“I don’t know where he is.”

My excitement dissipated. “Oh. Well, it’s just that he’s disappeared, and-”

“Disappeared?” she said with alarm.

“Yes. No one has seen him since last Tuesday.”

She was quiet.

“Look, Alyssa, I have reason to believe that Sam was in Indianapolis recently. Obviously, you’re there, and so I thought you might have seen him.”

“No, I haven’t.” It sounded like a practiced response.

“Have you spoken to Sam recently?”

More quiet.

“Alyssa, Sam is in some very serious trouble. It appears that when he left, he took off with thirty million dollars of property belonging to a client of his.”

“What? Sam would never do that!” I heard the disbelief in her voice, and I recognized it as blind devotion, something I knew well myself. Was I being stupid to keep returning to the response that said-There must be a reason. Sam is a good person. And Sam wouldn’t have done anything to harm Forester?

“Look, Alyssa, I believe he wouldn’t do something like that, either. At least not without very good reason. But it’s pretty clear he took these shares. There’s also the fact that the person who owned the shares ended up dead on the same night Sam took off. People are asking questions about whether Sam had anything to do with his death.”

“This is insane. He would never hurt anyone. And if he stole that money then why would he be borrowing from me?” She stopped abruptly.

I felt my pulse quicken. I stood from the chair and began to pace the office. “When did he borrow from you?”

Nothing.

“Have you seen or talked to Sam this week?”

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

“What you should say is the truth! Look, I’m sorry to raise my voice, but this is serious. Sam has disappeared without a trace. The FBI is investigating him.”

“Oh, God.”

“Please, tell me what you know. Have you heard from Sam?”

More infuriating silence, and then finally, “Yes. I saw him last Wednesday morning.”

45

“You saw Sam last Wednesday?” I said to Alyssa. The day after he disappeared.

“Yes.”

I squeezed the phone so tight I thought I might break it. He had gone to Alyssa. He had disappeared, and he had headed for Indianapolis and Alyssa, the one person he knew made me jealous.

I felt a crushing weight. I sat on the floor, right in the place I was standing and slumped back against the wall.

“I told him I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had no idea all this was going on,” Alyssa said.

I had so many questions, but at the same time I wondered if any of them mattered. Sam had betrayed me, that much seemed true. “Are you…involved with Sam? Is that what this is?”

“Involved?” She sounded confused. “No. Not at all. You guys are engaged.”

“I thought we were. Now he’s gone. Why did he go to Indy?”

“He said he needed help. He called me on Tuesday and asked if he could borrow a credit card and a passport.”

“From you?”

“From my brother. Sam actually looks a lot like my brother. He said he needed them, just for a week or two, and that he’d return them.”

“Your brother handed over his credit card and passport? What are you guys thinking? He could be a terrorist!”

“Sam is not a terrorist,” she said with scorn. I had to agree, but still.

“My brother loves Sam,” Alyssa continued. “I mean, Sam was like a big brother to him. He grew up with Sam around. My brother is on the college football team now at Indiana. That’s why I’m here, to keep an eye on him and give him some family nearby. But anyway, we’ve known Sam forever. We trust him. Or we did.”

“When was the last time you talked to Sam before last week?”

“I guess it was after the reunion. We’d always kept in touch. Loosely, I mean. But then he just dropped out of the picture.”

Because I asked him to. “And then you got a phone call out of the blue?”

“Yeah, Tuesday night-I guess it was early in the evening-and he asked if there was any way he could borrow some cash.”

“How much?”

“Seven hundred dollars.”

“And then he asked for the passport and credit card?”

“Right. My brother got a passport last year to do this exchange program, and it’s not like he needed it right now. Anyway, Bloomington, where my brother goes to school, is only an hour away, so I drove there and picked up the passport and credit card.”

“And then you met Sam?”

“He said he was driving to Indy and asked me to meet him first thing Wednesday morning.”

If Sam had driven Tuesday night to Indy, where had he slept? In his car? In a hotel? It was surreal that a week ago I knew every detail of Sam’s life, down to what he ate for breakfast, what time he intended to work out, what he discussed with his mother when he called for one of their biweekly discussions. At least he hadn’t spent the night with Alyssa. If she could be believed.

“We met in a hotel for breakfast on Wednesday,” Alyssa continued. “It’s on the southwest side of town, by the airport.”

“How did he look?”

“I don’t know. Tired, I guess. And worried. But he was Sam.”

He was Sam. I knew what that meant. We both did. Gorgeous Sam. Funny Sam. Sam, who lit up everyone’s room and everyone’s life. Or at least that’s what we thought we knew of Sam.

“Did he tell you why he was asking for the money and stuff?”

“He said he had some things he had to take care of and it required that he not use his own ID. He said he might charge a few things on the credit card, but he promised he would send me a money order paying everything back within the next two weeks, along with the passport and credit card.”

“Have you received anything?”

“Not yet.”

“I need your brother’s name.”

She didn’t respond.

“And his address and credit-card number,” I added.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble. Or myself.”

“It’s Sam who’s in trouble.”

“But if the FBI knows I gave my brother’s passport to someone to use…”

“I’ve got an investigator working on the case. I’m just going to give him the information. I won’t turn this information over to the FBI unless I have to.”

A sigh. “Okay, here it is.”

I grabbed a pen and scrap paper off the desk and sat back on the floor, scribbling the information Alyssa gave me. Her brother’s name was Alec Thornton. Was Sam somewhere, introducing himself as Alec?

“Did Sam give you any kind of information about where he was going or what he was doing?” I asked.

“Nothing. He said he couldn’t tell me anything, and he asked me not to tell anyone he’d seen me. Then we just talked for the rest of the time.”

“About what?”

“You know. Small talk. What’s going on with my family and his.”

I felt the burn of jealousy sear its way into my belly. Alyssa had gotten to have small talk with Sam last week.

“When is the last time you saw him?” she asked.

I told her the basics of what had happened over the last week.

When I was done, Alyssa said, “My God, Izzy. What do you think Sam is doing?” Her voice was empathetic and low, and I thought that maybe in a different life, Alyssa and I could have been friends.

“I have no idea. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Or me. And I know Sam better than anyone.”

That jealous burn returned, along with my usual disdain for her. I opened my voice to correct her to tell her that it was I who knew Sam best now. But as soon as I started to say it, I realized the inaccuracy of that statement. If I knew Sam best, I would be able to understand some little part of what he had done, and yet I was still very, very much in the dark.

Alyssa seemed to sense my turmoil. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, and I’m sure it’s not true. I know you and Sam have something very special. ‘Extraordinary.’ That’s the word he used, anyway.”