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THIRTY-SIX
WHAT DO YOUmean, Daniel is gone?”
As C.P. sat at the side counter in her kitchen, the one where the cooks took their coffee breaks, she was utterly exhausted and clearly not tracking. After having spent the day in Houston meeting with her team, she’d just flown back and had no idea what time it was, why she had decided to end up here—or where Chef was, for that matter. The only thing she knew for sure was that she cared about none of the answers to any of that—and maybe not even to where Daniel Joseph might have gone to.
What was Lydia saying?
Bringing herself into some semblance of focus, she murmured, “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re telling me. Forgive me.”
“He’s gone.”
Something in the woman’s voice got through the screaming in C.P.’s own head, and as she looked at Lydia properly, a cold rush went down her spine. Theamount of distress in that face was the kind of thing you saw around car accidents on the freeway.
“Sit down.” She reached across and put her hand on the other woman’s forearm. “Please, sit down and tell me what happened?”
Had he died—
“He’s just wrong,” Lydia babbled. “He’s just—he won’t listen to me. So he packed up and left.”
“The program? The clinic?”
“Well, me, primarily. The rest of everything is just a… a side effect.”
The woman was positively caved in on herself, her shoulders slumped, even her hair hanging limply: She looked as if she had been left in the wilderness to fend for herself in the middle of a blizzard.
And then something else occurred to her. “Lydia, he’s not well enough to be out in the world.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
C.P. checked her watch. “It’s ten p.m. When did he go?”
“This morning. He didn’t want to see me again, so I didn’t return until late afternoon. He cleared out all of his things from our room, just as he said he would, but I’ve hoped he’d change his mind and come back. I’ve been waiting out in front of the house ever since.”
“Did he take one of my vehicles? Because they have trackers on them.”
“No, he’s on his bike.”
“TheHarley?” C.P. leaned forward. “Is he insane—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but has he had some kind of psychotic break?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Well, then we’ll track his phone. Come on, we’ll find him.”
C.P. got to her feet and dragged the woman after her, going down to her study. Once inside, she went over behind her desk, called her computer up, accessed her contacts—and did a cut and paste into a phone tracker—
“Nothing.” She sat back and looked across. “I’m not getting a signal. So either he’s found and turned off the tracking on his phone or he’s destroyed the cell.”
As Lydia stopped pacing and they both went quiet, C.P. closed her eyes and rubbed the nape of her neck. What a day.
“How far are you along?”
C.P. popped her lids at the quiet question. “Excuse me?”
“You’re pregnant.” The woman touched the side of her nose. “It’s evident—but it must be pretty early as I only just noticed yesterday.”
“I, ah… I’m not sure what to say to that.”
“I’m sorry. I should have kept quiet.”
