Dangerous Desire

4

I didn’t think it was possible, but the blazing heat in my chest gets worse. I’ve got a forest fire raging under my rib cage, searing my throat. I’m almost exhaling flames.

“What do you mean, nothing?” I manage to grit out.

“I mean she took the subway to Penn Station, then disappeared.”

“So she’s on a train!”

“It’s possible. It’ll take a lot more time for us to review all the footage to confirm, but . . .”

When she trails off, I prompt impatiently, “What?”

“Penn is one of the busiest passenger transportation hubs in the Western Hemisphere. More than 350,000 people pass through there a day.”

“So you’re saying we need to get more eyes to help you look?”

“I’m saying that it’s the perfect place to accomplish two things: vanish into a crowd, and plant a red herring.”

My brain is working better than my lungs, because I put two and two together quickly. “She wanted to make it look like she took a train?”

Tabby lifts a shoulder. “I can’t be sure. But from what I know of Eva, she’s smart, resourceful, and thinks on her feet. She’d have known you’d look for her as soon as you discovered she was gone.”

She doesn’t add the obvious—that if Eva went to the trouble of trying to make it look as if she went one way while actually going another, she didn’t want to be found.

Guess we’ve got more acquainting to do, because if she thinks I’m not going to find her, she obviously doesn’t know me very f*****g well.

Anger gives me the edge I need to focus above the pain in my body and the fear in my heart. “Okay. Going with that theory, she’s probably still in New York.”

Connor cuts in, nodding. “We need to start looking outside Penn Station. Exits and the immediate surrounding area.”

“She’s on foot,” I mutter, my mind going a million miles an hour. “Unless she stole a bike—”

“Or a car,” Tabby supplies, a little too calmly, I think. When I glare at her, she says, “Just covering all the bases, Nasir.”

“She doesn’t know how to drive,” I say. “She’s not in a car.”

“And nobody in this city’s pickin’ up a hitchhiker,” says Connor.

“So she’s on foot,” I say more loudly, my pulse an uneven, throbbing rush in my ears as a new theory presents itself. “What’s another big transportation hub close to Penn Station?”

“Port Authority Bus Terminal’s the closest,” says Tabby.

I try to picture Dimitri leaving a bus ticket for Eva at the counter, but decide it doesn’t fit. A bus is so common. Public transportation is something a billionaire would find repugnant. At least trains have a certain style. Plus, buses are slow. If you’re looking to make a quick escape, you don’t take a goddamn Greyhound.

A memory hits me. The night I first read Eva’s file months ago, the night before I left Los Angeles for New York to start my job with Metrix, I was alone in a room at my friends’ house in the Hollywood Hills while my farewell party raged outside. I opened the computer file Connor had sent me, and had my first introduction to one beautiful and mysterious Evalina Ivanova . . .

Who’d disappeared into the sea after jumping off a yacht in the middle of the night.

“The docks,” I say, knowing even as it’s leaving my mouth that I’m right.

Connor looks doubtful. “That’s a long walk from Penn.”

“Not if you’re motivated.” I turn my attention to Tabby. “Can you find out what ships left the harbor between midnight and now?”

Tabby snorts. “Can I.” Without another word, she turns and leaves, her chin in the air and her red pigtails swinging.

I look at Connor. “Is that a yes or a no?”

He sighs. “It’s a ‘Just f*****g watch me,’ brother. With a side order of ‘Don’t insult my intelligence’ and ‘Dumbass.’”

“Right. Shoulda guessed.”

When I make a move to follow Tabby, Connor stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Hold on a sec. I want to talk to you.”

“We don’t have time—”

“We need to consider an alternative scenario for Eva’s disappearance, brother.”

I stare at him, already knowing where he’s going with this. “She wouldn’t go back to him unless she thought it would keep me safe. You read the hospital reports yourself. You know what he did to her. She f*****g hates him.”

“No doubt,” he says gently. “But what if she didn’t go back at all?”

I blink, startled. “Come again?”

“She could have contingencies in place for something like this. Secret bank accounts, other identities, there’s a hundred ways she could’ve set herself up to disappear again if Dimitri caught up with her. Like Tabby said, Eva’s smart. I can’t see her going to all that trouble to escape and disappear from her old life without having a plan B. Maybe even a plan C, D, and E.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe she isn’t headed back to Dimitri. Maybe she’s headed to Thailand. Australia. Fuckin’ Iceland, who knows? My point is that you might want to consider the possibility that she’s not going back to him . . . but she didn’t want to stay with you, either.”

Man, that feels like an ice pick plunged right into the center of my f*****g chest. “She loves me,” I say, hearing the growl at the back of my throat.