Chapter 36 NICK
NICK
Beck left my office twenty minutes ago, and the folder of Roth family dossiers still sits on the corner of my desk untouched. I haven't decided what to do with any of it yet.
Sebastian Roth. My other cousins. My aunt, Madeline.
My grandmother, Constance, who shouldn't haunt my thoughts the way she has ever since I learned her name.
The weight of it all presses down on me, but I push it aside.
Avery will be here soon. We'll have lunch.
I'll tell her everything, and she'll help me figure out what the hell I'm supposed to feel about a family that threw my mother away like garbage.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text. Avery's name on the screen. I smile—until I read the words in front of my eyes.
I'm scared. In Chelsea with Na—
I read it again, each word slicing through me.
My eyes follow the cut-off message, while my thoughts speed ahead in rapid fire.
Is it the baby? Images surface unbidden. Avery at the designer’s studio after her faint. The fluorescent hell of the emergency room afterward.
Did it happen again?
But that doesn't track. Avery would call me, not text. Someone—whoever she's apparently with right now—surely, would call me.
She wouldn't send a fragmented text that cuts off mid-word like something stopped her from finishing. Or someone.
I'm scared.
Those two words sear me. This is a woman who survived things that would’ve destroyed someone weaker. She doesn't reach for that language unless the fear is real.
In Chelsea with Na—
Who the fuck?
I hit Avery's contact. Her phone rings once. Twice. Three times. Her voicemail picks up, and her recorded voice tells me to leave a message.
Damn it. I end the call. Try again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
She's out there somewhere, afraid, and I can't fucking reach her.
I vault out of my chair on a low curse. Cold floods the base of my skull and spreads downward through my chest, my arms, settling into my hands until my fingers feel thick and clumsy on the phone.
Not panic—I don't have the luxury of panic right now.
This is something worse. The slow, spreading certainty that my entire world has tilted under my feet while I wasn't looking, and I'm the last one to feel it move.
I pull up the contact for the Chelsea rec center's art building. My thumb finds the number and I'm already listening to it ring before I've consciously decided to call.
"Elizabeth Xavier Center, this is Carla speaking."
"Carla. It's Nick Baine." I don't have time for pleasantries, for the warmth she usually greets me with when I visit the center. "Is Avery there?"
A pause. I can hear her recalibrating, adjusting to the edge in my voice. The edge that's scraping against my throat like broken glass.
"Um, no, sir. She came by earlier and dropped off some supplies for the art program." She's trying to give me more than I asked for, the way people often do when they're either facing me or have my voice in their ear. "That was maybe an hour ago now. Is… Is anything wrong, Mr. Baine?"
An hour ago. Anything could have happened in sixty minutes' time.
"Was she with anyone?"
Another pause. Longer this time. I can practically hear the woman thinking, rifling through her memory.
"She came in alone." Carla's sounds concerned now too, which only heightens my dread. "But now that I'm thinking about it… I did see her talking with someone. A woman with a little boy."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know, Mr. Baine. I didn't recognize them as members of the program."
Shit. "Did she leave with them?"
"I... I'm not sure. But Jason at the front desk might have seen more. Let me go check with him now—hold on."
I hear her breathing faster. Swift footsteps on hard flooring. A muffled question, the words indistinct. Then her voice returns, pulled tight as wire.
"Jason saw them leave together. A woman—he thinks maybe late thirties or early forties, Middle Eastern, he says—and a young child. Jason is saying they seemed friendly with each other, like they knew each other."
"Did he get the woman's name? Anything at all?"
Carla's voice muffles as she relays my question. Then: "I'm sorry, Mr. Baine. Jason doesn't know who the woman was. Or where they might have gone."
Goddamn it. I grip my phone so hard it's a wonder the device doesn't shatter. I have practically nothing to go on, yet the pieces are already assembling themselves.
Middle Eastern. Late thirties or early forties. A woman Avery knows, seemed friendly with.
In Chelsea with Na—
Nadiyah?
The name comes to me, accompanied by vague flashes of memory.
At the atelier, one of Avery's dress fittings.
A reserved, unremarkable woman bent over the embroidery frame with her precise, unhurried hands threading pearls into lace.
The way she'd looked up when I spoke to her once to compliment her work.
Dark eyes, level and measuring, studying me with a quality of attention that seemed insignificant at the time but registers as something else entirely now.
Something cold. Calculating.
It has to be her. That's the only thing that makes any sense.
I don't know where she lives. I don't even know her last name.
I don't know why Avery would be with her in Chelsea when the atelier is in Midtown, miles from the rec center.
I can't think of any possible connection that exists between a seamstress and the woman I love that would put them together this morning.
It doesn't matter why.
Avery is scared. Odds are she's with this woman. Her text cut off mid-word as though she was stopped before she could finish, and now her phone is ringing through to voicemail.
"Is everything okay, Mr. Baine? Is Ms. Ross all right?"
My pulse hammers against my temples and my throat, worry edging swiftly toward panic. "I don't know. I fucking hope so."
I end the call.
My key fob is in my hand. I stalk toward my office door, the phone held at my ear, Gabe's number connecting before I've cleared the threshold.
He picks up before the second ring. "Hey, Nick."
"I need a location ping on Avery's phone. Now."
"On it." He doesn't hesitate. Doesn't waste time asking why. "Give me two minutes." His tone is all business, the professional I need right now. "What's happening? Is she having pregnancy issues again? Should I call an ambulance?"
"I don't think it's medical. I just got a partial text from her. She's scared. She's with a woman from House of Delaire—the one working on her veil. They were in Chelsea together about an hour ago, at the rec center. Gabe, I… I think Avery is in real danger."
"Fuck." The single syllable is cold with understanding—and urgency. Gabe knows how much Avery means to me. When he speaks again, his voice has gone military-flat. "Whatever you need."
"As soon as you get me that ping, I'm going to need a team ready to move. Fast."
"You got it."
I approach my assistant's desk, my pace brisk, barely pausing to stop. "Get me that phone location ASAP, Gabe."
"Nick—" he starts.
"Yeah?"
"We'll find her."
I end the call without answering, because I can't hear those words right now. Can't afford to consider the alternative they imply.
"Lily."
She looks up from her screen, and something in my face stops her cold. The color leaves her cheeks. Her hand freezes above her keyboard, and her eyes go wide with an alarm I've never seen from a woman who's weathered years of my worst moods without flinching.
“What’s wrong?”
"Get Serena Delaire on the phone. I need an employee address—first name Nadiyah. I need it right fucking now."
She's already reaching for her phone. "Where will you be?"
"In my car."
I turn back toward the corridor, and that's when I see Beck emerging from his office twenty feet away. He's got his phone in his hand, his low voice in the midst of some negotiation or another. His dark head snaps up at the sound of my footsteps.
"Beck."
He ends his call and slides the phone into his suit jacket pocket. He's at my side in seconds. "What's going on?"
I show him Avery's text. Watch his expression shift as the words register.
"Her phone's going straight to voicemail. Gabe's running a location ping and scrambling a security team as soon as we know where she is."
Beck's jaw tightens. I can see him thinking, calculating, weighing options, considering angles. "We don't know what's happening yet," he says carefully. "Maybe before we go in with guns blazing—"
I bite off a sharp curse. "Something's happened to her. We're talking about my wife, Beck. My wife!" I don't give a shit about caution right now, or proper procedure, or whatever the fuck else he's about to suggest. "I'll burn this goddamn city to the ground if that's what it takes to find her."
Silence stretches between us.
Beck holds my gaze for one long moment. Then he nods. Once. The nod of a man who knows when the time for counsel has passed.
"What do you need from me?"
"Coordinate from here. Keep Gabe looped. I want you ready to call in the police. Be ready to call in the whole fucking cavalry on my go."
"Okay, Nick. Yeah, I've got you. Go."
I'm already in motion, heading for the executive floor elevator bank. Every step drags while somewhere across this city, Avery is on her own and afraid.
My phone buzzes in my hand. Gabe.
"I've got that ping for you." His voice is clipped, efficient. "Her phone's about a block and a half north of the rec center. Signal's stationary right now."
A block and a half north. Chelsea. The area takes shape in my mind, solidifying from fragments into something I can drive toward. The only lead I can chase for now.
Lily appears at my periphery, phone pressed to her shoulder. She's kept pace with me somehow, moving alongside me down the corridor with her heels clicking rapid counterpoint to my longer stride.
"I have Serena Delaire," she says. "She's got an address for Nadiyah Marchal." She recites it, the numbers and street name slotting against Gabe's coordinates with sickening precision.
It matches what I already know. Chelsea. Not far from the rec center.
I recite the address to Gabe, still waiting at the other end of the line.
"Gabe, you got that?"
"Got it. We'll be mobile in five minutes and heading there."
"I'll be on location in ten."
The elevator bank is ten feet away. Five.
I hit the button as soon as I reach the doors, and they slide open immediately, the car empty and waiting. I step inside and punch the down button.
"Hey, Nick." Gabe's voice cuts through the static of my racing thoughts. "Don't go in alone, yeah? Wait for my team."
Everything in me rejects the request. Every instinct, every nerve, the marrow in my goddamn bones. "Then you'd better get there fucking fast, Gabe. Avery needs me, and I'm not waiting around for anything."