Chương 3
When Adrian told him to take Blackthorn back to the stable, Lily shook her head.
“He won’t go with him yet.”
Mateo did not look offended.
He looked at Lily.
Then at the ribbon.
Then at Adrian.
“I can wait.”
Adrian stared at him.
“You know about that too?”
Mateo’s silence lasted too long.
Adrian laughed once.
This time there was nothing accidental about it.
“Apparently I’m the only person in my own house who doesn’t.”
“This isn’t your house,” Victoria said softly.
He looked at her.
She glanced around the ballroom.
“This is the hotel.”
The correction was so absurdly precise that June looked away to hide a reaction.
Adrian felt heat rise into his face.
Victoria had always done that when he became unreasonable: corrected the smallest available fact rather than challenge the larger thing directly.
He used to find it elegant.
Tonight he wanted to break something.
“When did Claire tie the ribbon?”
Lily answered.
“The last night.”
Adrian crouched so abruptly his knee hit the marble.
“What last night?”
June said, “Lily.”
“The last night Claire was here.”
Adrian looked at the girl.
“You saw her?”
Lily nodded.
“You spoke to her?”
Another nod.
“What did she say?”
“Adrian,” June said, sharper now, “she was seven.”
“She’s eight.”
“She was seven then.”
The date landed.
Claire had disappeared eleven months earlier.
Lily had been there.
He had spent eleven months paying private investigators in three states.
He had put up a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward, then doubled it after six weeks.
He had been on national television asking strangers to call a tip line.
He had hired a former federal agent to review the county investigation.
He had accused Claire’s ex-boyfriend of knowing more than he admitted. The young man had lost his job after reporters discovered where he worked.
Adrian had apologized privately.
The apology had not restored the job.
All that time, an eight-year-old child had seen Claire the night she vanished.
“Why didn’t the police interview her?”
“They did,” June said.
Adrian stood.
“What?”
“Not the first night. Later.”
“When?”
“About three weeks after.”
“No.”
June’s eyebrows rose.
“No?”
“I saw every interview summary.”
“No. You saw what your investigator gave you.”
“He had access to—”
“He didn’t have access to everything.”
Adrian looked toward Victoria.
Her face had become very still.
“Tell him,” June said.
Victoria’s hand moved to the diamond at her throat.
The gesture was automatic. Adrian had watched her do it at fundraisers, funerals, and dinners with people she disliked.
“Not here,” Victoria said.
June gave a short humorless laugh.
“You’ve had eleven months to pick a better place.”
Lily leaned into Blackthorn.
The horse lowered his nose against her shoulder.
Adrian noticed the child had begun to tremble.
Not from the horse.
From them.
He forced his hands open.
“Everybody stop.”
Nobody spoke.
He looked at Lily.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?”
She looked at her mother.
June nodded.
“There’s an office upstairs,” Adrian said. “No cameras.”
Lily looked at Blackthorn.
“He can’t go upstairs.”
“No.”
“I want to stay with him.”
Adrian almost said no automatically.
Then he heard himself.
“No” had been the first word of half the conversations he remembered with Claire.
No, you can’t take him on the western trail.
No, you are not dropping chemistry.
No, that boy is twenty-three.
No, you’re not moving to Lexington.
No, you cannot make decisions like this and expect me to finance them.
He looked at Blackthorn.
“All right.”
They moved to the indoor schooling arena behind the hotel’s equestrian wing, a space normally used for demonstrations during auctions. At midnight it smelled of sand, leather, hay, and the faint chemical sharpness of disinfectant.
Blackthorn walked there beside Lily.
Mateo never touched the lead rope.
Adrian followed.
Victoria came last.
June had taken off her catering apron. Under it she wore black slacks and a white shirt with a coffee stain near the bottom button.
Adrian noticed the stain because Claire used to accuse him of looking at clothes when he did not want to look at people.
The arena lights were too bright.
He asked Mateo to turn off half of them.
They sat in the first row of empty bleachers.
Lily stayed at the rail.
Blackthorn stood on the other side with his head over it.
For several minutes nobody spoke.
A floor-cleaning machine hummed somewhere in the hotel.
June opened Lily’s broken shoe and tried to fit the strap back through the buckle.
“It’s torn,” Lily said.
“I see that.”
“You can’t fix torn fake leather with your fingers.”
“I’m discovering that.”
“I told you.”
“I am aware.”
Lily smiled a little.
Adrian looked away.
The ordinariness hurt more than the ribbon.
He had imagined Claire’s disappearance in every catastrophic version available to a frightened father. A vehicle in deep water. A stranger. A fall from Blackthorn that no search team had found. Drugs, although Claire barely drank. An abusive relationship. A psychotic break. Trafficking, because some consultant had used the word during the second week and Adrian had not slept afterward.
He had never imagined that other people knew.
June set the shoe aside.
“Lily saw Claire at the stable around ten thirty that night.”
Adrian turned toward her.
“The security logs showed Claire left the house at nine twelve.”
“She did.”
“Then how was she back at ten thirty?”
“She came through the east paddock.”
“That gate was locked.”
Mateo spoke for the first time.
“Not from the inside.”
Adrian looked at him.
Mateo lowered his eyes.
Claire had known the property better than most security guards. She had grown up testing every boundary Adrian paid to construct.
“What was she doing?”
June looked at Lily.
The girl had begun braiding three strands of Blackthorn’s mane.
“She was saying goodbye.”
Adrian’s chest tightened.
“To who?”
“To the horse,” Lily said.
He waited.
“And me.”
“Why you?”
Lily shrugged.
“She liked me.”
May you like
The answer was so simple it embarrassed him.
Adrian had expected a reason that belonged in an investigation. A secret mission. A hidden plan.
