Page 10

So she wasn’t dead, she was hidden.

Nobody vanishes that clean. Not alone. That turned the eastbound highway and the gas station into what they probably were. A story. Laid down for me to find. By someone who knew I’d be looking.

Somebody was helping her. Somebody who knew how I searched and had fed me exactly what I expected to find.

The woman in the gray hood had never shown the camera her face. I’d called her Wren because her height was right and the route made sense. She could have been anybody.

The parcel came four days after she left. It was addressed to her, ordered a week earlier. A prospect signed for it and left it on the desk in the ops room. I’d opened it because it might’ve been a thread. A shipping address. Anything that pointed at where she’d gone.

Inside, wrapped in white tissue was a onesie. Tiny. White. Little green letters embroidered across the front of it.

Daddy’s Little Bug.

I’d sat down on the floor.

Weeks before I threw her out, I’d been sitting in the clubhouse kitchen with my laptop while Holden emptied the fridge into a trash bag, swearing Bea had food poisoning. I’m the one who asked if anybody else was sick. Dutch said Indira. Handful said Austen. Colt laughed until he had to sit down.

Your old ladies do not have food poisoning. They’re pregnant.

I saw four pregnancies in under a minute. I never thought about Wren.

She’d stopped drinking coffee in the mornings. She’d fallen asleep before dinner twice that week. Three days before the video, I’d found her sitting on the side of our bed with one hand spread low over her stomach. She’d smiled when she saw me and asked what I wanted for dinner, and I’d let her change the subject.

I had seen every sign. I had filed every one of them as nothing.

I’m the man who sees everything. I sit in a room full of screens and I catch what nobody else catches. I didn’t see this.

I’d thrown the mother of my child out. I’d sent her into the dark pregnant and alone. Somewhere out there my kid should have been born months ago. I didn’t know whether my child was alive. I didn’t know a name. I didn’t even know if I had a son or a daughter.

After that bombshell, I’d called Robin. Her brother. He sounded cheerful—easy, unforced, away from home and out of the loop. No idea where his sister was. Hadn’t heard from her in months. Swing by the house if you want, he said. Neighbor’s got a key. Look wherever you like.

A man hiding someone doesn’t invite you to search his house, so I didn’t go. I ran it instead, the way I run everything—deeds, utilities, the neighbor, every line of it clean.

Robin worked for JW Security. A small protection outfit up the coast, filings so clean they were boring. I ran it too and then I crossed him off the list.

While I searched for Wren, I took my system apart. Every log. Every key. Every port I’d ever opened and closed and forgotten about. I couldn’t find a breach but someone had got into my system so I rebuilt it from scratch. Twice.

Handful found me in the ops room a little before midnight. In a few minutes, I’d be starting a second year without my songbird.

“You’re going to want to hear this,” he said.

I didn’t look up. “Say it.”

“I was working the floor at Virtues tonight. Couple of old boys at the bar, deep in it about the good days.” He waited until I looked at him. “There’s a dancer they can’t shut up about. Legend, the way they tell it. Worked masked, years back, never showed her face, and then just—gone. Retired. Vanished.” He paused. “She’s back. Started up again a few weeks ago. Place called The Hot House.”

Masked.

“Wren retired.”

“I know what she—”

“She retired. Nobody’s seen her dance in years.” I turned back to the screens. “She wouldn’t. Not where anyone could—”

“She taught Austen to work the pole at Virtues,” Handful said. “After close. Half a dozen times. I’ve watched her do it.”

“That’s not the same.”

“The Hot House is in Kettlewell Cold Bay.”