Page 1 of Lost With My Enemy

CHAPTER ONE

ELISE

I have seventeen tabs open on my laptop, a color-coded timeline taped to my apartment wall, and a flight to Calgary that leaves in six hours.

Everything is on schedule.

My suitcase is packed with military precision. Toiletries in a clear bag, shoes in individual cloth covers, outfits separated by day with corresponding sticky notes. There's a backup charger in the front pocket and a backup for the backup in my carry-on. The boarding pass is printed, because Wi-Fi is a suggestion, not a guarantee, and my planner is open to today's page, where every hour from now until wheels-up is accounted for in blue ink.

This is what calm looks like. Organized. Airtight. Under control.

My phone rings.

The caller ID says Sloane Barrett, which means one of two things: she's calling to wish me a good flight, or something has gone sideways and she wants to warn me before I find out on my own. Sloane has always been better at ripping off the bandaid than letting me pick at it.

"Don't spiral," she says, which is the worst possible opening to any phone call.

"That's not how you start a conversation with someone who has a flight in six hours."

"Five hours and forty-seven minutes, knowing you."

Fair point. "What happened."

"WestJet just announced a forty-eight-hour pilot strike. Starting at midnight."

The room tilts just enough for me to grip the edge of my kitchen counter while my brain cycles through contingencies at a speed that would concern a medical professional.

"That can't be right. My flight is Air Canada."

"Air Canada announced a sympathy work action twenty minutes later. Both airlines are grounded. Domestic and cross-border." A pause. "It's all over the news, El."

My laptop is already open, fingers moving before Sloane finishes talking. CBC headline, bold and merciless: MAJOR AIRLINE DISRUPTIONS EXPECTED ACROSS CANADA AS DUAL WORK ACTIONS TAKE EFFECT.

Forty-eight hours minimum. Possibly longer pending negotiations.

And I need to be in Calgary in thirteen days to oversee the setup for the Weston-McAllister corporate retreat. Two hundred guests. A venue I've never physically walked. A client who once fired a caterer mid-appetizer course because the napkin folds were "aggressive."

Thirteen days felt generous this morning. Now it feels like a countdown.

"Before you ask," Sloane says carefully, "I already checked VIA Rail. Sold out through next week. Everyone had the same idea."

"Bus?"

"Greyhound doesn't run cross-Canada anymore. And before you suggest it, no, you're not renting a car and driving thirty-four hours solo. You've never driven west of Peterborough."

"I've driven to Montreal."

"That's east, babe."

My jaw tightens. Sloane knows me well enough to let the silence breathe instead of filling it, which is generous, because the silence is full of a controlled panic I've spent twenty years perfecting.

My parents' divorce taught me one useful thing: when the floor drops out, you build a new one before anyone notices you're falling. The problem is, I can't build a floor out of a grounded airline and a sold-out rail system.

"Griffin has a friend," Sloane says, like she's been waiting to deploy this sentence.

" Griffin Wyatt? Our Griffin? The walking disaster who set off the fire alarm at grad formal? No."

"You haven't even heard it yet."