There you are again, Adam Harper. Looking like someone else. Someone lighter, happier, younger. Your skin glows, warm and golden. I ache to reach out and touch you.
“My client thinks that this man—who Mia knew as Raife Mannes—has something to do with what happened to her.”
“Thinks.”
“Mannes, too, has disappeared.”
A man walks through the door of the coffee shop wearing a surgical mask. I’ve seen this before, more and more in fact, especially on the subway. I heard on the news that some people believe the virus from China is heading this way. The sight of people wearing masks makes me uncomfortable. Do they know something I don’t? About the air, about a sickness in the air? Or is it that they’re sick, trying to protect others? My father would surely have a rant about this. The end-time wouldn’t come with a bang, he promised, it would sneak in subtly, curling and silent, a poisonous gas.
No one else seems to notice the man in the mask, everyone staring at a screen—phones, laptops. Some people are having low, blank-eyed conversations with no one, speaking to a person they hear in their earphones. In fact, we’re the only two people it seems, sitting across from each other, talking to each other.
“Okay,” I say, refocusing my attention. “So, you say this man Raife, who I know as Adam, was dating Mia, who you said was troubled. Mia goes missing. So does Raife. And your client—Mia’s father—hires you to find her or him or both.”
“That’s right,” he says.
“I don’t like that word—troubled.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it implies that there was something wrong with her. Aren’t we all troubled in one way or another?”
He seems to consider. “It’s not a judgment. Some of us are more vulnerable to predators than others, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Predators.” The word makes my skin tingle.
“There are people who take advantage of vulnerabilities to get what they want.”
I can’t argue with that. “Is that what you think he is? A predator.”
I glance down at the picture, remember the feel of your arms around me. The truth is, I’ve never felt so safe or loved as I did when I was with you. How can you not be the person I thought you were? There must be some mistake.
“All I know is that a woman is missing, and so is the man she was dating,” Kirk answers. “That he was not who he claimed to be. That all her accounts have been drained. And she left her father, her friends, her apartment, and phone behind without a word.”
I search for something to say, but all the words jam up in my throat.
He goes on, “Then nine months later, his profile is back up on Torch under another name.”
You and I, Adam, we had the talk about exes. You told me about your high school sweetheart. Your first real love, a British girl you met while you did a year abroad in London. You did mention someone else—there was a woman more recently, one with emotional problems. You said that the breakup was ugly, protracted, hard. That you hadn’t been with anyone since. You made it sound like a couple of years. I told you about my college boyfriend, not everything, the few dates and hookups I’ve had since. Embarrassing, I guess. Most women in their late twenties might be married, have children, or serious partnerships. Or at least they’ve had serious relationships that ended. Not me. You’re the first person I thought I might be able to share myself with, all my layers.
You are not surprised by the force of the storm. Rilke. That was the line that hooked me in.
“So how did the trail lead to me?” I ask.
“That’s my job,” he says. “I’m a detective. And you should know—everyone should know—that privacy is a thing of the past. If you have the right connections—and I do—anybody’s information is for sale.”
“That sounds like a lecture, not an answer.”
He finishes his coffee and places the cup on the table. There’s a thing he does with his hands, make a fist of one and cups it with the other hand, squeezes.
“I have a couple of Torch profiles, so do other people at my firm,” he says. “We’ve been watching for his photo to come up. I think this is how he operates. He finds women on online dating apps.”
I don’t love the way that sounds. I think this is how he operates.
“Women? There are—others.”
He doesn’t answer. “When his photo came up finally, it was pretty easy to find his matches—with the right connections at Torch.”