Chapter 2 Anna?

The first thing Michael heard was wood breaking, and for a second he didn’t even realize it was him doing it.

The desk split under his hands, the top collapsing into a scatter of paper and pens. A mug hit the floor and cracked. Jon was still standing by the door, not moving or speaking, just watching him.

“Say it again,” Michael told him.

Jon swallowed. “We checked all the girls. None matched Anna’s record. We pulled prints, cross-checked files, ran databases…”

“Check them again.”

Jon opened his mouth and the chair was already across the room before he got a word out. It hit the wall and left a dent and chips of paint scattered across the floor. Jon didn’t move.

“We think she was in the crossfire,” he said. “The building collapsed before extraction. If she was there…”

“She wasn’t.”

“Michael…”

“She wasn’t!” Michael drove his fist into what was left of the desk and felt the wood give under his knuckles. The pain shot up his arm and he didn’t care.

Just when he thought he had finally found what he lost, he realized it wasn’t over. The girl he thought was Anna wasn’t Anna. And now Jon was standing in his office telling him she might have been in that building when it came down, that he might have been standing thirty feet away from her when the roof caved in.

Jon stepped closer. “You’ve done everything you can. Maybe it’s time to let go.”

Michael looked at him. A bottle was on the desk and his hand found it and he threw it at the wall beside Jon, not at him, but close enough. Whiskey ran down the plaster and the glass scattered across the floor.

Jon didn’t flinch. “That wasn’t going to bring her back.”

Michael barked a laugh without humor. “Neither was giving up.”

“You were running on fumes. You hadn’t slept. You were seeing ghosts in every corner.”

“I built this empire on ghosts,” Michael snapped, the words more raw than he intended. “Don’t tell me when to stop.”

Jon exhaled hard and rubbed the back of his neck. “You think I wanted to say it? I was there too. I saw those cages. I heard what they did to those girls. But Anna…” He stopped and shook his head. “If she was in that building when it went down…”

“She wasn’t.” Michael got it out before he could finish. “Don’t say it. Don’t finish that sentence. Not in front of me.”

Nobody moved. Then Jon said quietly, “You’ll burn through everyone around you if you keep going like this. Anna is gone, it’s time you moved on Michael.”

Michael walked toward him and Jon didn’t step back. They stood close enough that Michael could smell the smoke still on his jacket from the night before.

“Don’t you dare say that again,” Michael said.

Jon looked at him for a long moment like he intended to argue, then shut it. He simply nodded once and walked out and the door clicked shut behind him.

Michael pressed both hands flat against the wall and pushed until his knuckles went white and the drywall cracked under his palms. Dust came off on his fingers. The pain in his wrist flared and he held onto it.

Anna used to sit across from him when she was small and trace the veins on the back of his hands with her finger. She told him they looked like rivers on a map. She said she would follow them one day to find out where he kept all his anger. He told her it wasn’t somewhere anyone should go. She laughed and said storms didn’t bother her.

The laptop on the desk still had Jon’s report open on the screen. Her name wasn’t on a single line. Michael stared at it until his jaw ached from clenching then picked up his phone and called Ryder.

“Pull the satellite feeds from the compound,” he said the moment Ryder answered. “Everything before the blast, during it, after. Every angle.”

Ryder paused. “You really think…”

“Just pull them, no questions asked.” Michael hung up.

He stood in the middle of the wrecked office. “She was out there.” His voice came out rough, scraping the back of his throat.

He dropped into the chair and put his head in his hands. Whiskey smell was everywhere. Every time he closed his eyes he was back in that warehouse, the heat, the smoke, the faces of the girls they pulled out, and underneath all of it Anna, not fading the way memories usually did but sitting in his chest like something with weight, like something that hadn’t finished with him yet.

He didn’t know when the door opened. He only heard Mara’s voice.

“Sir.”

He didn’t lift his head. “What.”

“The girl you brought home.”

He looked up. “What about her.”

“She is awake.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​