“Philippe Petit,” Ruthanna whispered beside Ethan. “I met him once in Paris.” Her hand now squeezed his forearm tightly. “She’s telling the truth, isn’t she? That it was an accident?”

  Ethan thought carefully before he answered, remembering the tragic story of Ruthanna’s daughter, Sophia. Ruthanna would never know if Sophia had been so heartbroken over the breakup with Trace Jones that she’d killed herself in that hotel room—or if it had all been some kind of terrible, drunken mistake.

  He covered Ruthanna’s hand with his. “I don’t think she wanted to die,” he said gently.

  Ruthanna’s tense shoulders dropped. “That means a lot. You know her better than anyone,” she said.

  Which is not saying much, Ethan thought.

  “But I can’t stop thinking: What if she wasn’t ready, and I pushed her too hard?” Ruthanna said. “Sometimes a thing you think is a favor ends up being the heaviest kind of burden. But by the time you realize it, it’s too late, and you don’t know how to take it back…” She stopped and looked up at him through her big dark glasses. “I don’t want it to be my fault,” she whispered.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “All we’ve ever done is try to help her. But sometimes I get the feeling that she’s not used to being helped.”

  Patience, the nurse from earlier, approached. “Are you the husband?” she asked Ethan.

  “Friend,” he said quickly.

  “Have you noticed any changes in her sleeping or eating lately?” she asked as she shut the door to AnnieLee’s room.

  “No,” he said. He patted Ruthanna’s hand. “She was happy. Excited. She has a lot to look forward to. I don’t think she was trying to hurt herself.”

  But what, then, was she trying to do? he thought. The word came to him, sudden and surprising as a slap in the face. Escape.

  “Sir?” Patience said. “I asked you if you knew any of her next of kin that we could contact.”

  Ignoring her, Ethan turned to Ruthanna. “I’m sorry,” he said. “AnnieLee wants me to get her things, and I should probably go do that.”

  When he was almost out the door, he heard the nurse say to Ruthanna, “Do I know you, ma’am? You look awful familiar to me.”

  Ruthanna demurred in her low, rich voice. “Oh, I’m not from around here, darlin’.”

  Chapter

  76

  Back at the Aquitaine Hotel, the manager visibly trembled as he let Ethan into AnnieLee’s room. “…just beside ourselves,” he was saying from the hallway. “Never in a million years would I ever…” He looked up at Ethan. “If there’s anything we can do—”

  “Thank you,” Ethan said, and firmly shut the door in the man’s tanned, worried face. The poor man was probably expecting to be hit with a lawsuit any minute, and Ethan would have felt sorry for him if not for the fact that every ounce of his own concern and worry was being used up by the infuriating, intoxicating AnnieLee Keyes.

  As Ethan turned around to face the hotel suite, he felt a jolt of adrenaline. Without even taking another step into the room, he knew that someone else had been in there with AnnieLee, and that the man had not been invited.

  There was the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke in the air—AnnieLee never smoked—and, even fainter, what seemed to him like the metallic scent of fear.

  Ethan leaned against the wall and closed his eyes as an old, sharp anguish shot through him. He was back in North Carolina, walking into a room where his wife lay strangled. She’d been wearing the nightgown he’d bought her for her birthday, the one made of silk as red as blood.

  He took a deep, shuddering inhale—One, two, three, four—held it—One, two, three, four—and let it out: One, two, three, four. He waited four seconds and did the whole thing again. Box breathing, Jeanie had called it, and she had said it kept her calm in moments of great stress.

  If only, he thought, it could have kept her safe.

  Then Ethan pushed himself off the wall, shaking his head as if he could rattle loose the memories of his wife. He still missed Jeanie, despite her betrayal. But it was time to worry about a living woman.

  He crept silently through the entryway, though he knew that whoever had come in had long since vanished. The bedroom lay ahead of him, and the living room was to the left. He went into the bedroom first. The bed was in disarray, its covers kicked to the floor. He glanced over at the muted TV, which was broadcasting drone footage of an enormous cliffside mansion. Closed-captioning suggested that it could be his for a mere sixteen million euros.

  A black dress with a muted sparkle dangled halfway off the end of the bed. He felt the heavy, expensive fabric as he read the card from Ruthanna: You know what I say about “too much”… He tossed the card back onto the bed—he did indeed know.

  And it certainly explained the shoe he saw lying in the middle of the bed. A thin, impossibly high stiletto with a jewel-encrusted heel, it looked more like a weapon than it did footwear. He couldn’t imagine AnnieLee ever wearing such a thing, though clearly Ruthanna hoped her protégé might be convinced. He spotted the other shoe by the wall, as if AnnieLee had flung it there in a huff after trying it on. He bent down to pick it up and noticed a pale bit of something clinging to the heel. He peered closer. It looked like…a scrape of skin.

  Ethan stood motionless, even as his heartbeat quickened. Someone had used the shoe as a weapon.

  He set it carefully on the bed and moved into the living room. The balcony doors were open wide, their pale curtains fluttering lightly in the breeze. A vase of roses had been knocked over, and water pooled on the coffee table, dripping down onto the thick cream carpet.

  He walked out onto the balcony, gripped the railing, and looked down. He felt an almost overwhelming vertigo as he thought about falling that far. Below he could see the broken glass awning, and ribbons of caution tape blocking the hotel’s front entrance.

  Ethan stepped away from the railing and breathed slowly again, trying to calm himself. But it seemed he could feel AnnieLee’s desperate panic, and the feeling caused him nearly physical pain.

  Someone had come into her room, and this someone was a person she feared so much that she chose to throw herself off a balcony rather than face him. The realization of what this meant felt like a punch to Ethan’s gut. The person couldn’t be a crazed fan, or an anonymous petty Vegas criminal, or a random psychopath. He was someone AnnieLee knew.

  Was he one of the men from the black truck? The driver of the Impala? Or someone so frightening that he was only now making himself known?

  Ethan knew that he should call the police. But he also knew that doing so would most likely backfire. AnnieLee would be furious, and she would push against everyone, dodge any questions, refuse to cooperate. And how could the police investigate a crime that its victim said never even happened?

  He stepped back into the hotel room. He’d played enough amateur detective for the day. Anyway, the answers weren’t to be found at the Aquitaine Hotel. They lay with AnnieLee.

  He found her bag and began to gather up what little clothing there was. And as he did, he asked himself, What sort of person packed a tiny duffel bag for a three-week road trip?

  A person used to privation and lack—that’s who. Ruthanna joked that there was no such thing as having too much, but suddenly Ethan understood that AnnieLee didn’t even believe in having enough. He’d always thought that she wore the same too-small boots and the same two pairs of jeans because she was superstitious: she thought they were lucky. But now it seemed to him that there were darker, sadder reasons.

  Either she didn’t think she deserved more or she knew she needed to travel light, so that at any moment she could grab everything and run.

  Chapter

  77

  So she really seemed okay? Body, mind, all of it?” Jack asked, pouring himself a Scotch from Ruthanna’s minibar, though five o’clock was still a ways off.

  Ruthanna nodded, her mouth full of fancy French chocolate. Low-carb diet be damned—stress like this called for truffles, or whatever the hell those delicious little cocoa-covered balls were. “AnnieLee was as impatient and headstrong as ever,” she said. “But then she was sleeping when I left. I think they still want to do some kind of psychiatric evaluation.” She picked up another truffle and then set it back down again. Maybe Scotch was the thing for stress. Or both. “I somehow still can’t believe it,” she said. “I keep thinking someone’s going to pinch my arm and tell me to wake up.”

  “If only,” Jack said, grimacing and rubbing his forehead.

  Ruthanna hadn’t seen him so rattled in years, and she patted a spot on the couch next to her. “Take a load off for a minute, hon,” she said.

  He sat down heavily and put his feet up on the coffee table. “I should be on the phone with ACD, and the Aquitaine Event Center people, and about a thousand other lawyers and bean counters. But right now I just need to drink a little of this Scotch and be grateful that our sweet girl is okay.”

  Ruthanna turned to look at his familiar, rugged profile. Our sweet girl. It was as if AnnieLee belonged to them the way a child would, and the phrase sent a sudden rush of emotion through her. She was so grateful for Jack, she cared about AnnieLee so much, and seeing her lying tiny and alone in that hospital bed had just about broken Ruthanna’s heart.

  Had she done wrong by dreaming up this concert? She knew how much pressure AnnieLee was under, and how it was all new to her—she hadn’t been performing since she was knee-high to a grasshopper the way Ruthanna had. AnnieLee hadn’t had time to grow the thick skin that was necessary to survive.

  Ruthanna let out a long sigh. Sophia hadn’t grown that thick skin, either, and though she’d never truly wanted to be a performer, she had always been in the public eye. She’d resented it, too, which was one of the things that had made her relationship with Trace Jones so ironic. She’d finally gotten out of her mother’s shadow, only to turn around and walk right into his.

  And what if that was the thing that had killed her?

  On the morning of Sophia’s funeral, Ruthanna had stepped outside her house to find a helicopter over her lawn, hovering so close she could feel the wind on her face. Her phone had been ringing day and night with reporters who wanted to hear about her grief, as if her pain was something she owed them.

  She didn’t owe them anything but her music, but after that day she couldn’t give it to them anymore. Sophia’s death—and the world’s fanatical fascination with it—had broken Ruthanna. She’d quit the business.

  And now, years later, she was back, and another girl she loved was hurting. She couldn’t bear to lose this one, too.

  Jack put his hand on her leg and squeezed affectionately. “What about you? Are you doing okay?” he asked.

  She was trying to figure out how to answer the question when her phone rang. It was Ethan.

  “Hey, cowboy—” she began, but Ethan’s words tumbled right over hers.

  “I’m at the hospital,” he said. “But AnnieLee’s not here. Ruthanna, she’s gone.”

  Chapter

  78

  Ruthanna let the phone fall from her fingers onto the carpet. Jack began to rub her back, as if he could smooth away her rising panic.

  “That damn fool girl ran,” she said.

  Jack bent down, picked up her phone, and held it out to her. “Call the hospital,” he urged.

  “What for?” Ruthanna snapped, her numbness shifting quickly to anger. “Should I ask how the hell they let a banged-up girl in a hospital gown and no shoes sneak out the back door?”

  “You could ask if anyone saw anything—”

  “Ethan’s on top of that already, Jack,” she said. “And you know full well what’d happen if I called them up. I’d pitch a hissy fit so big it’d have a tail on it, and there’s no way that would help.”

  “It might make you feel better,” Jack said.

  “Yes, it might,” Ruthanna agreed. “All the same, I think I won’t do it.” She put her face in her hands. “Why didn’t I just stay with her?”

  “Because you thought she was safe there,” Jack said gently.

  “I did,” she whispered. And knowing how wrong she’d been about that made her want to cry. “I thought they were taking care of her.” She squeezed her stinging eyes shut. She never should have left; she should’ve sat by AnnieLee’s bedside until she woke up.

  Unless, of course, AnnieLee hadn’t really been sleeping in the first place.

  Then Ruthanna heard Jack say, “Damn it,” and she looked up to see him scrolling down his phone.

  Her heart gave a lurch. “Damn what?”

  He held up the screen so she could read the headline.

  AnnieLee Keyes Jumps from Luxe Vegas Hotel

  [Click HERE for DRAMATIC Photos]

  Speculation the rising star was suicidal

  Ruthanna grabbed the phone and clicked through, but when she saw the photograph of a blurry, white-robed figure—AnnieLee, caught mid-plunge—she put the phone down. “Suicidal? That’s horseshit!”

  “Anything to get eyeballs,” Jack said.

  “Don’t I know it,” Ruthanna said bitterly. “The people behind these gossip sites will piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining. But it’s one thing to say I’m having an affair with my personal trainer and another thing entirely to say my protégé flung herself off a balcony on purpose!”

  “I’m sure Eileen is doing everything she can,” Jack said. “But once these guys smell blood…”

  Ruthanna didn’t plan to read the article. “Are they saying that she tried to kill herself or that she already did?”

  “Depends on which site you’re reading.”

  “Maybe they’re the ones I should call,” Ruthanna said angrily. “‘FYI, AnnieLee didn’t mean to jump out of a window, but she did mean to up and vanish, so maybe you can pull your heads out of your—’”

  “Ruthanna,” Jack said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You know how this goes. We release a statement. ‘AnnieLee Keyes was injured in an accident, and is recuperating under a doctor’s care in an undisclosed location. She requests privacy,’ et cetera. It’s a terrible reality, but there’s a standard PR line.”

  Ruthanna knew Jack was right, but it hardly mattered, because she didn’t truly care what people said—she only cared that AnnieLee was safe. She dialed AnnieLee’s cell, and it rang six times before going to voicemail. Ruthanna didn’t bother leaving a message.

  “I’m going to call the police,” she told Jack. “I’m going to talk to someone who actually knows what they’re doing, and I’m going to make them find her.”

  She paced the room as she dialed. A few minutes later, she was connected to a woman who introduced herself as Officer Tucker.

  “I’d like to report a missing person,” Ruthanna said.

  “All right,” the officer said. “May I have the person’s name?”

  “Her name is AnnieLee Keyes,” Ruthanna said. “K-e-y-e-s.”

  “And tell me about the last time you had contact with Ms. Keyes.”

  “I saw her this morning.” Ruthanna swore she could hear the woman exhaling on the other end of the line, as if she thought she was dealing with some kind of nut.

  “Just a few hours ago, then. Okay. Did you see her in person?” Officer Tucker asked.

  “Yes. She was in the hospital.” Then Ruthanna recounted what she knew of the events leading up to AnnieLee’s fall—which, she realized, was almost nothing. How had that child fallen off a balcony?

  “Do you believe she is a risk to herself?” Officer Tucker asked.

  “No,” Ruthanna said quickly. She spoke out of stubbornness and loyalty. But as soon as Officer Tucker began to talk, Ruthanna realized her mistake.

  “If an adult wishes to spend some time alone,” the officer said, “without notifying friends or family of their whereabouts, they are entitled to do that, ma’am. It sounds like she was under a lot of pressure. She might just be trying to take a little break.”

  Ruthanna took a deep breath. “I misspoke. I do think she is in danger,” she said.

  “All right,” the officer said. “I want you to tell me more about why you think that. But first I do want to reassure you that over fifteen hundred people go missing a day in this country, and the vast majority of them are found safe and unharmed.”

  “But she wouldn’t just walk away from everything!” Ruthanna said.

  “Have you reached out to her family? Her friends? Anyone who might have been in touch with her after you were?”

  Ruthanna sucked in her breath. AnnieLee’s family? Her friends? Ruthanna had no idea who any of those people might be. She was trying to figure out how to explain this to Officer Tucker when she heard a sharp knocking at the door. Jack walked over to see who it was, and a moment later he returned with Ethan Blake, whose face was shadowed with worry.

  Ruthanna motioned for him to sit. He didn’t. “No, I don’t actually have their contact information,” Ruthanna said to the officer. “But it’s extremely important that we find AnnieLee as soon as possible.”

  “Who’s she talking to?” Ethan asked Jack, and when Jack said, “The police,” Ethan reached out and took the phone out of Ruthanna’s hand.

  “Thank you for your time,” he said to the officer. “We’ll call you back.” Then he hung up.

  Ruthanna’s mouth fell open. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Calling the police won’t help anyone, Ruthanna. AnnieLee doesn’t want to talk to them, and she doesn’t trust them. If she sees a cop, wherever she is, she’s going to run. I don’t know why, but I know I’m right.”

  “So, what: we just sit here and do nothing?” Ruthanna said. “Wait for her to call us on the phone she left behind and tell us that she’s perfectly fine?”

  “No, Ruthanna,” Ethan said. “I’m going to go find her.”