Paolo
Fanculo. Where is she?
It’s dark in the apartment. The clock says it’s three in the morning. I don’t even know how I slept without knowing where Caitlin was.
I surge out of bed and stalk through the apartment, checking my phone for messages, throwing on the lights.
Where in the fuck could she be?
I try calling her, but not surprisingly, there’s no answer.
I’m ready to drive over to her brother’s dorm and pull him out of bed, but I hold back. That would be harassment, and Caitlin wouldn’t like it.
I start looking through the place more thoroughly, looking for signs. Her suitcase is still there-flung open but not unpacked from our trip to Vegas. Her computer equipment, but not her laptop. I go to her bathroom. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I look.
And that’s when I see the box for a pregnancy test in the trash can. I pull it out. Below it is the actual test. I fish it out of the trash and look at the results.
Madonna. Cristo. Dio. She’s pregnant!
Is that why she’s not here? Where in the fuck did she go?
I go ice cold. Not because she’s pregnant-I’d welcome that if it’s what she wanted, but because she didn’t turn to me with this knowledge. She ran away.
It chills me to the bone and makes me crazy to find her, to give her whatever she needs to get through this decision. To let her know she’s fully supported no matter what.
I start for the door a dozen times, then sit back down. I want to be here if she comes to the apartment.
I wait until dawn breaks. Until the traffic outside becomes a roar. Until there’s no denying she’s not coming back. Pocketing the pregnancy test, as if keeping that evidence with me will somehow help me find her, I leave and head to her old apartment, to see if she’s holed up there.
She isn’t.
My phone rings at 8:30 a. m. and I see it’s Nico. We don’t chitchat, he and I, so I know it’s business, and because of this thing with Caitlin, I nearly crack the phone I grip it so hard.
“Nico.”
“I got a call from my informant at the FBI.”
I didn’t think it was possible for me to go colder, but I do.
“What is it?”
“They picked up your girl yesterday and brought her in. She stayed about three hours and then they let her go. That’s all I know.”
I want to roar with the pain piercing my chest. Did she betray me? All those questions about what I’d do in different scenarios. Was it because she was already working with the feds? Or because she knew she would?
I force breath through my nostrils.
“She’s fucking MIA, Nico,” I tell him, my entire being cracking in half. “She’s MIA and she’s pregnant with my child.”
Nico curses in Italian.
I slam my forehead against the plaster wall and crack it.
I loved that girl.
I still do.
And she’s pregnant.
“Well, if she’s missing that means she didn’t roll over,” Nico says, thinking faster than I am. “If she rolled, she’d be by your side wearing a fucking wire. She wouldn’t disappear and raise flags. She probably got scared between the pregnancy and pressure from the feds and she ran.”
Away from me? Why?
She’s still scared of me.
This is all my fucking fault. I couldn’t show her enough of myself for her to feel safe. To know I’d never hurt her in a million years.
I keep sucking in my breath, processing Nico’s words. They make sense. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“So you gotta figure out where she would go. What can I do to help?”
Right. I gotta figure this shit out. My shoulders crack as I square them. I will fucking find her. I will find her and let her know she doesn’t have to run.
“Find out what happened while she was with the feds, if you can.”
“Yeah, already on it, but my informant didn’t have clearance. He’s going to try, though.”
“Well, let me know if you find anything. I’m going to go shake down-I mean, have a conversation-with her brother. If anyone knows where she would be, it would be him.”
“Yeah. Go find her. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
I know if Nico is offering me comfort, my cracks are showing. And I don’t give a shit.
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Likewise.”
Caitlin
I made a huge mistake coming here. Like colossal.
For one thing, it looks like someone found the hidden key and made themselves at home sometime in the last two years. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been here.
It’s suddenly very clear to me I was stupid to keep this place. It was the only thing Trevor and I inherited from our dad when he died. After they declared him dead, the judge ordered for the land to be sold to pay for our care, but it didn’t sell right away.
And that was when I got serious about hacking. It was a skill I’d already been honing. So I just electronically removed the cabin sale from the government auction and kept it. I put the water, gas and electric on the government’s tab. I don’t feel bad since we don’t use much.
Still, I’ve hung onto it as the one thing we have to our names. This place of our own we could come to if we ever needed to hide out or get away.
Right now, though, I’m wishing we’d sold it and taken the money.
The place is a dump. It’s falling apart. Maybe I’m just creeped out by the fact that someone else has been here. I can tell by the cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. The pair of men’s jeans draped across the unmade bed.
I couldn’t sleep at all last night worrying that whoever it was might be coming back, even though there are no signs that they were here recently.
But the real problem is that I was in such a state of trauma last night, I didn’t even bring any food. My hunger quickly morphed into queasiness and I’ve been throwing up water all morning.
Add to that the very enormous problem that my phone signal’s not working, which means no hotspot or WiFi. No internet.
So now I’m literally stranded here.
In a cabin, in the snow, miles from civilization.
With no food.
If I thought being knocked up by a mobster and hauled in by the feds was bad, I had no idea.
I may not make it out of here alive.
Paolo
From Caitlin’s old apartment, it’s a short trip to Trevor West’s dormitory. I wait outside until he comes out, and then I join him on the sidewalk, matching his pace.
He takes one sidelong look at me and lurches away.
“Don’t run,” I command, because I don’t want to grab him. Assaulting Caitlin’s brother probably isn’t going to help things.
He freezes, but only because he thinks I’m holding a piece on him. I know, because his eyes instantly dart to my hands. When he sees they’re free, he starts to turn again.
“I said, hold up,” I growl.
He hesitates.
“You know who I am?” I don’t have any idea how much Caitlin’s told him. If he even knows about us.
“I have a guess,” he says, wary as hell.
“I’m the guy who’s in love with your sister,” I say.
That stops him. No, he definitely didn’t expect those words. His eyes snap to mine. They are the same shade of cornflower blue as hers. His dark hair hangs over them like shutters. He’s a good-looking kid in an emo kind of way.
“Listen, I need your help.”
Wariness returns to his face and he shifts his stance like he’s ready to run for it again.
“Have you heard from Caitlin? Since yesterday? She’s missing and I-”
“I don’t know where she is,” he says immediately, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders up against the wind. He starts walking away from me.
He’s lying. I always know when they’re lying and this kid’s easy to read.
Once again, I resist the urge to grab his arm and yank him back, instead matching his pace, then step in front of him to block his path. “Listen to me. She got picked up by the feds yesterday.”
That gets his attention. He definitely didn’t know. But he still doesn’t trust me, because now he seems even more determined to get away. Fear flickers over his face. I know how this must seem. If all this kid knows about me is that I’m the guy who killed his dad, he’s not gonna see me as an ally.
“I’m not going to hurt her.” I thrust my hand in my jacket pocket and produce the pregnancy test. I hold it in front of his face. “She’s carrying my child.”
He goes still, looking from the pregnancy test to me. “I never heard a word about you,” he says suspiciously.
“Well, maybe she wasn’t proud of it.” It hurts me to say it out loud. To acknowledge that the woman I love has such a big hang-up with giving herself to me. “She knows I’m not responsible for your dad’s death.”
I need to get that out of the way. If he sees me as his dad’s killer, he’s never going to talk.
“Listen. I think she’s probably freaked out right now. She just found out she’s pregnant, and I’m guessing the feds put pressure on her to turn informant. They probably threatened her with renewing the charges. If she was scared and needed to figure shit out, where would she go?”
His mouth is tight as he looks over my shoulder stonily, like he’s thinking. “There’s a place,” he says finally.
“Where?”
“I’m going with you.”
Okay, sure. He doesn’t trust me. “Fine,” I say curtly. “Get in my SUV.”