---- Chapter 18 Carter Wolfe POV: | was there at 7 a.m. | had spent the entire previous day preparing. |' d gotten a haircut, a shave. ' d bought a new suit, the kind she used to say made me look handsome. | stood outside the closed, dark bar in the pre-dawn chill, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. | didn' t feel the cold. | didn' t feel anything but a nervous, bubbling anticipation. The bar owner showed up around 9 a.m. to accept a delivery. He gave me a strange look. "You waiting for someone, pal? We don' t open 'til five." He eyed my suit. "Did you get the time wrong?" "She' Il be here!" | snapped, my nerves frayed. "She's nota liar!" He shrugged and called me a psycho under his breath, but | didn' t care. If | went inside, she might miss me. She had to see me waiting for her, right out front. 8 a.m. came and went. Then 9 a.m. Then 10. A cold, wet sleet began to fall, soaking through my expensive ---- new suit, but | didn' t move. She was just running late. She was busy. That was all. | waited all day. The sun set, the bar opened, and the evening crowd began to arrive, jostling past me as | stood my lonely vigil on the sidewalk. By the time the bar closed in the early hours of the morning, a deep, bone-aching chill had set in, and not just from the cold. She wasn't coming. But | refused to believe it. | came back the next day. And the next. For five straight days, | stood outside that bar, from dawn until dusk, waiting for a woman who was never going to appear. | caught a vicious cold, my body wracked with shivers and a hacking cough, but | didn't leave. | started to get desperate. | went to the surrounding shops, asking to see their security footage, trying to catch a glimpse of her, to see if she had even driven by. My frantic behavior nearly got me arrested. Finally, | went to the research institute where the awards conference had been held. | waited by the gates like a beggar, hoping to catch someone, anyone, who might know her. A friendly security guard took pity on me. "Amira Osborne?" he said, scratching his chin. "Oh yeah, the genius Al lady. She ' s long gone, mate." My heart stopped. "Gone? Gone where?" ---- He shrugged. "Back to the States. They all flew out to D.C. for the big awards ceremony with the President. Left about... oh, six days ago now." Six days ago. The morning after | had last seen her. She had never planned to meet me. It was all a lie. A cruel, calculated lie designed to get me out of her way so she could disappear. The world went gray at the edges. A profound, crushing wave of despair washed over me, so total and absolute that | thought | might actually die from the pain of it.