The Survivor - Cristin Harber Page 0,63
she pulled it open for him to bring the bags in. They came to another door, and from what he could tell, she entered a different code that buzzed them into the apartment lobby. “You’d think I’d shy away from elevators after today.”
He snickered. “I think you don’t shy away from much.”
“Oh, ya know. Except for things I need to say.”
His grin hitched, and he had to give her that.
She called the elevator. A woman in a power suit walked through the front doors, never glancing up from her cell phone. The elevator opened. Two men stepped out. Both looked past them like they were ghosts.
The woman and Amanda stepped into the elevator. Both pressed for their floor without acknowledging one another, and he realized why Amanda liked the appeal of DC living. So many people were so involved with their self-importance that most didn’t look around to see what they might miss. Or, at least, that was Hagan’s hot take.
They arrived at Amanda’s floor and walked down an L-shaped hallway. After they turned the corner, her apartment and an exit for the stairwell were the only doors within view.
Instead of a door lock, she had another punch code and sensors that he hadn’t noticed on other apartments. “High tech.”
Her grin waffled. “Uh-huh.”
They entered, and she disabled a security alarm. The still air felt untouched. Hagan pulled their bags into the living room and parked them against the wall. Amanda approached him as though she were walking a tightrope, but at an arm’s length away, she turned—“I need to check something”—and hurried down the hall.
“All right.” Tension balled his blood again. He paced the living room. Books with cracked spines lined shelves around a television. Hagan looked for pictures and found none. “How long have you lived here?”
“Since after I left college,” she called from another room. “Halle was my roommate for a while.”
“Huh,” he muttered under his breath, “bet that was fun.”
Amanda returned but pinned herself to the wall. “The store name.”
It took him a moment to reframe his thoughts to work. Hagan nodded. “The one that didn’t match up.”
She skirted the room and sat on the edge of the couch. “The footnotes didn’t say anything about the change.”
“Right.” They’d double-checked over breakfast in bed.
“It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t let it go.”
He sat on an armchair and repositioned a throw pillow. He frowned. The store’s name seemed a distant second to the attempted abduction. “Of our two headaches.” Hagan shifted the pillow again, then chucked it across the room. “I’ve gotta admit, that’s not the one I care about.”
“If they’re connected—”
“They are.” He’d considered the entire job a farce. They’d found nothing, and someone had tried to grab Amanda. God only knew why. “I feel like you’re forgetting someone tried to—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not the expert here, but it feels like you’re stuck on who, and I haven’t moved past why.” He stopped cold. “You already know why?”
Her lips parted as wide as her eyes. Fear rolled off of her in waves.
Hagan jerked the armchair toward the couch and sat on the edge of the cushion, leaning closer, damn near begging her to open her mouth. “Amanda.”
She barely nodded.
“Before.” He licked his lip and tried to regulate the bristling anxiety knotting in his neck. “What did you have to tell me?”
She swallowed hard. “You have to know—”
“Yeah, babe, I have to know,” he growled.
Amanda shook her head and gasped like the threat had clogged her throat. She wiped her hands over her cheeks. They trembled as she pulled them away. “Before anything else. I have to tell you—” The color drained from her face. “I am in—”
The door buzzer rang, and a man’s voice called from a speaker in the hall, “Coming up, kiddo.”
“What?” she screeched and spun. “No.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
FIVE YEARS AGO
FLOYD LIBRARY
WASHINGTON COLLEGE
The overhead lights hummed. Mandy flipped her spiral notebook over and pretended to study her chicken scratch, highlighter poised as though she were preparing for the midterm and not eyeing Halle leaning way too close to Billy.
“Maybe we should take a break.” Maybe Mandy’s best friend and boyfriend should steer clear from hushed conversations over a shared biology book. Or, maybe, Mandy needed to chill. Her new relationship was just that. New. Halle and Billy had known each other forever. She didn’t think she was the jealous type. Then again, she’d never had friends who acted like friends.
Billy leaned back in his chair until he balanced on two