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For a split second, she hesitated. Her time was up. Elise wasn’t here, wasn’t going to be here. Ronan wouldn’t leave without her, and every second he waited meant more exposure, a greater possibility of beingcaught.
She knew better than to think the people behind Manifest would simply call the police if they caught Ronan, but if she left now, it was all for nothing: the weeks of planning, of biding their time in Florence, the exposure they’d subjected themselves to by attending theparty.
She turned back to the sideboard. The top drawer was empty, but when she opened the second one her breath caught in her throat: a series of manila folders were lined up against the green feltinterior.
She grabbed for the first folder as the alarm echoed through the house, praying it was something, anything, that would take them closer toElise.
Her eyes skimmed the page. It looked like a delivery receipt for a container ship in the port of Naples, an illegible signature scrawled on the receipt line. Her fingers itched for her phone and a way to take a photograph of the signature to decipherlater.
She flipped through the page inside the folder, hoping for a manifest, something that would tell her what had been brought into port for the people behind Manifest, but there was only a series of receipts like the first one — dates and a signature acknowledging receipt of the shippingcontainer.
She filed away the dates, all of them the month before, in April, and set the folder aside, scrambling for the one behindit.
When she opened it, she was met with the image of a young woman with dark hair and haunted eyes, her cheeks hollow, a purple bruise shadowing her righteye.
Julia’s stomach rolled over when she saw the title of the page: Asset #US4879KM.
What kind of audacity did Manifest have to have to keep a hard copy of their ongoing crimes? She chided herself for her naivety. The world was full of criminals who’d been getting away with their crimes for so long they assumed they wereinvincible.
She flipped through the pages behind the first one and was met with more pictures of more women, some of them wearing looks of defeat while others lifted their chins at the person behind the camera as if in challenge, all of them with the same haunted look of the firstwoman.
A look that said they’d seen too much, had endured toomuch.
She was three-quarters of the way through the images when she was met with her sister’s familiargaze.
Elise stared back with a mixture of resignation and defiance Julia knew well. Her face was unmarked, but two faint red lines marked the portion of her neck that was visible in thepicture.
Julia combed the page carefully, her eyes snagging on a date at thebottom.
DOS: 2019/June/25
LOC: 36.8915° N, 27.2877°E
The second line was a coordinate, but she had no idea what the first line referredto.
Distant shouting sounded from somewhere in the house, but she couldn’t tell if it was down the hall, in one of the stairwells, or somewhereelse.
She thought about taking the folder with her, then decided it would be stupid. Better to let Manifest — and whoever lived or worked in this house — think their secrets hadn’t beenuncovered.
She memorized the coordinates and the date on Elise’s page and reluctantly put it back where she found it along with the otherfolders.
Then she ran for thedoor.
21
It wasn’tthe first time Ronan was glad he’d brought the taser. They hadn’t been patted down for weapons on arrival at the party — a professional courtesy for Manifest guests — but everyone expected agun.
A taser was rarely considered, and its use was inevitably followed by a dramatic pause during which everyone involved stopped to think,“Did he just use a fuckingtaser?”
Aside from the obvious advantage of giving him a few seconds head start in the ensuing chase, he had to admit that he enjoyed the shockvalue.
The taser only worked once before it had to be charged, but it was enough. He ducked out of the circle of guards and slipped through the crowd of onlookers, whose shock added to his sense of satisfaction. He could only assume it had been awhile — or maybe never — since one of their sick little parties had beendisrupted.
By the time the guards were in full-fledged chase, the alarm ringing through the house with an eerie squawk, he’d made it to thekitchen.
He hoped Julia skipped trying the first two meeting places. They hadn’t known about the alarm, hadn’t anticipated the added attention. There was no way one of their first two meeting places would be accessiblenow.
He barreled through the cooks and servers, knocking over trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres on his way to the door at the back of the kitchen that led to the tunnels under thevilla.
