I was well aware of my overactive writer’s imagination, so I quickly shook off the thought.

It simply made no sense.

I sat in my car for a good long while afterwards and tried to analyze what I was feeling.

Disappointment.

But why?  What had I expected?

The answer didn’t come easy, and when it did, I felt like even more of a fool.

I’d expected to see her.  To see Iris.  In some corner of my mind, I’d done the whole thing in some hope that going out with another woman would draw her out, if she were anywhere to be drawn.

Basically, I’d spent the afternoon setting myself up for a letdown and dragging someone else along for the ride.

CHAPTER THREE

I pulled back into my drive with a sense of relief.  I’d only been gone a week, but a week with my parents over the holidays was more than I wanted to deal with.

A week of pretending I was okay, that everything was normal, that it was the divorce that had me acting like a robot; asocial, going through the motions, quiet and stuck in my own head unless directly addressed.

But of course it wasn’t the divorce.  I hardly thought of that anymore.

It was Iris.  Or rather, the lack of Iris.

My parents had fallen back on protocol, making polite small talk.  They were civilized and well-bred to a fault.  They may have been worried, but they’d never pry.  Even as a child, they’d always given me my space, to a fault, sometimes.

It worked out for the best.  There was nothing I wanted to talk to them about.

But the not talking had me thinking more.  And thinking was not a good thing for me to do just then.

Iris had been gone two months and counting.

It had been a rough two months.

Two months of longing and mourning.

Two months of denying and grieving.

How perverse was it to realize just how in love you were with a near stranger only after finding out that she was gone forever?  Possibly dead.  Probably dead.

I could recite that cryptic last letter of hers by heart, and still, I wasn’t sure how to decipher its true meaning.

I wouldn’t be seeing her again.

Even after reading that letter a hundred times, I had to keep reminding myself of that.

She’d clearly been in some kind of serious trouble, but she’d never let me close enough to help her with it.

I was certain I could have kept her safe.  That was the part I thought about the most—the what ifs.

What if she’d let me help her?  What if she’d stayed close and let me keep her safe?

The letter had clearly implied that if I was receiving it she was likely dead, but I just couldn’t seem to accept it.

And as for moving on, I hadn’t been doing a bit of that.  Instead, I’d been dwelling and obsessing, dreaming and fantasizing.

I’d started writing everything about her down.

I didn’t want to forget a thing about her.  Not one tiny detail.

The color of her hair.  The depth of her eyes.  The stubborn shape of her jaw.  The way her lips shaped words with such expression.

The way she listened like she cared about every word and gave advice beyond her years.

The way she made me feel—Alive.

Every curve and hollow of her body was recorded, in my mind and now my hard drive.

There was a bit of truth in every lie, and even if it had only been fed to me in the smallest increments, I wanted, needed to remember the real Iris.

I put my car in park and turned it off, sitting there for a time, summoning up the energy to get out.

I unloaded my car.  Two small suitcases, very tidy, like my life used to be.

Now it was a sham, but I spent a lot of time and energy going through the motions, keeping everything in order.

In my mind, though, chaos reigned.

Before visiting my parents, I’d taken to making a grueling daily schedule for myself, without a minute of idle time, and even while traveling, it never let up.  I needed to jump right back into that.

If I allowed myself to indulge my feelings, such as they were, I’d take to my bed and never get up.

I entered the house via the laundry room.  I was heading straight to my bedroom, but was stopped in my tracks one step into the living room.

I had company.

Unwelcome company.

“You,” I breathed, suitcases dropping from both hands and hitting the ground with two loud, echoing thuds.

“Me,” he agreed.

The f**ker in the Jaguar.

In my house.

“How did you get in here?”

He smiled a less than friendly smile.  “Is that really the question you want to ask me?”

It felt like a tight hand squeezed my chest.  “What happened to her?”

His mouth twisted bitterly.  “Do you even care?”

I was trembling, I wanted to hit him so bad.

Was this the man responsible for my Iris going missing?  What had he done to her?

I tried my best to hold onto my temper.  “Yes.  Yes, I care.” I swallowed hard, having to force the next part out.  “Please, I’m begging you.  Tell me what happened to her.”

He shook his head.  “I can’t do that,” he said, and I lost it, charging him where he sat, my fist slamming into his stomach twice before he could react.

Theoretically, I knew how to fight, but I’d never used those skills in a serious fashion on a real target.

It was much harder when it was real, and this f**ker obviously knew what he was doing.