Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DOM
The email from Detective Lily Chen arrives three months after the interviews.
I'm in the Tokyo apartment we've rented in Shibuya when my phone buzzes with the Google alert. Roxy's in the shower, preparing for tonight's opening at Gallery Kōmyō in Roppongi, the culmination of months of international exhibitions.
The article is brief. Professional. Final.
Arizona State Police Detective Lily Chen announced today that the Gary Hollis homicide investigation has been officially closed and marked inactive.
"We've exhausted all investigative leads," Chen stated.
"Without new evidence or witness cooperation, the case cannot move forward.
The file remains open but inactive pending new information. "
I read it three times before setting the phone down and staring at the Tokyo skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
It's over. Finally fucking over.
James and Roxy Brennan exist in the real world and she couldn’t prove our previous lives with anything she had. Only speculation.
And the people Detective Chen was looking for, Dom and Roxy, whoever they were, vanished into the American landscape and were never seen again.
The shower turns off and I hear Roxy moving in the bathroom. I pick up my phone and walk to the doorway. She's wrapped in a towel, her long black hair dripping water onto the tile floor. When she sees my expression, she freezes.
"What happened?"
I hand her the phone. She reads the article, her eyes moving across the screen. Then she looks up at me.
"It's over," she says quietly.
"Yeah."
"She closed the case."
"Marked it inactive. No new leads. No evidence. Nothing to pursue."
Roxy sets the phone on the counter and crosses to me, her hands sliding around my waist. She's still damp from the shower, smelling like soap and shampoo and something uniquely her.
"We won," she says.
"Yeah. We did."
Tokoyo Hunting
We celebrate the only way we know how.
That night, we take the rental car into Shinjuku. Not the tourist areas with their blinding neon and endless crowds, we choose the backstreets, the forgotten corners where Tokyo's hidden gems hide behind the glittering facade.
Roxy has her camera and I have the scanner app on my phone, monitoring police frequencies even though we both know we're untouchable now.
Detective Chen closed the case. Marked it inactive. We're free. But the hunting isn't about necessity anymore. It's about who we are.
The love hotel appears first, five stories of crumbling pink concrete with a faded heart-shaped sign that hasn't been lit in years. The windows on the upper floors are broken, jagged glass catching the neon glow from the pachinko parlor across the street.
"This is it," Roxy breathes.
We slip through a gap in the fence. The smell hits immediately, a mix of sweet and rotten underneath. Humidity clings to everything, making the air thick and wrong. You could literally take a bite out of the air.
Inside, the lobby is frozen in time. Velvet couches covered in dust. A reception desk with room keys still hanging on hooks. Faded posters advertising hourly rates in yen amounts that haven't been valid in decades.
Roxy's camera comes up.
Click. Click. Click.
She moves through the space like a ghost, photographing the decline.
The way neon light from outside filters through broken windows, painting everything in shades of pink and blue.
The peeling wallpaper. The abandoned furniture and the evidence of lives lived in temporary spaces.
I keep watch near the entrance, listening for footsteps, voices, anything that suggests we're not alone.
But we are. Completely invisible. Just two more shadows in a city of millions.
"Look at this," Roxy says from the stairwell.
I join her. She's photographing a room on the second floor where the door is hanging open, the bed still made with sheets that have rotted into the mattress. A champagne bottle sits on the nightstand, empty, covered in dust.
"Someone left in a hurry," she says. "Or maybe they just never came back."
"You think about that? People who disappear?"
"All the time." She lowers the camera and looks at me. "We disappeared. Dom and Roxy vanished and no one's ever finding them."
"Because they don't exist anymore."
"Exactly." She steps closer, her hand finding mine. "We're ghosts who became real by becoming someone else."
"And now the law just confirmed it. Officially gave up."
"We won, Dom. We actually won."
"One more location," I say against her mouth. "Then we celebrate properly."
The apartment building is three blocks away, a narrow structure wedged between a closed restaurant and a karaoke bar that's seen better days.
The ground floor is boarded up, but the upper floors are accessible through a rusted fire escape.
We climb in silence, our footsteps echoing on metal grating.
Inside, the apartments are small, claustrophobic. Tatami mats rotting on the floors. Possessions left behind, things like a child's toy, a teapot, photographs in frames covered with dust and mold.
Roxy photographs it all. The way the end of times transforms the intimate into the universal. The proof that people lived here, loved here, left pieces of themselves behind when they left.
"This is going in the next portfolio," she says, reviewing the shots on her camera screen. "Not for the opening tomorrow, but for six months from now. A year. However long it takes."
"Building the archive."
"Exactly. We have time now. All the time in the world."
Wind whistles through broken windows, carrying the smell of rain and exhaust and the city's endless motion. I love it here, where we go completely unnoticed. Two more people in Tokyo's shadows, documenting what everyone else ignores.
The ultimate proof that our model works.
We drive back to the Shibuya apartment with the new photographs stored safely in Roxy's camera.
Twenty-three shots of Tokyo's hidden parts.
The love hotel, the apartment building, the evidence of lives lived and abandoned.
Perfect additions to the archive. Proof that we're exactly who we've always been.
Tomorrow we'll stand in Gallery Kōmyō and listen to people theorize about the mysterious artist, and no one will know we're right there.
Invisible but present and totally free.
The opening at Gallery Kōmyō is the biggest yet. The space is in Roppongi, all minimalist design and perfect lighting. Roxy's work, all twenty-eight pieces from the original portfolio plus three new additions hang on white walls like sacred objects.
Which, in a way, they are. The prices have climbed again.
What sold for four thousand in Brooklyn now goes for fifteen to twenty-five thousand in Tokyo.
The crime scene polaroids, the environmental prints, the sketches of human grief, all of it commanding prices that would have seemed impossible a year ago.
But the mystery has made it valuable.
RB, the ghost artist who refuses to appear, who communicates only through anonymous email, who attends openings as an observer while collectors and critics try to solve the puzzle of their identity.
We arrive at 7pm, an hour after doors open.
Roxy's dressed in dark jeans, a simple black sweater and boots.
Her hair is down and she has some light make-up on.
She blends in well. I'm again in black jeans, a dark gray henley, and my usual trusted boots.
I stand out because of my height and stark features.
A few women look at me, but I avoid eye contact, not wanting the wrath of Roxy ruining the evening.
We slip into the gallery through the crowd of collectors, critics, and art world regulars. Japanese mixed with English, the conversations animated and intense. My hand finds Roxy's waist immediately. She leans into me, her fingers lacing with mine.
No one looks at us twice as Roxy's work dominates the space. People move through the space, studying each piece with the kind of reverence usually reserved for museums. I watch their faces, their reactions, while keeping Roxy close against my side.
A Japanese collector in his sixties stops in front of one of the crime scene polaroids. He speaks to his companion in rapid Japanese, then switches to English.
"Who is this artist? RB?"
"No one knows, any information is just rumors, but does it matter? The work is very impactful."
A Western critic I recognize from the Berlin opening stands in front of the environmental series. She's speaking to a Japanese gallery owner, her voice carrying across the space.
"The mystery is part of the appeal. No one has ever met the artist. Even Sarah Vance at Void Gallery, who is the original representative, has never seen them in person. Just email communication."
"That's extraordinary. How do you represent someone you've never met?"
"You represent the work. The artist is irrelevant."
"But people want to know. The theories online…"
"Let them theorize. Every theory that's wrong is another layer of protection for the artist. And another reason for collectors to want the work."
Roxy's hand tightens in mine and I squeeze back gently.
The gallery owner appears near the entrance, a woman in her forties named Yuki Tanaka who's been pursuing Roxy's work for months. A collector approaches her, gesturing toward one of the drawings.
"Can I meet the artist?"
Yuki shakes her head with what looks like genuine regret. "I'm sorry, RB doesn't do public appearances. Very private person, but I can facilitate communication through the New York gallery if you're interested in future work."
"There's more?"
"I believe so. The artist continues to create."
The collector nods thoughtfully and moves on.
Roxy's pulse is racing where my thumb rests against her wrist. She's hearing them talk about future work and the second portfolio we've been building during our travels. Twenty-five pieces documenting darkness across Berlin, Miami, LA, Tokyo.