Mason has a sleeping Robin on one shoulder and his phone in his other hand.

“But how did you—” He stops. Shakes his head. “What did August and Julien—I know. I know. I’m listening.” A pause. “When? Now?” Mason pulls the phone away from his face and squints at the screen. “They’re not going to ground a plane for me, even if I—no, I agree. If you have people on the ground, then⁠—”

“Jameson’s not in bed,” I announce, skidding to an unsteady stop in the middle of the living room, with its built-in bookshelves and family photo and the most comfortable couches. “He didn’t come to be with you guys, did he?”

Gabriel blinks, his eyes sharpening. “No. I didn’t see him when I got here.”

“He said he would be right back. He said he had an errand. Jameson doesn’t have errands. I mean, nobody does real errands in the middle of the night.”

“But he went out once already,” Gabriel says.

“How do you know that?” I demand. How did I let him walk away? How did I not know that I’ll be right back wasn’t some cute dream?

“I’ve been paying attention.” Gabriel looks betrayed that Jameson still managed to slip out when he was keeping watch.

“Jameson isn’t here,” Mason says into the phone. “You didn’t hear from the airport, did you? Because that’s—no. Good. Jesus fucking Christ. Lily, did he say where he was going?”

“No, he just said—” It dawns on me then. Jameson didn’t say where the errand was supposed to take place, and I didn’t push him on it, because I was pregnant and tired. I’m still pregnant, but I’m incredibly awake. My body knew this was an emergency before my brain caught up. “He said the Brooklyn Bridge would be the worst of it.”

The Brooklyn Bridge means Cobble Hill. It means the street where I grew up. It means holding my grandfather’s hand while he walked me to school. It means the window I looked out of when I couldn’t look at a textbook for another minute. It means the tree in the yard and the leaves that started as tiny buds in spring and opened wide into green leaves and turned brilliant colors and fell in the fall.

And it means Jameson standing outside, wanting to burn it all down but choosing to take me instead. It means him following me to that parking lot. It means jumping off the roof so I could escape.

It means⁠—

I don’t know what it means tonight.

Is it already burning?

Is it worse?