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we passed each other in the halls we would nod and do no more. I had the phone numbers of everyone in the building. I grabbed the phone and called the apartment. I hoped Gabriella would answer. My back teeth hurt because I was clenching my jaws so tightly. Like a love struck teenager, I thought I might hang up the moment she answered. The phone rang ten times, twelve, thirteen times. Maybe they really were in Monaco.
    I hung up and then gave it another dozen rings.
    Finally Corben picked up, and with an exasperated growl said, “Who is this?”
    “I’m coming up,” I told him.
    I tossed the phone down and moved out the door on a near-run.
    ~ * ~
    I got to his apartment and we both took an extra moment for what was coming. I stood on one side listening at the door, and I knew he was standing on the other side, his eye to the peephole. We both waited. I had no idea what we were waiting for. I started forward and before I could knock he flung the door open so hard I heard the doorstop snap.
    His face, once bordering handsome, had grown into a collision of sharp edges. His high cheekbones were barely covered with flesh. He looked like he’d been ill for days. His jaw line angled back severe as a hatchet. I hadn’t seen him for several weeks and I could tell he hadn’t been eating. His eyes were feverish, planted too deeply in his head, and he didn’t seem able to completely close his mouth. His upper canines prodded his lower lip. I could smell the sourness of his breath beneath the mint mouthwash. His rapid breathing rustled loudly from him.
    A lot of the old pain and jealousy sped through my blood. My pulse stormed along. I could feel the veins in my wrists clattering. I wondered if I was as ugly to him as he was to me.
    “Where’s Gabriella?” I asked.
    The question hit him like a rabbit punch. I don’t know what he’d been expecting but it sure wasn’t that. His face folded into nine variations of anger, indignity, and confusion before it settled into outright surprise. It suited him just swell.
    He couldn’t come up with anything better than, “What?” and he hated himself for it. He got grounded again and the peevish tone thrummed into his voice once more. “Who are you to ask that?”
    “Who the hell would I have to be? Where is she?”
    “She’s not here.”
    “That doesn’t answer my damn question. Where is she?”
    His resentful front began to fall apart even faster. He couldn’t maintain his outrage. I watched it crack to pieces and the sight startled me. We were getting down deep where the nerve clusters were always on fire for one reason or another. The venom began to seep from me but I held onto that desperate need to see her. He detected it in me and almost took a kind of pity as he said, “She’s gone.”
    “What?”
    “It’s true.”
    I took a lunging step toward him and caught hold of myself in time. I looked over his shoulder and hoped he was lying, but I couldn’t feel her presence in the slightest. I couldn’t smell her perfume, I got no sense of her at all.
    “Gone where?”
    “I don’t know, Will.”
    The way he said my name tightened my chest. It was almost a whimper, an appeal to friendship. The sound of his own voice angered him and I watched his thin face harden further, his shoulders straightening. I took another step until we were toe to toe. “What the hell are you saying?”
    “She hasn’t been home since the day the old man was killed in the lobby.”
    “That was over two weeks ago!”
    He steeled himself. “Yes.”
    “Have you called the police? Filed a missing persons report?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    He didn’t answer. His eyes softened and he dropped his gaze. He fell back a few steps like he was aiming his ass for the rich leather wraparound sofa I saw in his living room, but he began to stumble. I actually had to reach out and grab his arm to keep him from going over. I shook him hard once but he still looked dazed. The cops should’ve been called