Heart of Briar. Laura Anne Gilman

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      She studied her response, decided that it had just the right tone of aggrieved but not-worried girlfriend, and hit Send.

      The other two emails were follow-ups on projects she’d closed out last week, her name on the cc list. She didn’t have any websites going live this week, and nothing else seemed currently to be on fire, so she had room to breathe.

      Except she couldn’t. Despite what she’d said to Glory and to Steve, Tyler’s continued absence—the worry about his continued absence—was almost like an asthma attack, closing up her chest and making her feel a little weird, off balance and dizzy.

      “It’s silly,” she said out loud. And it was. Everyone was right: she knew that. She and Tyler had only met four months ago, and, yes, they’d pretty much fallen into each other’s lives without a hitch, like the true love neither of them had claimed to believe in, but there were always surprises, bumps and revelations along the way, and twenty-four hours wasn’t all that long for an adult to be out of touch, especially since there wasn’t any indication there was anything wrong.

      Except Jan knew. Deep inside, in some skittish reptile part of her brain, she knew. Something was wrong.

      * * *

      The rest of the day, Jan tried to take the excellent advice she had been given. She closed the text box in the corner of her monitor and cleared her in-box down to zero, then worked on a project with an extended deadline until she was actually ahead of schedule.

      And if every ping of incoming mail or text message made her heart speed up in anticipation, she didn’t let it distract her. Too much.

      She even left the apartment to have dinner downtown with a friend, didn’t mention anything to her about Tyler going missing, and tried not to think about going to bed alone. But when she woke up to a second day of silence, that sense of something being wrong began to chew on her nerves.

      By midmorning, her nerves had gotten so bad, it was almost impossible to focus on her work. She opened the text box, closed it, and then opened it again, afraid that she would miss him when he did check in.

      “Obsessive, much?” She clicked on the text box, closing it again. “Let it go.” But she couldn’t.

      When afternoon rolled around, and there was still no word, Jan couldn’t just sit and wait and try to be patient. Sending an email to let the folks at the other end of her projects know that she would be off-line for a bit, she shut down her computer, shoved her cell phone, inhaler and wallet in her daypack, and headed across town. Glory was right, and she was a wimp. If the cops wouldn’t investigate, then she would.

      It was only a twenty-minute bus ride downtown from her apartment building—but it took almost that long for a bus to actually show up. Jan tried to stay calm and not over-anticipate what she might find there.

      His building was older than hers, without a digital security box. If you had a key, you could go right in; if not, you had to wait for someone to buzz you through the lobby door. She had a key. He’d given it to her, two weeks after they’d met, on a little keychain with a vintage Hello Kitty on it. If she hadn’t already been pretty sure she was in love before, that would have sealed it for her. Hello Kitty wasn’t his thing, it was hers, and he’d known that.

      She took the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down the hallway to his door. Once there, though, all of her resolve fled. She’d never been here before, without him. He hadn’t called and said “get your ass over here, I miss you.” He hadn’t said anything at all, not to look after his plants—he had none, he was the original black thumb—or pick up his mail. The super might have come in at a bad time and missed him. Tyler might be inside, just not checking in, might be blowing her off, or...

      If he was that much of a coward, she could hear Glory saying, then he totally deserved to be caught at it.

      Jan agreed. She just didn’t want to be the one doing the catching.

      “He gave you a key,” she told herself. “If anything is wrong...standing out here isn’t going to find that out, is it?

      She was worried. No matter what anyone else said, this wasn’t like him. He never went offline this long. He couldn’t—he had clients and email, and even if his connection was down, he would have called and told her. If he was breaking up with her... No. He wouldn’t do it this way.

      And it wasn’t as though she was breaking and entering. Okay, it was entering. But not breaking. She had a toothbrush there, and an extra emergency inhaler, and knew his super, and where he kept the spare change for when the ice cream truck came around and he had a craving for an ice cream sandwich.

      So why was she standing in front of his door, key in hand, terrified to go in?

      Because she wanted to find something to explain it...and was terrified of what she might find. Because maybe everyone was right, and she was a ninny. Or worse, they were wrong, and he was on the floor, dead, or dying, or...

      She swallowed, trying to deal with the conflicting urges, half-ready to turn around and go home without even putting the key in the lock.

      “Ma’am?”

      She turned, her heart in her throat, and saw a cop standing in the hallway a few steps away from her. She had been so focused on the door, she hadn’t even heard the elevator open or anyone come out.

      “You a friend of Tyler Wash?”

      “I’m his girlfriend.” It still felt weird saying it out loud. Three months. What was three months?

      It was forever, when you knew, she reminded herself. And they had both known, so fast, never any doubt...right?

      The cop looked her up and down, as if he was trying to memorize her to pick out of a lineup, later. “Have you heard from your boyfriend recently?”

      “No. I came over... I haven’t heard from СКАЧАТЬ