---- Chapter 20 20 In her cozy Montana bookstore, Maya Evans saw the news. Liam's face, haggard and desperate, on the cover of a national magazine. The ten-million-dollar reward. Her quiet new life, suddenly under a glaring spotlight. Locals in her small town started giving her curious looks. She vaguely resembled the woman in the picture. Annoyance, sharp and unwelcome, pricked at her. His persistence was suffocating. Even from thousands of miles away, he was trying to control her, to drag her back into his vortex. "He'll never stop," she thought, a familiar coldness settling in her heart. She had left to be free, not to be hunted. She wouldn't let him destroy this new peace. She had warned him she would vanish. She hadn't warned him she wouldn't fight to stay vanished. A plan formed in her mind. A way to use his obsession against him. 1f he wanted a chase, she would give him one. Awild goose chase. She contacted a discreet, international service, a shadowy ---- offshoot of the Phoenix Initiative. They specialized in misinformation, in creating false trails. A few days later, "credible" sightings of Maya Goldstein started surfacing. A blurry photo of a woman resembling her at a cafe in Paris. A "confirmed" tip she was living under an assumed name in a remote village in Tuscany. Liam, desperate for any sliver of hope, seized on the European leads. He chartered a private jet, flew to Paris. He showed Maya's picture to bewildered café owners, his heart pounding with a mixture of hope and dread. He was always one step behind. The woman in the photo was a tourist who had already left. The "confirmed" tip was a dead end.