Darkness.
Did you know that Taylor Swift was not seen in public for over two years at one point, except on stage?
She wasn’t seen entering or leaving a concert venue. No one saw her going into or checking out of a hotel. There are no sightings or pictures of her riding in a car driving to and from her private plane or entering or stepping out of a concert bus.
Except near her summer house in New England, but evidently, all the people of Westerly, Rhode Island, were Swifties and valued her privacy.
But how did Taylor Swift travel around the world to her concerts and remain unseen?
The Sherwood Forest financial forums weren’t the only internet chat rooms Colleen perused. Every Swifties board had a channel dedicated to pictures of a huge, suspicious trunk that was handled gingerly by her bodyguards, not the roadies, and loaded into the passenger compartment of vans and her private plane instead of being stowed in the luggage compartments.
So that was how Colleen Frost ended up contorted into Tristan’s extra-large roller suitcase.
Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her head was up near the handle. She was kneeling at a slant in the cramped space as the suitcase wheels bumped over the seams in the cement floor of the hangar as he rolled her past the police officers.
She kept absolutely still.
A wiggling suitcase might be interpreted as probable cause.
Just before Tristan had zipped her inside, Jian had made a few phone calls to friends at the airport.
A double line of mechanics and airport security personnel had formed between the plane’s stairs and a large limousine that had pulled into the hangar a few yards away.
Inside the wheeled suitcase, Colleen breathed in the faint scents of cinnamon and wood smoke, like walking back from a hike in the middle of the forest to fried apple pies at the fire. That wasn’t Tristan’s cologne, which was the green of walking on pine needles beside the blue water of a lake. This dark scent was the same one Twist had worn at the Devilhouse when she’d been cradled in a blanket in his arms.
From outside the suitcase, she heard Jian yell, “If you obtain a search warrant for the airplane, the plane’s leasing company can allow you entry. I assume you know which one it is.”
Colleen bit her lip and didn’t make a sound. GetJets, the rental company discreetly printed on the plane’s tail, was notorious on Sherwood Forest’s forums for switching out planes to stymie search warrants and thus protect their clients. They were sticklers for privacy almost as much as Apple.
The suitcase she was in lifted and tilted a little, and then she was laid down on her right side.
Under her shoulder, an engine growled and vibrated, and the suitcase rocked as the limousine accelerated.
The zipper in front of her face slowly parted as Colleen pressed her head backward to make sure it didn’t scrape her nose.
The two sides of the zipper fell away, and Tristan’s face appeared. His cheeks were dark with five o’clock shadow, and the skin between his blue eyes was creased with worry. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Let me out of this thing. I can’t believe that worked. No wonder no one saw Taylor for over two years.”
Tristan and Jian finished unzipping the bag, and Colleen remained sitting in it on the floor between the bench seats of the stretch limousine. “I don’t think we should go to the hotel.”
Jian frowned. “I booked it under a pseudonym.”
Night sky and streetlights sped past the car windows.
Colleen said, “At the very least, we should drive by and make sure no one is waiting for us there.”
“Excellent precaution,” Tristan said.
The limousine sharply turned a corner, flopping Colleen sideways. She grabbed Tristan’s leg for balance and glanced up at him.
He was looking down at where she clutched his calf, his eyes turning the bright blue of the hottest stars, and his voice was low as he rumbled, “Good girl.”
Colleen laid her cheek against his knee. Being hunted by corrupt police was terrifying, but hanging onto Tristan soothed her.
His big hand smoothed her hair as the limousine drove through the night.