Chapter 21
AMELIE
PLAYLIST: A DROP IN THE OCEAN – RON POPE
Iopen my eyes, and when I glance to my side, everything feels surreal. I see Jane next to me in my bed, looking at me, leaning in for a kiss.
“Hi,” she says. It's usually my line.
“Hi,” I say back. “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to watch you peacefully sleep,” she says, laughs, and adds, “I had to pee, and then I couldn’t fall back asleep. There is a lot of light in this apartment, not to forget that very monumental piece of…art…”
She tilts her head at the pussy picture.
I laugh.
“You’ll get used to it,” I say, and only then realize what I have said. “How late is it?” I ask quickly to change the topic while turning to my side and propping my head on my elbow
“Past noon.”
“Oh,” I say. “I haven’t slept that long in like forever.”
She smiles at me.
“How are you feeling?” I ask. “It got quite wild yesterday.”
“I feel alive,” she says. “My headache is killing me, but I’ve never felt more alive. Tad awkward, maybe, thinking back.”
I laugh and let myself fall onto my back.
“I’ll get you an ibuprofen, hang on.”
“Thanks,” she says as I get up. I take a long shirt and some panties from a drawer and slip them on.
“Do you know where El is?” I ask her because she seems to be nowhere.
“No, she wasn’t here when I woke up.”
“Huh,” I say, and walk to the kitchen and open the drawer with the drugs in it. I pull it open, see the plate with the cocaine on it, and somehow, my gut clenches.
We had a deal. And that deal was no more drugs. But that plate was used. I run upstairs, get out onto the terrace, but she is not there. My heart races. Something doesn’t feel right.
I get back down.
Jane stands in the doorframe connecting the main room and the bedroom.
“What’s up?” she asks, but I don’t answer. I spotted a note on the dinner table. Next to it is the Porsche key. I run to the table. Grasp the note.
Had to do it now,
otherwise I’d never.
I love you. Always.
xoxo El
Goosebumps spread over my arm. I thought we’d plan. We’d plan her move, so I can protect her. So she is safe—
I run like an idiot through the studio until I find my phone. I dial her number, but it goes straight to voicemail.
I shoot all the way downstairs, no Range Rover waiting outside.
“Fuck,” I breathe out.
I need to do something.
Find her.
Panic surges through me as I stand there on the sidewalk in nothing but a shirt and panties.
I stumble back into the door.
My nose and cheeks tingle strangely.
I run back upstairs.
“Amelie, what the hell is going on?” asks Jane when I reappear at the door.
I stand in the middle of the studio.
My chest is heaving up and down.
There is not enough air.
Everything around me is spinning.
Turning upside down.
So far away.
Unreachable.
Jane stands in front of me.
My vision is blurry.
She grasps me by the shoulders.
“Breathe with me,” she says. “In and out.”
I stare at her. Frozen to the spot, while all I want to do is run.
“In through the nose,” she says and breathes in deep through the nose. “And out through the mouth. Follow my guidance.”
She brings her one hand up for me to see.
“In through the nose,” she says, and lifts her hand slowly up. “And out through the mouth.” She brings it slowly down.
I breathe in through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
“Focus on the sound of my voice,” she says. And I do. “Listen to the buzz outside. You can hear the honks, the buzz of Manhattan.”
I listen to what trails inside from the windows. It’s far away, and yet it takes my focus from the inside to the outside.
“You are standing on the ground,” she says. “Feel the ground. It’s holding you. You can’t sink. You can’t fall.”
My chest unclenches, and air flows back into my lungs. I feel less dizzy.
I take a deep breath.
And another.
I can see properly again.
My thoughts clear.
“Tell me what is going on, and we'll think about it together,” says Jane.
“El—“ I say. “She—yesterday—I need my phone.” And I run around to find it.
“In your hand,” Jane says.
I shake my head as I unlock it.
News. There would be news.
I type in Whitney Morgan news.
My entire body is pricked with goosebumps while it loads.
I read. But there is nothing.
No news about her father’s arrest.
No paparazzi about her being spotted somewhere.
I stare at the screen.
“Amelie,” says Jane.
My eyes wander up into hers.
“Tell me what is going on, and I might be able to help.”
I bite my lips. I made a promise to never tell.
“El,” I say, and suddenly, words pour from my mouth, “She said something yesterday, that she wanted to do something, I can’t tell you what, because I promised her to never tell, but it’s bad bad what happened to her, and now she is gone, leaving me this strange note and she took drugs, I saw it when I got the ibuprofen for you—“ my eyes widen. “I completely forgot the ibuprofen—“
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Just tell me.”
“We made a deal, no drugs. She almost OD’d when we were in Florida. And I made a deal with her, but she broke it. I can’t reach her. The car isn’t here. I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared.”
Tears stream down my face. Speaking it out makes it so real.
“I hear you,” says Jane. “We breathe and don’t panic until we know. She might be doing whatever she wanted to do, and can’t take the call.”
“She’d be talking to the feds,” I say.
“See,” Jane says. “That is something we can find out.”
“We can?”
“Yes,” says Jane, and goes to grab her phone.
I watch her call.
“It’s me, Jane,” she says into the speaker. “Listen, I have something really important; a simple yes or no would suffice, but I need to know if there is a case recently opened, related to—”
“Elise Whitney-Morgan or Richard Whitney-Morgan,” I say.
“I know it’s a big favor, and I wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t really, really important,” says Jane to the person she called.
My hands are sweaty waiting for an answer.
“Thank you,” she says and hangs up. I am about to implode.
“There is no new case open in the FBI’s database. I have a friend in the Art Crime Unit, and she checked the database.”
So she hasn’t filed anything. Which means—
“Fuck,” I breathe out as I snap.
I run to my laptop, open the hidden partition, open the emulator, and enter my credentials.
It rings.
“It’s me,” I say. “I need you to find someone. I take everything. Last known log, tower data, last calls, whatever you get related to this number,” and I dictate him El’s number.
I hear typing on the other end as I stare at the screen.
“Last log with tower was downtown Manhattan at 7:33 this morning,” says my contact. “Number is registered with the Whitney-Morgan Foundation. The last contact was a number registered to the private airline VistaJet.”
“Search for an Elise Whitney-Morgan.”
“No itineraries found.”
“Fuck,” I whisper and rub my hand over my face.
“CCTV gives a black Range Rover registered to the same foundation.”
“Can you retrace where it went in the past hours? I’ll pay whatever.”
“Park Avenue, corner to 64th, got it this morning at 8:01. Since then, no view.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She left the Porsche.
Meaning she went with Alex.
What if Alex got wind of it?
I gave Alex the keys—
Everything falls in me.
What if Alex bugged the studio?
What if Alex took her to her father?
“Are there any addresses registered to Elise Whitney-Morgan in New York?”
“No,” he says after a moment. “But a total of…1410 registered to the Whitney-Morgan Foundation.”
Okay, think, I tell myself. The only connection is finding Alex.
“I need a trace on this number,” I say, and read Alex’s number aloud from my mind, the one time I saw it on El’s screen.
“111 West 57th,” he says.
“Billionaire’s row,” I answer. It’s like finding a fish in the ocean.
“Are there any apartments registered to the Whitney-Morgan foundation in the building?”
“The entire building is owned by it.”
“Shit,” I say. “Thank you. Let me know what to send.”
“10.”
And with that, we hang up.
I hide my face in my hands. I have tried everything.
A hand on my shoulder from behind me.
It’s the moment I realize Jane is still here. And witnessed what I just did. I blew up everything.
“No news is good news,” she says.
“No,” I say and jump up. “There is always news about her. If there is no news, it means no one saw her.”
I should have stayed awake. Plan with her. Should have known she took something.
There is only one thing left.
I take my phone and dial Alex’s number.
“Blake,” he answers.
“It’s me, Amelie. Do you know where El is?” I ask in the most innocent voice I can pull off. “I can’t reach her, and you were gone too, so—“
“Hang on,” he says. And I listen to him walk through several doors.
“I can’t talk right now,” he says. “But she is gone, cut ties with him, the foundation, everyone. He is furious and flying in from London. He has hell and earth set in motion to find her.”
It doesn’t sound as if he’s lying. But what if he’s that good?
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“When she went for a walk in Central Park. She used her credit card to buy a coffee there, and since then, we lost her.”
Credit card. They are tracking her credit card data.
“Thanks,” I say, and hang up as I shoot to the drawer at the entrance door with all the keys and important stuff in. I throw everything out like a crazy person, because the drawer is a mess. When everything is lying on the floor around me, I know my Amex is gone.
“She took my card,” I say out loud. I don’t care about the card, but it means I can trace what she did with it.
I log in to my account.
There it is. A flight booked with VistaJet.
And it’s the moment I understand.
My eyes wander from my phone to the crumpled note from her in my hand.
I have to do it now, or I never will.
A smile appears on my face as relief spreads through me.
She is doing something for herself.
Only for her.
No one else.
I suddenly start laughing.
All the stress is falling off me.
I turn.
See Jane.
“She’s alright,” I say. “She took my card. She’s doing what I told her to do. Breaking free.”
Jane looks at me for a moment.
“How about we have some breakfast?” says Jane and opens the fridge.
“There’s nothing in there,” I say. “We always got take out.”
“You never cook?”
“No?” I half-say, half-ask.
“Oh,” she says and closes the fridge again. “Let’s get take-out somewhere.”
Two hours later, I return to the studio.
I had breakfast.
I feel like myself again.
And I am alone.
I close the door behind me.
Emptiness overcomes me with a sinking feeling in my stomach.
El was always here.
And now, I am alone.
I am alone again.
I was left once more again.
I know she did what I told her to do, but I thought—
What did I even think?
That I’d run away with her?
And now, I am here, alone, with feelings.
I feel so lost in me without her here, that it stabs me in my chest.
I get up to the terrace, grab the blanket we cuddled up in, sit on the lounge sofa, and stare at the Empire State Building.
I feel so alone that I finally understand why El did drugs. If that’s how El always felt, I get why she did it. It’s a horrible feeling, one that chews on my insides.
On Monday, I appear in the lab with dark eyerims and not more than two hours of sleep every night.
“You look horrible,” says Jane. “Something happened?”
“No,” I say shortly. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, maybe this helps,” she says. “I finalized the analysis over the weekend.”
“You were here over the weekend?”
“Yes,” she says, hesitantly. “I had to get my mind off things.”
“Off what things?” I ask.
A moment of silence follows.
“The fact that I am in love with a woman who is full of secrets, who is not only my student, but also in love with another woman,” says Jane and stares at her hand resting on the table, not at me, and I am glad, because my mask drops.
It sounds so royally fucked up that I find no words.
At that moment, the door to the lab opens.
I spin around.
A security guard comes in, followed by two men in suits.