Jessie Wilson had spent eleven months learning how to sleep like a normal person. It had not gone particularly well. Normal people, she had discovered, apparently went to bed without checking the hallway twice, without noticing whether the same car had been parked across the street for three consecutive nights, and without waking instantly when the refrigerator made a noise it hadn’t made before. Jessie had managed to stop keeping a weapon beneath her pillow. She considered that progress.
The photograph of the missing girl sat on her kitchen table. Jessie had been staring at it for nearly an hour while Gabriel sat across from her drinking coffee she hadn’t offered him.
“Her name is Emily Carter,” he said. “Sixteen. She disappeared four nights ago.”
“And you’re just coming to me now?”
“I didn’t know she was missing until yesterday.”
Jessie looked up. “Explain.”
Gabriel shifted in his chair. That bothered her. Gabriel didn’t fidget.
“Her father is Nathan Carter.”
Jessie knew the name. Of course she did. Nathan Carter had been a driver. Not technically part of their organization, because technically there had never been an organization. There were people who knew people who occasionally required the services of other people who specialized in activities best left off tax returns.
Nathan had been one of those people. He’d driven for Jessie three times. Quiet man. Reliable. Never asked questions. Never carried a gun. He also possessed the unusual criminal-world skill of knowing when to shut up. Jessie had liked him. That didn’t happen often.
“Where’s Nathan?” Gabriel didn’t answer.
Jessie leaned back. “Where is he?”
“Missing.”
That changed things. “How long?”
“Six days.”
“And Emily disappeared two days later?”
“Yes.”
Jessie stared at him. “You were going to leave that part out?”
“I just told you.”
“After I asked.”
Gabriel sighed. “This is why I didn’t want to come here.”
“No. You didn’t want to come here because you knew I’d start asking questions you didn’t want to answer.”
“That too.”
Jessie picked up Emily’s photograph. A smiling sixteen-year-old girl wearing a purple sweater and braces looked back at her. There was nothing remarkable about the picture. That made it worse. Emily wasn’t involved in anything. She wasn’t a courier. She wasn’t carrying information. She wasn’t somebody’s accomplice. She was a teenager.
“What does Nathan know?” Gabriel looked toward the window.
There, Jessie saw it. A fraction of a second. Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Jessie did.
“Gabriel.”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I genuinely don’t.”
“You know something.”
“I know Nathan called me eight days ago.”
“And?”
“He asked about you.”
Jessie’s expression changed. “What did he ask?”
“He wanted to know whether I’d spoken to you.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Did you tell him where I live?”
Gabriel looked offended. “No.”
“Did you tell him what I’m doing?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“I told him you were out.”
Jessie almost laughed. “Out.”
“That’s how he phrased it.”
Jessie got up and walked to the window.
Eleven months. She had spent eleven months trying to build something resembling an ordinary life. She taught self-defence. She advised shop owners about security. She bought vegetables from a man named Peter every Sunday. Peter believed Jessie worked in corporate security. Technically, this was no longer entirely a lie.
She had neighbours. One of them borrowed sugar, another complained about parking. A woman downstairs had asked Jessie to water her plants while she visited her sister. Jessie had spent twenty-two years entering other people’s homes without permission and had somehow found being entrusted with a neighbour’s African violet’s terrifying.
She liked it and that was the problem. She had finally acquired things she couldn’t hide in a safe. Routine. Trust. Peace. And now someone from her old life was missing. His daughter was missing. And Nathan had been asking about her.
“Why me?”
“I don’t know.”
Jessie turned around. “You keep saying that.”
“Because I don’t know.”
“You know enough to be scared.”
Gabriel’s face hardened. “I’m not scared.”
Jessie smiled without humour. “Your left hand has been tapping your leg since you sat down.”
His hand stopped.
“You checked the street before you came inside. Twice. You parked three blocks away instead of directly outside because you didn’t want your car associated with this address. You haven’t touched your phone since you arrived because it’s either turned off or somewhere else entirely.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“And you’ve had half a cup of coffee in forty minutes,” Jessie continued.
“So?”
“You normally finish mine too.”
Gabriel looked at the cup. “That might be the most disturbing thing you’ve said.”
“Who are you afraid of?” Gabriel didn’t answer.
Jessie walked back to the table and picked up Emily’s photograph. “Fine. I’ll find out myself.”
Gabriel’s chair scraped backward. “Jessie.”
She stopped.
“Don’t do this the way you used to.”
Something in his voice made her turn around. “What does that mean?”
“It means don’t go kicking doors open.”
“I never kicked doors open.”
“Metaphorically.”
“I didn’t do that either.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jessie definitely knew what he meant.
The old Jessie believed information justified almost anything required to obtain it. Manipulation. Threats. Blackmail. Fear. People were puzzles. Apply pressure in the correct place and eventually something opened. She had spent eleven months trying to stop seeing human beings that way.
“I told you,” she said quietly. “You’re not getting the old Jessie.”
Gabriel looked at her for several seconds. “I hope not.”
Then he left.
Jessie waited seven minutes before following. Not because she was following Gabriel, but because seven minutes was long enough to determine whether someone else was.
She walked two blocks to a coffee shop and sat beside the window. Gabriel appeared at the intersection. Nobody followed him. No parked vehicles moved. No pedestrians changed direction. Good.
Jessie drank coffee and thought about Emily. Then she did something the old Jessie would never have done.
She called the police. It wasn’t about Nathan’s criminal connections. Not yet. She simply asked whether Emily Carter had officially been reported missing. She had.
Jessie learned very little beyond that. Emily had last been seen leaving school four days earlier. She hadn’t arrived home. Her phone had stopped transmitting shortly afterward. Police were investigating and appealing for information.
Jessie thanked the person she spoke with and hung up. Then she sat there feeling strangely pleased with herself.
Look at that. Legal channels. Very mature.
She deserved a sticker, but unfortunately, legal channels had given her approximately nothing. The next trip for Jessie was going to Emily’s school. She didn’t pretend to be a police officer, so that was progress too.
She waited across the street until classes ended and teenagers poured through the doors in noisy groups. Jessie watched them. The old instincts returned effortlessly. Groups. Relationships. Hierarchy. Who walked beside whom. Who followed. Who dominated conversations. Who checked their phone repeatedly. Who watched everyone else.
Psychology wasn’t magic. People simply communicated constantly without realizing it.
Jessie spotted the girl she wanted within ten minutes. She was standing slightly apart from three others, pretending to participate in their conversation while repeatedly looking toward the road.
Nervous.
Jessie approached slowly. “Are you a friend of Emily Carter?”
The girl froze. “Who are you?”
“My name is Jessie.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.” Jessie almost smiled. Smart kid.
“I’m trying to help find her.”
“Are you police?”
“Nope.”
The girl took a step backward. Jessie immediately stopped moving and kept her hands visible.
“Good instinct,” Jessie said.
The girl frowned. “What?”
“Don’t trust strangers who approach you outside school.”
“Then why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.” That answer confused her.
Jessie took Emily’s photograph from her pocket. “But I think you know something.”
The girl’s expression changed. Not much, but enough.
“I don’t.”
Jessie nodded. “Okay.”
She turned to leave. “Wait.”
Jessie stopped. The girl looked around. “Emily was scared.”
Jessie turned back. “Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No. She kept checking outside.”
“Outside where?”
“School. Cafeteria. Everywhere.”
“Did she say someone was following her?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone?”
The girl hesitated. Jessie waited. Silence made people uncomfortable. The old Jessie used silence as a weapon. This time she simply gave the girl room.
“There was a man.”
Jessie’s attention sharpened. “What man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Describe him.”
“I barely saw him. He was sitting in a car.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know cars.”
“Colour?”
“Grey. Maybe silver.”
“Age?”
“Old.”
Jessie nearly smiled. “How old?”
The girl shrugged. “Like forty?”
Jessie was forty-three so apparently death was imminent.
“Did Emily recognize him?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“Because when she saw the car, she grabbed my arm.”
Jessie felt something cold settle beneath her ribs. “What did she say?”
The girl looked at her. “She said, ‘He found us.’”
Us, not me. ‘Us’.
Jessie kept her face neutral. “Anything else?”
The girl shook her head. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you.”
“I won’t use your name.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.” Jessie meant it. She walked away slowly. Only when she reached the corner did she take out her phone.
Gabriel answered immediately. “What?”
“You left something out.”
“I told you everything.”
“No. You told me Nathan was missing.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me Nathan was hiding.” Silence.
Jessie stopped walking. “Gabriel?”
“I didn’t know that.”
Emily’s words repeated in her mind. He found us. Nathan hadn’t simply disappeared. He had been running, and he’d taken his daughter into whatever danger he’d created…or tried to.
Jessie returned home after dark. She checked the street. Nothing unusual. She entered the building. Nothing unusual. She climbed the stairs.
Nothing unusual. Then she reached her apartment. Something was wrong. The door was closed. The lock was intact. No scratches. No damage. Nothing visibly disturbed. But Jessie stopped three feet away.
Her neighbour across the hall had a welcome mat that constantly shifted because one corner curled upward.
It was straight. Someone had moved it. Jessie didn’t touch her door. She walked downstairs, exited through the rear of the building and circled the block.
Her heart wasn’t racing and that bothered her more than if it had been.
The old Jessie was awake now. Calm. Focused. Almost comfortable.
She hated that woman, but she also needed her.
Jessie waited forty minutes before returning. When she finally entered the apartment, nothing had been stolen. The television remained. Her laptop was untouched. Cash was where she’d left it. No drawers had been opened. There was no obvious sign that anyone had searched the place.
Then she saw the kitchen table. Emily’s photograph had been there that morning. Now it sat perfectly centred on the table. Jessie had left it near the edge.
Someone had moved it.
Below the photograph was a folded piece of paper. Jessie stared at it but didn’t touch it immediately. Eventually, she used a pair of kitchen tongs to lift it. There was one sentence printed on the paper.
STOP LOOKING FOR THE GIRL.
Jessie stared at the words. Eleven months earlier, a message like that would have excited her. A challenge. A threat. Proof that she’d gotten close enough to make somebody nervous.
Now she felt something entirely different.
Anger.
Not the hot kind.
Jessie’s anger had never been loud, it became very still.
Someone had entered her home. Someone knew where she lived. Someone knew she was looking for Emily. And whoever had left the note believed frightening Jessie would make her stop.
That told her two things.
First, Emily was probably alive. Dead people didn’t usually require warnings.
Second, whoever was behind this didn’t know Jessie Wilson nearly as well as they thought they did. Jessie looked around the little apartment she’d spent almost a year turning into a home. The surviving plant sat on the windowsill. Tomatoes from the farmers’ market were in a bowl on the counter. Her neighbour’s spare key hung beside the refrigerator.
Ordinary things that Jessie had once considered boring. Things she now understood were precious precisely because they were ordinary – normal.
Someone had brought her old world into this one. Jessie walked into her bedroom and pulled the locked case from the closet. She opened it. For several seconds, she simply looked inside.
Then she removed one item – an old phone. Nothing else.
She closed the case again and that mattered because the old Jessie would have taken everything.
Jessie powered on the phone and called a number she hadn’t used in eleven months. A man answered on the fourth ring. There was silence.
Then he laughed softly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Jessie sat on the edge of the bed. “Hello, Victor.”
“I heard you retired.”
“I did.”
“Then this must be a social call.”
“Someone entered my apartment.”
The laughter disappeared. “That’s unfortunate.”
“They left me a message.”
“Even more unfortunate.”
“They know I’m looking for Nathan Carter’s daughter.” This time the silence lasted longer.
Jessie noticed. “Victor?”
“You need to walk away.”
Her grip tightened around the phone. “That makes two people who’ve told me that today.”
“Then perhaps you should consider the possibility that everyone else knows something you don’t.”
Jessie stood. “What happened to Nathan?”
“I can’t help you.”
“Can’t?”
“Won’t.” That distinction mattered.
“Is Emily alive?”
Silence. Jessie closed her eyes.
There, the hesitation. It was tiny – almost non-existent, but Jessie had built a career on almost non-existent.
“You know where she is.”
“No.”
“You know who has her.”
Victor exhaled. “Jessie.”
She hadn’t heard fear in Victor’s voice in fifteen years, but now she did. “Who are these people?”
“You don’t understand what you’re walking into.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” Another pause.
Then Victor said something Jessie hadn’t expected. “Because this isn’t about Nathan.”
Jessie stopped breathing for half a second. “What?”
Victor’s voice dropped. “Nathan didn’t disappear because of something he knew.”
“Then why?”
“He disappeared because of something he stole.”
Jessie’s mind accelerated. “What?”
“I’ve already said too much.”
“Victor—”
“He took a file.”
“What file?”
“One he was never supposed to see.”
Jessie walked to the kitchen. The threatening note remained on the table.
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes, I am.” The admission surprised her.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes lying keeps people alive.”
Jessie looked at Emily’s photograph. “And sometimes it gets innocent people hurt.”
Victor said nothing.
Jessie’s voice softened. “They took his sixteen-year-old daughter.”
“I know.” That told her something else.
This wasn’t contained, people were talking and were afraid.
“What was in the file?”
Victor whispered, “You.”
Jessie didn’t move. For a moment, she thought she’d misheard him.
“What did you say?”
But Victor had already disconnected. Jessie stood alone in her kitchen. The refrigerator hummed. Traffic moved outside. Somewhere upstairs, someone laughed at a television program.
Everything around her remained completely ordinary except nothing was ordinary anymore.
Nathan Carter hadn’t disappeared because he’d stolen money or diamonds or even evidence against some criminal organization.
He had stolen a file, a file about Jessie then two days later, his daughter had vanished.
Jessie looked at the warning on the table.
STOP LOOKING FOR THE GIRL.
She slowly turned the paper over. There was something on the back she hadn’t noticed before.
A photograph but it wasn’t of Emily. It was a photograph of Jessie.
She was younger in it. Much younger. Maybe nineteen. She was standing outside a building she didn’t recognize beside a man whose face had been deliberately scratched away.
Jessie stared at the photograph. She had no memory of it being taken. What was even worse was that she had no memory of the building. She did remember the jacket, the haircut and being nineteen and she remembered exactly where she’d been living that year.
This meant the photograph should have been impossible. Jessie turned it back over.
STOP LOOKING FOR THE GIRL.
For the first time since Gabriel had knocked on her door, Jessie understood something that made her genuinely afraid.
Emily hadn’t been taken because of Nathan. Nathan hadn’t been running because of himself. Somehow, after twenty-two years of stealing other people’s secrets, Jessie had finally encountered the one secret she couldn’t remember.
Her own.
Come back tomorrow for the next chapter…
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