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She has it—from me. My love for her bounces uselessly off the moon.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Henry
Eleven months later ~ New York City
I’m having drinks with Smitty, an old college friend, and Theo Drummond, a chemist who might do some work with the Locke Charitable Foundation.
We’re at one of the posh bars that cater to the Wall Street large-assets crowd.
The place is filling up. People come up to us now and then to say a quick hello. Locke is stronger than ever. Everybody wants in.
Small consolation.
Smitty has his eye on three women across the way. “Should we ask those three to sit with us?”
“Not me,” I say. My heart’s not in it. Hasn’t been for a while.
“Theo?” Smitty tries.
Theo shakes his head. “You’re on your own.”
“I can’t fuck all three,” Smitty says. “Well, actually I could…”
Theo groans.
I point my finger into my empty glass, lit from the bottom from the glowing bar. The bartender comes over and pours the scotch.
Smitty turns back to me. “Come on, Henry, when was the last time you had any?”
“A minute ago, and it tasted utterly amazing,” I say.
“You know what I mean,” Smitty says.
How long? The answer is a year and twenty-one days. It’s been a year and twenty-one days since I had sex. A year and twenty-one days since Vicky disappeared. Literally disappeared along with her sister.
I try not to think what she’d say about my sex hiatus, how she’d tease me about losing my most eligible bastard status.
I don’t care. It’s only her. Her or nobody.
My PI hasn’t turned up jack. It’s a lot easier to hack through somebody’s fake identity than to scour the planet for a person who knows how to disappear.
Last I heard, Denny was up to his eyeballs in debt, drinking heavily and trying to borrow money from the people he once snubbed for being beneath him.
A spate of Where is Vonda? articles came out, but nobody ever found her.
One year and twenty-one days.
“You sure?” Smitty tries.
“I’m not over my last thing,” I explain. “Final answer.”
He turns to Theo. “What’s your excuse? You’re not dating anybody. Look at them—smokin’ hot!”
“I’m not dating anybody,” Theo says. “But there is somebody.”
“What?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard of Theo with anybody. “Who is she?”
