16. Reid
REID
PLAYLIST: BLACK BETTY – RAM JAM
The alarm blares on my phone, telling me the connection to the ankle monitor was lost. I saw it coming from a mile away, the moment she ran.
She couldn’t handle whatever just happened, and therefore, she runs. She’s a runner. No accountability, no emotions, no confrontations. Hunted by her own dark past.
In the end, things did not go exactly as planned, but I made her break the deal.
The only problem is that after all that happened between us, I don’t want her to run.
I don’t want her to go back to being a felon.
A thief. A con artist. I want to see her grow past it.
I want to make her see there is so much more to life.
And most of all, I want to kiss her again.
I know what my evaluation at the end of all of this will state, when I failed the routine polygraph, because I let myself be seduced by a subject.
“Rach,” I say when Rachel answers the call. “She’s done it. She cut it.”
“She did not,” says Rachel.
“Yeah. I’m in her studio. I need you to follow her tail. Take Emmett and Hoboken; I want the full force coming down on her. Every place associated with her needs to be watched, especially that area around the docks where she was several times last year.”
“Done,” says Rachel.
“I’ll search this studio in the meantime, because I’m already in,” I say.
“She went over the damn roof, cut it somewhere at Tudor City Plaza. I lost it there. Check for her Porsche, run it through the system, and have it tracked. I want to know where she went, what people moved around that area, and what other moments were there.”
“On it,” she says. “Hang on.”
I’m on hold, she’s probably coordinating the rest of the team, and I start searching the studio.
“Okay, teams are on their way. There are three cameras we can get. She drove the Porsche into Tudor Plaza, and we lost it there for roughly a minute until it reappeared on a traffic cam at 2nd. Hang on. Looks like she drove to Jersey—“
I hear heavy typing.
“I’m searching for the plate in all CCTV footage because she drove into Weehawken, and there is one cam out of order—
I already know what Rachel will tell me.
“It’s gone,” she says. “Like magic. It’s there one moment, but when I look from the other side, it’s just…gone.”
“We’re talking about Avery Zayne here,” I say. “Of course, she is gone.”
I open the trash can and empty it onto the floor. There’s nothing but empty coffee cups in there.
I open the kitchen drawers and fridge. The only thing I find in there is ice and rosé wine. Nothing but wine glasses in the drawers. She really wasn’t joking about the wine thing.
I scoff.
“What?” asks Rachel, and I tell her what I just found.
Rachel laughs.
“One day, we’ll have a glass of wine and laugh about what a pain in the ass that woman was. A day when she’s locked up, and you finally have a head for something else again.
My mouth gets dry as she says it, followed by a hollowness, and only then do I realize I've maneuvered myself into such a fucking mess.
I kissed Avery Zayne. My CI, aka consultant, aka now once again thief on the loose. I kissed her twice. And if I ever catch her again, and I have to, I will be fucked beyond.
I have to get my mind off it, and I do so by searching every last inch of the studio. I take photos of everything. All the stolen art, her own art studio, where she apparently tried to forge the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, because I found the canvas in the trash can.
I almost missed the door to her art space, because it was behind a seamless door. Since then, I started pushing against every single thing I touch, every wall, and everything else I find: Mirrors, drawers, and art pieces.
My phone rings.
“Yes,” I say.
“They found the ankle, the alarm was going off at the entrance to the park, exactly where we had no surveillance,” Rachel tells me. “We have been asking around if anyone saw something, but no one really wants to talk, and most of them were asleep.”
“Of course,” I say with a groan. It’s Avery Zayne. What did I expect?
“I’m gonna check out the Weehawken with Emmett,” Rachel says.
“Alright,” I say. “Keep me in the loop.”
We hang up, and I go back to my search.
I shake figures, rattle on the bed, push it away, uncover it fully, search the bathroom, the AC outlet, but there is nothing of remote interest, and most of all, there is no Cleopatra’s bracelet.
I was so, so sure she had it. But when the night becomes a day, and I have been searching the entire studio for ten hours straight, I have to acknowledge she might never have had it.
At least not here. She might have brokered it to somewhere we couldn’t track.
I stand in the middle of all the chaos I made, and my eyes fall onto the wall. The wall she pushed me into—
No, I tell myself. Focus on what’s relevant.
I stare at the wall.
The wall she gave me as a peace offering.
As a part of her.
Because whatever she tells herself, she does feel. It does matter. It matters so much that she scribbles on her wall. That she goes through all the length to find a hat. I mean, yes, it’s not just any hat, but still—
She is obsessed.
And cold.
And—
And what was it she said?
The villain in your story, too.
And just this moment, it dawns on me that the hat might be connected to something else. Something emotional. Something that touches her—or rather someone.
My eyes fall onto the X she marked.
It’s only then that I see six more X’s somewhere small within all the mess of her scribbles. One directly above the name Holly Haydn Heist.
I didn’t even register it before.
So Hedda used her.
Her entire life, she was used by that woman.
I feel anger rising in my chest.
Not just anger, but rage fired by disgust at what Hedda Lagner must have done to her.
She was a twelve-year-old girl.
Used by a grown-ass woman.
I feel so bad for Avery. No child should have to endure something like this.
I know, because my sister had to live through the same hell.
It is why I get so protective. Why I have zero tolerance when it comes to the abuse of children.
No wonder Avery is the way she is. She survived.
And she kept going back, because she had no one who could save her.
My chest is tight and my stomach heavy.
“Fuck,” I breathe out, because she was right: I do pity her.
I take a photo of the wall.
I don’t want to be here any longer.
I invaded a safe place she built for herself.
My eyes fall onto the pen she used, and because I am a compassionate person, I take it and write “I’m sorry I messed up your place” onto the wall next to her bed. She might never see it, but it quiets my mind, because I didn’t mean to destroy her safe place.
I leave the studio, and the door falls closed behind me with utmost finality.
I am in the office ten minutes later. My body is exhausted, my mind is in chaos, and my emotions are all over the place.
Rachel enters my office an hour later.
“And?” I ask her.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Figured,” I say. “There is only one way we get to her, and that is by catching Hedda Lagner. Avery wants the hat, Hedda has the hat, and when we get her, we’ll get Avery.”
“We’re as close to finding Hedda as we are to finding Avery,” says Rachel.
“I know, but Avery gave me some intel tonight,” I say to her, and tell her what Avery gave me about Hedda and the paintings.
I don’t show her the wall photos.
I don’t know why. But it feels like this was something reserved for me.
“I’ll be down in five for strategy,” I tell Rachel. I need a moment to fight the surfacing headache.
“Do you want me to send out a BOLO?” she asks.
It is the one question I have been trying to delay. My brain feels like it, and I rub my eyes with my arms supported on my desk.
The moment I send out a BOLO, everything will go to crap. The deal will officially be revoked. And we’re back to square one. Or do I give her the benefit of the doubt that she is just scared of her own feelings and will find her way back?
“No,” I say. “If we don’t have anything new in 48 hours, we will.”
“Do you think she’s coming back?” Rachel asks, naturally.
“I want to leave the door open, because things have been quite confrontative, and I am partially guilty of her reaction. I rub my eyes more and squint them to focus.
“Okay,” says Rachel and leaves.
My phone pings, announcing an incoming message.
I squint at the display and see a message from an unknown number. The moment I read it, I am wide awake.
Don’t forget to eat.