Stained Glass Shards

5.

GRIFFIN

"The subject, Elyce Claire Fielding, 27-year-old Caucasian female. Lives at the Five Points Tower in Boston, MA. Boarded a flight, seated First Class, from Logan Airport at 6:36 a.m. EST, arriving in LAX after nine in the morning PST. Tickets were purchased by Bruna Maximo, a literary agent from Max Lit, Boston, MA. A round-trip ticket to return to Boston in four days. Travel companion, Ritter Thorman, a 32-year-old agent from SA&T Agency, a multimedia rights agency in New York City." I stopped reading the text, which had pinged early in the morning.

I had been straddling wakefulness and sleep.

Okay, he's her agent.

I exhaled in relief and opened my laptop. With one hand, I typed Elyce's name into the search engine. Nothing new came up. Her last publication was about ten months ago. I considered that she might be working on a deal in California.

Maybe a publication of a book was in the works?

I was filled with even more questions. What had she written? Was it a book, poetry, or screenplay?

If her agent was a media rights agent, then it had to be a screenplay. Of what? I couldn't even speculate. Elyce hadn't discussed her projects. Then again, I had never really given her a chance to talk about her work. I had been selfish.

Her brother, who had the means to support her writing career, had offered her a small trust fund to patronize her profession, but she declined.

Had she taken him up on it?

All these months without her made me realize how one-sided our relationship had been.

Elyce's address had changed. I researched the Five Points Tower in Boston, a new high-rise building owned by her brother Lark's company, The Pentagon Group. He may have gotten her a good deal on an apartment. She'd always rejected his previous offers to move, but she may have been given an offer she couldn't refuse.

Her relocation was a direct shot at me. She wanted to get as far away from her tiny studio apartment where we'd created so many memories—and nightmares. The last two encounters, when she made her disappointment known, were in that little pad. Her move ensured I wouldn't show up again, late at night, when I wanted to sleep beside her after we made love, inhaling the flowery scent of her shampoo and the powdery fragrance of her skin.

Fuck.

I slapped my head, feeling relief from the temporary pain I caused myself.

The mystery of her new address made me want to find her. I texted the private investigator, Merrick Piers Darden, who was supposed to be the best on both coasts. After spending time in Boston, he'd recently returned to California, traveling between San Francisco and Los Angeles for his PI firm. My manager explained that Darden's firm maintained strong affiliations with some of the biggest production companies and celebrities in town. Rick, as Darden signed off on the text, was just the man to answer my questions.

I needed to know where Elyce was staying in California. And if she was staying with him. The text was simple—"Find out more!"

If the invoice Darden sent were any indication, the investigation would cost me a small fortune but was completely necessary to ease my mind and quell the angst in my heart. The financial costs would be significantly less than the potential emotional torment.

There was something in the way she looked at him—that Ritter character. Even under low candlelight, the shimmer in her eyes when they spoke, the way she tossed her head in laughter, the timbre of her giggle, and the seductive way her body leaned in and reclined back as she looked down or looked away, told me she was happy.