DURING THE promo film, C.J. kept muttering the advantages and disadvantages of picking each champion through a brilliant lock-jawed smile. The words rolled like scattered coins in all directions. Hopeful. Symbolic. Raw. Young. I didn’t try to chase them down, or assign any of them to the fleet of fighters standing on the opposite side of the stage, worthless checks in hand. Merritt was bleeding in a goddamn ambulance and none of the people left standing could fill the magnitude of Logan’s void. None of them shone bright enough to blind this whipped-up, fight-fueled crowd. Every choice was the wrong choice.
My vision was blurring, my head pounding. The only thing anchoring me at that moment was Nora’s hand, the firm pressure of hope or at least sanity. I heard myself telling her about the police, pathetic, like a child asking his mother to make it better, but I’d hardly gotten two sentences out before I heard her sharp inhale.
“Have they searched the park?”
Then her hand was gone. She backed into the crowd, eyes wide and instantly averted, a woman who knew she’d said something wrong. The body language was unmistakable. How the hell did Nora know about the park?
I tried to follow her. I needed to hold her in place until my head could process what her body was communicating, but C.J. pulled me in the opposite direction and Nora slipped away. When Logan’s voice surrounded us, the crowd screamed. She talked about dying in a locker room and blood-splatter flashed through my head, but it wasn’t Logan’s blood. Logan was in a park in Eagan where—I finally made the connection—Nora lived. She’d told me the other day when we walked across the Stone Arch Bridge. I’m married to a cook. I’m a mother. We live in Eagan.
I caught a glimpse of Nora’s hair as she ducked around a group of people and descended the stairs from the stage. My hand was still warm from her grip.
“Tell them Logan’s missing.”
“What?” C.J. hissed through a seething caricature of a smile. “Are you fucking kidding me? The internet will explode. Some of these people traveled thousands of—”
“We can’t pick a new face for Strike until we find out what happened to Logan.”
“What … happened … ?”
As she struggled to make sense of what I was saying, I took her phone out and pulled up Nora’s picture from the partner page of Parrish Forensics. “This is a person of interest. Put it on every screen. Now.”
C.J. gaped at the phone and swiveled to look behind us. “She was just here. Where did she go? Gregg, what happened to Logan?”
The film ended and as the emcee took the microphone, a low chant started and spread in every direction. Logan. It gained volume and rhythm until I couldn’t even hear the emcee, who stood inches away from me. Logan, Logan.
I shouted directly into C.J.’s ear. “We want an army out there looking for her. Tell them to search parks and suburbs, to turn over every rock, but most importantly, we need to find Nora Trier. Understand?”
“Gregg—”
But I’d already left the stage, walking purposefully down the stairs. I couldn’t see Nora, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to run. She might think she was invisible, that a quiet, dark-suited accountant could do something horrifying and slip away unnoticed, but she couldn’t hide from fifty thousand of us. I strode in the direction she’d gone, pushing through the groups swarming the aisles, feeling calmer than I had in months.
I know you don’t understand. At least at first you don’t, but give yourself a minute and forget about me. Who the hell am I anyway? Just another suit, another strange creature speaking a strange language. I want you to consider your life for a moment and the things or people who mean the most to you. You can see them, hovering around you, everything bright and good. Everything you would fight for. Maybe you feel yourself drawn more strongly toward one of them. A grandson. A lover you met in an airport, perhaps. Maybe even a company you dreamed and hustled to life. It’s okay. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. There’s no logic to what we love, to the things that pull at our deepest core. You would die for all of these things, of course, but say you were standing in a flour mill and there was an explosion, an instant rending of death from life. Your fast muscle twitch would take over and throw your incinerating body over that one person, that dearest, most precious thing. It’s worth a hundred of you, and the thought finds you in the shadows of every day, both sustaining and destroying you. And it will all be worth it, every sacrifice, every piece of you scorched away, as long as you can see them succeed. You will give everything, and you’ll do it with the fire of that explosion in your gut, telling you that you’re running out of time, that your chances to feed this great and beautiful thing are numbered, and you don’t know how many moments are left for it to be yours.
Strike was that thing for me. My true love. My only child. Two minutes ago I didn’t know how many moments I had left with Strike. But now, without even realizing it, Nora had helped me save the one thing that mattered most.
I’d known Nora Trier was special without understanding exactly why. I’d been drawn to her again and again, fumbling with my adolescent gestures, my idiotic advances, but now I saw the truth and it was so much more than I could have hoped for or imagined. She hadn’t found the money; she’d found the match to light Logan Russo on fire.
C.J.’s announcement stopped the crowd in midchant.
“Logan is missing.”
I passed the concessions, where everyone had fallen silent and vendors froze midtransaction with credit cards dangling forgotten in the air. C.J. outlined the situation quickly, with absolute gravity and poise, and then posted Nora’s picture on every TV and jumbotron in the arena, setting the entire stadium into unrest. Logan. Missing. Person of interest. Everyone on the concourse began coming back to life, but with purpose now. They started to talk and text, heads craning in every direction.
The rumble grew louder, the kindling catching fire, carrying heat past my body and far into the night. Minneapolis would feel it. The country would feel it. If Logan was dead, Strike would burn in the hearts of the world forever.
When the second-floor exit came into view, I saw a familiar form moving past the security guards. Jesus, she’d gotten through. Was I the only person on the planet who could see this woman? By the time I reached the exit she was halfway down the skyway, rushing toward downtown, and when she saw me behind her, she broke into a sprint.
But she couldn’t outrun the explosion.