OLIVER
Every Friday at nine, Anny’s attorney sends me the same sentence.
Anny Cooper Adams remains alive, safe, and unwilling to receive contact from you.
For four months, I have measured time by those words.
The house remains almost exactly as she left it. Her powered-down phone sits in an evidence bag in Ucker’s office, but the cream mug she used every morning remains on the same kitchen shelf. In the sunroom, one canvas holds an unfinished blue sky and another carries a single line across the white surface.
I do not enter that room.
At night, I sleep in the adjoining study again. The bed we shared for only a few weeks feels less empty when I am not looking at it.
The first week, I nearly ordered the Adams security team to trace the commercial flight she took out of Mexico. I had
