Page 74 of Running to You

He threw up his hands. “If you ever figure it out, let me know, will you? Because I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t deserve how you treated me.” He grabbed his folded clothes and headed up the stairs. He stopped halfway to the top. “Don’t leave without telling me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life worrying that somebody kidnapped you. Okay?”

At her nod, he climbed to the second floor, refusing to worry that she’d be gone when he came back down. But knowing, deep down, that it was only a matter of time.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Eliza stared after Sam a long time, but he didn’t return.

Not that she knew what she’d say to him. The idea that she’d broken up with him—had been looking for an excuse—sounded so bizarre that she couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

But the things he’d said felt right. And anyway, he wouldn’t lie to her. She needed the rest of her memories to return if she was ever going to make sense of it.

She was halfway through folding her laundry when something lying on the dark wood floor beneath one of the dining room chairs caught her eye. She swiped the strip of plastic, barely glancing at it on her way to throw it away.

Her foot pressed the lever to lift the lid of the trash can, but her gaze caught, and she froze.

The plastic thing was maybe two inches long, a quarter inch wide, and pointed at one end. A long number was written on one side. She flipped it over. The other side had an email address—a string of seemingly random numbers and letters followed by the familiar @gmail.com.

Where had it come from? But even as the question occurred to her, so did the answer.

She lifted her plaid shirt from the chair where Sam had draped it and checked the collars. Sure enough, one was stiff with a plastic…she had no idea what to call it, but it was the thing that went into the collars of shirts—men’s shirts—to keep them stiff.

The plastic piece in her hand had to have come out of the other, which was floppy.

Maybe this was the reason she’d been wearing a man’s shirt when she showed up at Sam’s on Friday night.

“Sam.” When he didn’t respond, she tried again, louder. “Sam!”

Footsteps sounded above. “What?” He hurried down the stairs. “What’s wrong?”

“I found this.” She held it out to him.

He took it from her. “What is it?”

“It came out of my shirt.” She showed him the floppy collar.

“Huh.” He studied the thing in his hand. “It’s your handwriting.”

It was.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

She shrugged. “A login and password, I assume.”

“But to what?” Not waiting for an answer she couldn’t give, he set it down, tapped his phone, and took a picture of both sides. “Just in case.” And then he ran up the stairs, returning seconds later with his laptop.

“Top three sites,” he said. “Where should I check?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t think, just talk. What comes to mind?”

“It’s a Google email address, so maybe a Google drive?”

“Great.” He clicked. Typed. “Nope. What else?”

“Dropbox?”

A second later, “Strike two.”