Chapter 2 - The Edge of the ContinentThe rain in Newport, Oregon, did not fall in polite, vertical streams like it did in New York. It blew sideways off the Pacific, heavy with salt and cold enough to bite through wool.
Amy stood on the wooden deck outside the second-floor apartment above The Salt-Stained Page, a small, two-story bookstore tucked into the curved harbor of Yaquina Bay. Below her, the dark green water churned against the wooden pilings of the docks, and the rhythmic, hollow clang of a distant navigational buoy echoed through the gray fog.
She wrapped her thick knitted cardigan tighter around her waist, taking a deep breath of the damp, pine-scented air.
"You're going to catch pneumonia if you stand out there without a proper raincoat," a voice called from inside.
Amy turned to see Mrs. Gable—a woman in her late sixties with silver hair tied in a messy braid, wearing a denim apron smeared with ink and coffee stains—holding two steaming mugs.
"I like it," Amy said, stepping through the sliding glass door into the warm, cedar-scented living room. "It doesn't smell like exhaust or expensive cologne."
Mrs. Gable handed her a mug of chamomile tea. "Well, Oregon has plenty of fog to share. Claire called me from London yesterday to make sure you settled in alright. She said if I let you pay rent before the baby arrives, she'll boycott my inventory."
"Claire is too generous," Amy murmured, sitting down on the worn leather sofa. "She didn't have to give me this space."
"Claire knows what it's like to need a fresh horizon," Mrs. Gable replied softly, sitting in the armchair across from her. She looked at Amy with sharp, kind eyes that had seen forty years of coastal transients come and go. "She told me you were running from a heavy life in New York."
"I'm not running," Amy corrected gently, taking a sip of the warm tea. "I'm arriving."
Mrs. Gable smiled, the deep lines around her eyes crinkling. "I like that distinction. Well, the apartment is yours as long as you need it. The shop opens at eight every morning. If you ever feel like helping out with the inventory or sitting in the corner with a sketchbook, the kettle is always on."
"Thank you, Mrs. Gable."
"Call me Eleanor." The older woman stood up, smoothing her apron. "Get some sleep, Amy. You look like you've been carrying the weight of two worlds on your shoulders."
When Eleanor left, Amy walked over to the corner of the room where her single suitcase sat unpacked. Next to it was an easel and a box of professional oil paints she had purchased at a small art shop near the Portland airport before driving the rental car down to the coast.
She hadn't touched a paint brush in nearly three years. Daniel had always encouraged her art in theory—he liked having her paintings framed in his corporate conference rooms to show off his "artistic wife"—but he had hated the mess, the smell of turpentine in their pristine apartment, and the hours she spent lost in her own mind when he wanted her ready for a last-minute dinner with investors.
Amy sat on the stool in front of the blank canvas.
She picked up a piece of charcoal. Her hand hesitated for a fraction of a second, then began to move in broad, confident strokes. She didn't draw a Manhattan skyline. She didn't draw the ballroom or the chandeliers.
She drew the rough, churning sea outside her window—the dark waves crashing against gray rocks, and high above them, a single, fierce sea bird cutting through the storm.
In Manhattan, three thousand miles away, the office of Harrison Freight Systems on the seventy-fourth floor of the World Trade Center looked like a war room.
Daniel had not slept in seventy-two hours.
His suit jacket was thrown over the back of his executive chair, his silk tie loosened, his dark hair disheveled. Across his broad oak desk stood three men: his chief of security, his personal private investigator, and his lead legal counsel.
"What do you mean you can't find her?" Daniel demanded, his voice dangerously low, his eyes bloodshot. "She didn't vanish into thin air! She took a car from the Plaza!"
"The car dropped her at JFK, Terminal 4," the lead investigator said, laying a sheaf of papers on the desk. "She paid the driver in cash. She bought a ticket at the counter under her maiden name—Amy Harrison—for a flight to Seattle, with a connecting flight to San Francisco. But she never boarded the San Francisco leg."
"Why?" Daniel leaned across the desk, his knuckles planted on the wood. "Where did she go from Seattle?"
"She left the Seattle airport, rented a vehicle under a third-party corporate account that belonged to a defunct art foundation she closed two years ago, and drove south," the investigator explained. "The vehicle’s GPS tracker was disabled three hours after she picked it up. She knows how to hide, Daniel. She isn't using her primary credit cards. She isn't checking into major hotels."
Daniel slammed his palm onto the desk, making the coffee cups rattle. "Find her! I don't care how many operatives you hire! Check every seaside town, every art colony, every small college town between Seattle and Los Angeles!"
"Daniel," his attorney, Marcus Vance, said gently, stepping forward. "You need to consider the legal implications here. If Amy has formally left, and if she's carrying an heir to the Harrison estate—"
"She is my wife!" Daniel shouted, turning on his lawyer with a look of pure fury. "She isn't an 'implication'! She is my wife, carrying my child, and she is out there somewhere alone because I was too blind to see what was happening right in front of me!"
The office door swung open quietly.
Vanessa Cole stepped into the room, holding a slender iPad and a folder of press releases. She was wearing a tailored white suit, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed, her expression a masterclass in professional sympathy.
"Daniel," Vanessa said softly, ignoring the other men in the room. "The board meeting starts in ten minutes. The European transport representatives are on line two. We need to clear up the press statements regarding your absence from yesterday's summit."
Daniel turned his gaze onto Vanessa.
For the first time in two years, he didn't see a brilliant, ambitious partner who made his job easier. He saw the cold, calculated wedge that had driven his wife out of his life. He remembered the message on his phone: She has no idea, does she?
"Get out," Daniel said quietly.
Vanessa froze, her polished smile flickering. "What?"
"Get out of my office, Vanessa," Daniel repeated, his voice dropping into an icy register that made the security guard step back toward the door. "And by the end of the day, I want your resignation on my desk."
Vanessa’s face went pale. "Daniel, you can't be serious! I have done nothing but build the reputation of your foundation! The PR strategy for the entire European merger depends on—"
"The PR strategy is over," Daniel said, walking toward her until he was standing inches away, his eyes burning with an intense, unforgiving light. "I let you standing beside me become a substitute for my marriage. I let you speak for my company while my wife sat alone in our home. Pack your things, Vanessa. If you are still in this building by five o'clock, security will escort you to the street."
Vanessa stared at him, her mouth slightly open, before her expression hardened into pure venom. "You're throwing away a fifty-million-dollar PR campaign for a woman who ran away from you?"
"I’m throwing away the trash," Daniel said coldly. "Leave."
Vanessa turned on her heel and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
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Daniel stood in the center of his massive office, looking out at the foggy Manhattan skyline. He pulled the ultrasound photograph from his coat pocket, tracing the tiny image with his thumb.
"I will find you, Amy," he whispered to the empty room. "Even if I have to dismantle this entire company to do it."
