Chapter 147 Concrete Jungle

Chapter 147 Concrete Jungle
The city stretched beneath her like a living organism. A jungle of steel and glass with rivers of asphalt flowing through it. Thousands upon thousands of cars, taxis and buses moved down there. Manhattan pulsed and breathed and roared, indifferent to the woman standing thirty-two floors above it, pressing her forehead against cold glass.

Sierra Quinn had not moved from the window in hours.

Her eyes traced the grid of streets below, block after block of concrete canyons disappearing into a haze of exhaust and afternoon light. Somewhere out there, maybe out there, maybe nowhere near here, Ryder Marsh existed. Or didn't. She couldn't allow herself to finish that thought. Every time it crept toward her, she shoved it back into the dark corner of her mind where it coiled and waited, patient as a rattlesnake.

Is he out there? The question played on a loop, a broken record skipping in her skull. Is he hurt? Is he fighting? Is he…

She pressed her forehead harder against the glass.

Eight million people moved through this city every day. Eight million stories, eight million trajectories, and not one of them was his. She had checked every hospital within a hundred-mile radius of the route he would have driven. She had called police departments in three states. She had spoken to a waitress who remembered his smile and a gas station clerk who remembered the dark SUV. And then the trail had simply... evaporated. As if the earth had opened its mouth and swallowed him whole.

Behind her, the apartment was a graveyard of cardboard boxes. Her life in Manhattan, taped shut and labelled in black marker. Kitchen. Books. Winter clothes. Bedroom. Everything she owned, packed and ready for a life she had been so certain was waiting for her. She was ready for a life with Ryder. A life at Sage Ranch. A life that she had fought against for so long but finally felt ready for and the most important part of it was missing. Would fate ever turn in her favor?

From the kitchen came the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing, the clatter of a pan being set on the stove, the quiet percussion of Sylvia making do with whatever she could find. Sierra listened without really hearing. The sounds were distant, muffled, as if reaching her through deep water.

She watched a woman far below cross the street with a stroller. A delivery truck double-parked on the corner. A man in a suit hailed a cab with his arm raised like a signal flag. None of them were Ryder. None of them would ever be Ryder. This was Manhattan, his antithesis, the place that had made him feel small and caged, the place where he had told her their love couldn't survive. And yet she stood here searching these streets as if he might round a corner in his dusty boots and worn Stetson, as if the city might suddenly decide to be kind and deliver him to her doorstep.

She was looking for a bat signal. Some cosmic flare in the sky that would tell her where to go, what to do, how to find him. But the sky above Manhattan was the same flat pewter it always was, no stars, no signals, no answers.

Sylvia's footsteps approached. Sierra heard her pause, heard the soft sound of boxes being shifted and rearranged. Then something being unfolded—a blanket, spread across the hardwood floor in the narrow space between the stacked boxes and the window. Sylvia lowered herself onto it and patted the spot beside her.

"Sit with me."

Sierra didn't move.

Sylvia set a plate on the blanket, scrambled eggs, slightly browned toast, a few slices of an apple that had seen better days. She had performed a minor miracle with what remained in the kitchen. A near-empty carton of eggs. Bread from the freezer. Butter of questionable vintage.

"You should eat," Sylvia said, her voice gentle but firm. "You haven't had anything for two days."

Two days. Had it been two days? Sierra couldn't parse the hours anymore. Time had become a smear, a long grey streak without beginning or end. She remembered Sylvia arriving at the apartment. She remembered standing at this window. Everything between was fog.

She lowered herself onto the blanket because her legs were tired and because refusing would require energy she didn't have. She picked up a triangle of toast and brought it to her lips. She nibbled the corner. It tasted like cardboard. It wasn't Sylvia's cooking. She set it down.

Sylvia ate quietly beside her, not pushing, not hovering. Just present. After a while, she said, "We should go to the supermarket. Stock up on a few things. You've got nothing left in there but hot sauce and baking soda."

"Mm."

"I think I saw a place when we were driving in. Only a few blocks from here. We could walk. Fresh air might..."

"Maybe."

"Or I could go. Make a list. You could stay here and…"

"Sure."

Sylvia set her fork down. Sierra could feel her friend studying her profile, could feel the weight of Sylvia's concern like a physical thing pressing against her side. But she couldn't turn away from the window. Turning away felt like giving up. As long as she watched, as long as she kept her eyes on the world outside, she was still looking for him. And looking meant hoping. And hoping meant he was still alive.

A pigeon landed on the ledge outside, cocked its head at her, and flew away.

Come back to me, she thought, and she didn't know if she was thinking it at Ryder or at herself. Just come back.

The light shifted. Afternoon bled toward evening. Sylvia cleared the plates and returned with two mugs of tea made from a dusty box of Earl Grey she had unearthed from behind the toaster. Sierra wrapped her hands around the warmth and sipped it but didn't commit to drinking it.

Then her phone rang.

The sound cut through the fog in her brain like a blade. Sierra's heart lurched so violently she nearly dropped the mug. Her hand shot to the phone on the windowsill, and she had it pressed to her ear before the second ring finished.

"Ryder," she breathed.

She hadn't looked at the screen. She hadn't needed to. Every call, every vibration, every notification for the past two days had been the same desperate prayer leaving her lips before her mind could intervene.

A pause. Then a voice she didn't recognize, young, male, slightly nervous.

"Actually, it's Sean. From Alamo Rent-A-Car. Is this Sierra Quinn?"

Her stomach dropped. She closed her eyes.

"Yes."

"You told me to call you if Mr. Marsh's car was returned."

Every nerve in her body went taut. She straightened, pulling her forehead away from the glass for the first time in hours.

"I knew it!"

Sierra was already on her feet, scanning the room, her eyes sharp and alive in a way they hadn't been in days. She kicked a box aside, spotted her jacket draped over a chair, snatched her keys from the kitchen counter.

Sylvia scrambled up from the blanket. "Sierra? What is it? What's happening?"

"He returned the car to Alamo. Let's go."