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My phone vibrates before Theo finishes speaking, and I open the message to find Nora’s name above a residential address in upstate New York.
Emma moves closer to read over my shoulder, her hand finding mine as I compare the name to the records spread across the table.
We’ve spent months following photographs, Celeste’s notes, shelter files, and people who could only give us pieces of Nora’s life, and now there’s an address in my hand that might finally lead us to her.
“We found her,” Emma says.
“Yeah.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “When do we go?”
I turn the phone over in my hand before setting it beside Celeste’s notebook. Finding Nora doesn’t give us the right to appear at her door after everything she went through.
“We contact her first and make sure she wants to see us.”
Emma nods, although her attention returns to the address almost straightaway. “And if she does?”
I close my hand around hers. “We go together.”
She draws the phone toward her and reads the address again, looking ready to leave for upstate New York tonight if I let her. “I hope she says yes.”
“So do I.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Emma
AUGUST 24TH
My phone starts vibrating across my desk halfway through a project meeting, and by the fourth notification Lena has stopped pretending she isn’t watching it.
I finish explaining the revised rollout schedule before reaching for the phone, expecting a message from Bane about the trip we’re supposed to take tomorrow.
Instead, I find eleven texts, three missed calls, and a link from Kira accompanied by a message that makes my stomach tighten.
Kira: Don’t panic.
That is never how anyone begins good news.
Lena leans toward me from the chair beside mine. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The meeting breaks up around us and I open the link.
A photograph of Spencer and me fills the top of the page. It’s an old one, taken outside a premiere almost two years ago, back when I still knew exactly where to stand beside him and how long to smile before the cameras lost interest.
The headline beneath it makes my hand go cold.
SPENCER STONE BETRAYED? SOURCES CLAIM EX-GIRLFRIEND EMMA LOVE’S ROMANCE WITH BILLIONAIRE BOSS BEGAN MONTHS BEFORE SHOCK SPLIT
I read the headline twice before forcing my thumb down the screen, because staring at it won’t tell me who gave a reporter enough pieces of my life to build this version of it.
Anonymous sources claim Spencer had long suspected an emotional affair. Anonymous sources say Bane’s departure from Spencer’s security team had caused tension even then.
Anonymous sources suggest my employment at Wolf Shield was less accidental than either of us wanted the public to believe.
I keep scrolling, but every paragraph implies far more than it can prove, relying on dates that fall apart under basic scrutiny and carefully worded speculation designed to make a lie sound plausible enough for people to repeat it.
