Page 111 of Gone Before Goodbye

It made no sense. It made perfect sense.

Trace had always professed to be a confirmed bachelor, that hewasn’t built for long-term relationships, and his past actions more than bore that out. So had Nadia changed him?

Could be.

Nadia made for a pretty amazing package. Maybe Trace had fallen for real this time. He gave her his mother’s ring, for crying out loud. Maggie couldn’t get over that. Trace’s mother’s ring on Nadia’s finger.

Wow.

So maybe, in that way at least, Trace had changed. What do they say in finance? Past performance is not an indicator of future results.

“Then suddenly,” Nadia continues, “after Trace goes to see you—”

“He didn’t see me, Nadia—”

“—my fiancé vanishes and supposedly ran off to help people in Bangladesh or somewhere else too remote to reach him. Not one word to me. Not a goodbye. Not a breakup. Nothing. Don’t you find that strange?”

Maggie doesn’t reply.

“And no one knows any details about his whereabouts. If he’s working for a relief organization, no one can tell me which one. No one sees him or communicates with him. Meanwhile the last place he said he was going was, well, to visit you. So I start to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“You left WorldCures—”

“My mother—”

“I know. She was ill. But come on, Maggie. YouleftWorldCures. You had some idea of what was going on. Let’s not pretend.”

That accusation again. What’s the old joke her father used to tell? “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” Had she intentionally looked away from the finances? Probably. And yes, she knew that Marc and Trace were risk-takers, that they were pushing boundaries, that they were frustrated by the normal protocols that slowed down medical advancements. They wanted to speed up their progress, ends-justify-the-meanskind of guys, and when those two were both together, when you blended Marc’s and Trace’s passion, the result bordered on the toxic.

And there had been that surgery, that awful surgery here in Dubai…

“Do you see how it looks?” Nadia continues. “You leave WorldCures—

and then on his very last humanitarian mission, someone sells out your husband.”

“Oleg Ragoravich probably.”

“That was my thinking too,” Nadia says. “At first. Which is why I made it my business to get close to him.”

“How?” Maggie asks, and as soon as she does, she realizes how stupid the question is. No need for subtlety. “You, what, seduced him?”

“The man I loved had vanished. I would do anything to get him back.”

Sounds like a yes. “So how did it happen?”

“Like a lot of oligarchs, Ragoravich had made Dubai a big part of his life. I made sure we crossed paths. At this very club, as a matter of fact.”

“Jesus.”

“Are you judging me again?”

Maggie shakes her head. “No, go on.”

“I wanted him to take me back to Russia.”

“Which he did.”