Page 135 of The Lies We Play

“Byron,” Fitz says sharply.

“Sorry, love,” I hear him sigh. “We’ve been working on this since . . . I lost track of time. Just give him the heads up.”

“Byron says,” Fitz translates, “you are not to use your regular phone to contact either of them again.”

“Byron can get in line.”

“He also says your apartment is probably secure enough for tonight, but your cloud storage might not be. If you text Halston’s or Livia’s name to anyone, he will personally come to Manhattan and make you regret having thumbs.”

I stare at the phone.

“I’m not afraid of him,” I say, which is mostly true.

The line goes quiet for half a second. I hear another voice farther away. A keyboard. Someone moving fast.

“Creed,” Fitz says, and the humor is gone. “Listen carefully.”

I do.

“A few hours ago, I spoke to Livia Crane.”

Everything in me stops.

The quarter slips from my fingers and hits the counter. Once. Twice. Then it rolls in a small, uneven circle before falling flat.

Fitz waits.

He knows exactly what that name does to me.

“When?” I ask.

“It’s not important.”

I close my eyes. “You—” I cut myself off, clearing my throat. “You spoke to her.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

We—no. No.

I have been searching for her. I did, for a few years. I hired three different investigators.

I called her parents’ home in Connecticut often and was hung up on twice. I went to the address her mother had given everyone after the accident and stood outside a clinic in upstate New York that didn't have her on the rolls anymore.

I tried her old number in Manhattan and got a recorded voice that the number was no longer working. I tried again six months later. Then a year later. Then I stopped, because I had been told by everyone who would still talk to me that she had asked me not to look, and the man I was at twenty-six didn't have the standing to argue with what a grieving family said their daughter wanted.

Fitz ordered me to stop after the third or fourth year. He said I was making it worse. He said I was making her visible to whoever had taken her. I obeyed him because what else was I going to do—hire another investigator and watch him also fail? Plus, there were the calls. Those calls that threatened my family if I continued harassing the Saint Claire estate and looking for Ms. Crane.

That was around seven years ago.

And now Fitz has spoken to her.

“How,” I say again.

“She emailed me first. Then I called her.”

My mouth goes dry. “Why?”