Page 17

SIXTEEN

Nadia is crafty and cunning, but I once was, too. I was the first one to complete a dash and go, even if it was her giving me the idea. She might have thought, after all this time, that my instincts have softened.

I’m going to prove her wrong, show her she made a mistake in trying to mess with me and one of my players.

I start back at the place where I first saw her: the liquor store. Knowing what I know now, that run-in was no chance encounter. Nadia had likely been watching me for days, maybe even before that newspaper article came out. She would have known this is where I usually stop after work to pick up a bottle of wine, which means I might be able to find something out from the workers.

It’s still early on Saturday, the place freshly opened. A sensor beeps as I enter the store, and I scan the room, seeing there are no other customers in sight. Behind the counter, an older man sits. He nods his head in acknowledgement before returning to his morning paper. Luckily, it’s the same man who was working the day I ran into Nadia, and while I don’t expect him to remember our encounter, I’m hoping he remembers her. Her face is striking, hard to forget. It’s always been that way.

“Excuse me,” I say, approaching the counter. “I need your help.”

“Looking for something specific?” he asks, laying the paper flat on the counter.

“Not something. Someone.”

He leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. His left eyebrow raises. “Police?” he asks, heavy skepticism in his voice.

“No,” I assure him. “I ran into a friend here the other day and am trying to track her down.”

“You have a picture of this friend?”

“No.” This would be a lot easier if I did. Any pictures I have of Nadia would be almost two decades old, stuffed inside some shoebox in a storage container back at the house. I never even took the time to look, and she’s probably difficult to find on social media. Knowing Nadia, she doesn’t have an online presence at all.

“She’s easy to remember, though,” I say. “Petite. Long blonde hair. Expensive jewelry and purse.”

From my experience, most people in customer service are good at assessing a person’s social status based on what they wear. I’m hoping some of Nadia’s accessories might have caught the man’s eye.

“I know who you’re talking about,” he says, confident in his answer. “Can’t tell you much about her.”

I reach into my wallet and pull out two twenty-dollar bills, sliding them across the counter. “You can’t think of anything else? Maybe she mentioned where she works, or you’ve seen what car she drives?”

“No car,” the man says, resting a sun-spotted hand over the cash. “She walks.”

“Walks?”

“From one of the apartments down the street,” he says, pulling the cash away from me. “And that’s all I know.”

“Thank you,” I say, heading back outside.

It’s not much, but it’s something, maybe enough information to help me track her down. Even if she’s a con, she must live somewhere, and even if she’s disconnected her phone number in the wake of what happened last night, she wouldn’t have had enough time to move.

I twist my head from side to side, surveying the area. To the right, there’s a stoplight at a four-way intersection. Beyond that, are a few multi-level buildings housing offices and rental spaces. To my left, a few blocks down, I see a row of condos. I begin walking in that direction, my senses alert to take in whatever is around me.

It’s an expensive area, despite its proximity to the liquor store. This is one of the many gentrified areas of downtown Manning; what was a bad part of town in my youth is now only accessible to people in the six-figures club. If the liquor store attendant is right, and Nadia lives here, she must be making more off her scams than I realized.

There’s a hard knot in the pit of my stomach. If Nadia is in the business of human trafficking, that’s likely to bring in more money than stealing office equipment. It’s a long-shot theory, one likely influenced by too much misinformation in the media, but I can’t shake the fact that the same night the school was scheduled to be burglarized, Evie went missing.

I return to my car, drive down the street and park in a spot situated between the two buildings. It’s not the best plan, but in this moment, my only option seems to be to wait and see if Nadia arrives.

After twenty minutes, my phone buzzes, and I hope against hope that it’s her. Instead, the call is from Connor. We’ve not spoken since he surprised me at the school last night. I’ve been too distracted to even think about calling him.

“My goodness, Cass. I just heard about Evie,” he says. He sounds breathless. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know how to feel,” I say. “All I want to do is figure out where she might be.”

As I say this, my eyes guard the doors, watching as an older man exits one apartment and heads toward his car. Still no sign of Nadia.

“What are the police saying? The school?”

“We’re all waiting for information at this point,” I say. “Last I heard they were still trying to track down her family.”

“Evie’s the one with the bad home life, right? The one we gave a ride home on Monday night.”

“Yes,” I say, a recollection of my own upbringing flashing through my mind. I shake the memory away. “There’s no telling what might have happened. All we know for sure is that she was last seen at the lock-in.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Connor says, his voice somber.

But I can, and I do. If my actions put Evie in danger, it’s on me to fix this.

That’s when I see her. Nadia is walking around from the parking lot, heading toward the building on the left. She’s staring at a phone in her hands, I’m guessing a brand new one.

“Look, Connor. I have to go,” I say. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Aren’t you at the house?”

“I was this morning, but…” I can’t focus on watching Nadia and talking to Connor at the same time. “I have to go.”

I cut the call, easing out of my car and padding across the street to get behind Nadia.

There’s no escaping me now, not until I get answers about what happened to Evie.