Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Creed
Now . . .
A call arrives long after we hang up, but before I remember how to move.
I am still sitting at the kitchen counter with my phone in one hand and the quarter in the other, the apartment lit too brightly around me.
Every lamp is on. The recessed lights. The light above the stove.
Even the ridiculous little gallery light over the painting I bought because a decorator said it made the room less masculine in a way that sounded like criticism disguised as help.
The room looks no less empty. Halston’s voice is still in my ear.
If I forget this tomorrow—
My phone rings.
For one insane second, I think it is him again.
The screen lights.
Fitzhenry Everhart.
I answer at the third ring.
“Everhart.”
“You sound terrible.”
“I feel worse.”
“Have you thought about retiring?”
I groan because, honestly, I don’t know if I have the energy to fill him in on what just happened tonight. It was not the game. It was the call.
I close my eyes.
Fitz has never wasted words when a knife will do.
It is one of the reasons I hired him. Or he hired me.
With Fitz, the line gets blurry. He is my agent when contracts need teeth, my attorney when money starts speaking in clauses, and the only man I know who can make a billionaire, a general manager, and a federal investigator feel equally underdressed.
“That’s not really—” I stop myself. “Halston—Halston Saint Claire called.”
“He did, huh?” he sighs.
“You gave him my number.”
“That was years ago.”
I look toward the window. Rain keeps moving down the glass in thin silver lines, blurring the city into something almost gentle. New York lies well from a distance.
My hand tightens around the phone. “Fitz.”
“Yes?”
“You want to explain that?”
“I would love to explain several things. Unfortunately, at least one of us needs to avoid committing felonies tonight.”
A male voice murmurs in the background. Low. Controlled. Not Fitz. Fitz has put the call on speaker—he does that when Lang is in the room, and the matter on the line involves both of them.
“Babe,” Byron Langdon says, mildly. “We’re on it.”
I sit up. “Lang?”
“Hi, Creed.”
“It still surprises me you have a husband, Fitz.”
“Yes. Many people are surprised.”
Lang says, dryly, “Including, occasionally, Fitz.”
“Byron,” Fitz says sharply.
“Sorry, love,” I hear him sigh. “We’ve been working on this since . . . I lost track of time. Just give him the heads up.”
“Byron says,” Fitz translates, “you are not to use your regular phone to contact either of them again.”
“Byron can get in line.”
“He also says your apartment is probably secure enough for tonight, but your cloud storage might not be. If you text Halston’s or Livia’s name to anyone, he will personally come to Manhattan and make you regret having thumbs.”
I stare at the phone.
“I’m not afraid of him,” I say, which is mostly true.
The line goes quiet for half a second. I hear another voice farther away. A keyboard. Someone moving fast.
“Creed,” Fitz says, and the humor is gone. “Listen carefully.”
I do.
“A few hours ago, I spoke to Livia Crane.”
Everything in me stops.
The quarter slips from my fingers and hits the counter. Once. Twice. Then it rolls in a small, uneven circle before falling flat.
Fitz waits.
He knows exactly what that name does to me.
“When?” I ask.
“It’s not important.”
I close my eyes. “You—” I cut myself off, clearing my throat. “You spoke to her.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
We—no. No.
I have been searching for her. I did, for a few years. I hired three different investigators.
I called her parents’ home in Connecticut often and was hung up on twice. I went to the address her mother had given everyone after the accident and stood outside a clinic in upstate New York that didn't have her on the rolls anymore.
I tried her old number in Manhattan and got a recorded voice that the number was no longer working.
I tried again six months later. Then a year later.
Then I stopped, because I had been told by everyone who would still talk to me that she had asked me not to look, and the man I was at twenty-six didn't have the standing to argue with what a grieving family said their daughter wanted.
Fitz ordered me to stop after the third or fourth year.
He said I was making it worse. He said I was making her visible to whoever had taken her.
I obeyed him because what else was I going to do—hire another investigator and watch him also fail?
Plus, there were the calls. Those calls that threatened my family if I continued harassing the Saint Claire estate and looking for Ms. Crane.
That was around seven years ago.
And now Fitz has spoken to her.
“How,” I say again.
“She emailed me first. Then I called her.”
My mouth goes dry. “Why?”
“She found provenance irregularities. Her credentials appear to have been used repeatedly on Saint Claire-funded authentication work she says she didn't perform.”
That should be the part I focus on.
Fraud. Foundation. Documents. Credentials. Danger.
Instead, I hear only one thing.
She is alive.
She is awake somewhere.
My Liv is alive during the same night Halston called me.
The room tilts again.
I grip the edge of the counter.
“Creed,” Fitz says.
“Did she ask about me?”
The question leaves me stripped.
I hate that it comes before the strategy, before the danger, before every useful thing I should be asking.
Fitz is quiet.
A second too long.
“Yes,” he says. “She asked if you were safe.”
I press my fingers to my eyes until color sparks behind them.
Safe?
No.
I have not been safe in ten years. Not in a way she would mean. Not in a way Halston would know. I have been functioning. Paid. Applauded. Insured. Monitored by trainers, doctors, and coaches who care about my body because it wins games.
Safe is something else.
Safe was an apartment in Chelsea with a couch where Liv’s bare feet were tucked under Halston’s thigh, and my hand on her knee while Halston read legal clauses like he could bore evil into surrendering.
Safe was her laughing when I said love should be grounds for suing the Saint Claire estate.
Safe was Halston’s mouth on mine after he said never.
“Give me her number.”
“You can’t call her tonight.”
I lower my hand. “You don’t get to tell me that.”
“I do if you want her alive.”
The room goes silent.
I stand.
“What the fuck did you say?”
“I said if you want her alive, you don't call her tonight. You don't call Halston back. You don't text either name. You don't open an old photo folder in some sentimental cloud account and start searching for pictures like a tragic man in a documentary.”
“That was specific.”
“Because you are predictable when wounded.”
“I’m not wounded.”
“You sound like a man trying to bite through his own spine.”
The voice in the background says, “Accurate.”
“Shut up, Lang,” I say.
“I would, but I’ve spent several hours with my sources trying to figure out how to keep your woman and your man alive,” Lang states. “Fitz always wondered if they had been in an accident. I wasn’t there when that happened, but we believe . . . you need to be cautious and listen.”
I sigh.
“Creed,” Fitz says. “Are you still with us?”
The way he says my name pulls me back. I sit down slowly.
“What’s the plan?”
“Short-term, we get each of them clean communication. Halston first. Livia second. Neither through ordinary channels.”
“How?”
“Burner phone for Halston. It needs to be physically delivered without triggering whoever is monitoring him.”
“He said he’s under conservatorship.”
“He is.”
My jaw locks. “How the fuck is that legal?”
“Money, medical testimony, family affidavits, and a man with enough memory damage to be framed as unreliable whenever he disagrees.”
I close my eyes.
Halston’s voice returns.
I’m a recovering alcoholic. I almost killed a woman...
A story told so often it became furniture in his mouth.
“What about rehab?” I ask. “He said they drag him there when he doesn’t behave.”
“They have used treatment as leverage. Not always formally. Enough to keep him compliant. Enough that he knows the threat.”
“I’m going to kill them.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t asking permission.”
“Good, because I’m not giving it—” He pauses—“We can promise that they’ll pay.”
Despite everything, a laugh breaks out of me.
It is not a healthy sound.
Fitz ignores it.
“Lang has someone who can get a phone to Halston within twenty-four hours. Maybe sooner. After that, Halston stops using every device tied to the estate. No texts from his phone. No emails from his accounts. No searching names on his laptop.”
“He searched me.”
A small pause on the line.
“Yes,” Fitz says.
“Fuck.”
“Lang already took care of it.”
I sit forward. “What do you mean already?”
Fitz hesitates.
Lang answers from the background. “We’ve had a passive trace on Halston’s digital life since you and I had drinks four years ago. Low-level standing protocol. Any time his name surfaced in unusual queries, I got pinged. Tonight was a big ping.”
I stare at the counter.
“You’ve been watching him.”
“I’ve been watching the signal. Tonight he searched you, and he searched her, and he did it from a device tied to the estate, and I cleaned what I could before the cookies were sent home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because there was nothing to tell, until tonight.”
I swallow.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t . . .” Lang groans. “Just don’t make my work harder.”
“What about Livia?” I ask.
“Working on it.”
“Where is she?”
Another pause.
“Italy.”
I breathe in, slowly. The information should not change anything.
I already knew, from Fitz, that she was in Italy.
Florence is a more specific shape of the same fact.
But there is something about hearing the name of a city—a city I have walked through twice, on hockey trips when I was twenty-two, before any of this happened, when she had never been there—that makes the world too small.
She has been within the same map as me the whole time.
“Where in Italy?”
“Don’t,” Fitz says.
“I wasn’t going to—”
“You were.”
“I just want to know if she lives somewhere safe.”