RISK(18)

I would have stayed and put a halt to all of it, but I needed to be here. I had to be here.

"I don't know him, Crew. I've never seen him before."

"He's Nick's brother."

"Nick who? Nick Wolf? The guy from high school?"

"The guy who is burning up every bestseller list known to man." He reaches in the fridge for a bottle of water. "One of his books was optioned by a studio in Los Angeles. He's a big deal."

Nicholas Wolf went to high school with us. We didn't hang out often. When we were partying and planning for college, he was submitting short stories to the school's annual anthology.

It paid off in spades for him. His series of detective novels has taken the world by storm. You can't turn a corner without someone talking about his latest book release.

"What about Liam?" I tug my phone from my pocket. "What's his deal?"

Crew's already on it. His fingers are skipping over his phone's screen. "All his social network accounts are locked up tight. They're as private as Ellie's are. I can hand this off to Kristof. He'll have a full file on your desk in the morning. Just give me the word although, for the record, I'm still one hundred percent against you pursuing Ellie."

Kristof Hellaman used to hold a high ranking position in the FBI before I lured him away. I needed his expertise to solve my own personal whodunit a few years ago. He wasn't successful but he proved his loyalty. Since then, he's been on retainer, never more than a phone call away if I need a background check or an extra set of eyes on me when I travel. He's a valuable part of my team, and he's paid accordingly.

"Between you and me." I pause to circle my finger in the air. "Kristof brought me next to nothing on Ellie."

He chuckles, resting both his hands on the counter behind him. "Kristof brought you all there is on Ellie. You can't accept the fact that the last address he traced her to back then was in Boston."

The street address listed for Ellie Madden's mother more than a decade ago doesn't exist now. The tenement was torn down by a developer itching to build a suite of condos to lure people to Boston's old West End. It worked.

I co-invested with Crew in a pair of office buildings in that area spearheaded by a friend of my father, and the returns have been consistently healthy. Residential dwellings, beyond those in my own portfolio, aren't a magnet for my money. Commercial buildings have always proven to be my golden ticket.

"It's not about Kip." I scrub the back of my neck.

"You asked me not to mention Kip to Kristof." His voice takes on a serious tone. "I haven't, though I've never understood your reluctance to get him involved. She wouldn't even know you're looking for her and if he finds her, at least, you'll know she's all right."

I've always used the same excuse when Crew has suggested we get Kristof to trace Kip's tracks. I tell him that it would be a waste of my money. The details we have are so vague that it would be impossible to find her.

I never knew her real name. She didn't offer, and I stopped pressing for it after asking twice and getting only a shrug of her shoulder in response.

I first saw her walking a small, shaggy brown dog on Broadway and Fifty Second Street as the matinee of a musical ended and theater goers flooded the sidewalk around us. She dipped her head and dodged through the crowd, bumping into me and then steadying herself with a torn glove covered hand on my forearm.

I looked down at a petite curly haired girl wearing a worn red varsity jacket with the name Kip sewn onto the shoulder with black thread. Where a circular white snap should have been on the front, a piece of rusted wire pierced the frayed wool. It was woven through the hole left by the missing snap and tied into an uneven, loose knot to keep the mid-section closed. The jacket was at least four sizes too big for her, but it sheltered her from the bitter bite of the cold that winter.

To Kip, I was Rigs. It was the name she heard my grandfather calling out to me when the light turned to cross Broadway. He was in a rush to get home after our lunch in mid-town on that Sunday afternoon in December. I stood in place as she mumbled an apology after touching me. She looked up into my lean adolescent face with the sparse growth of beard dotting my jaw and the rebellious long hair that fell into my eyes. Then she smiled and with a pull of the leash, she sprinted toward Eighth Avenue with the barking dog on her heel. They disappeared into the rush of people heading back to the warmth of their homes or hotels.

It was one of the few times she ever smiled at me.

A week later I was back in the same spot with a brand new pair of red gloves in my hand for her.

"We can kill two birds with one stone, pal." Crew finishes the last of the water in the bottle. "I'll get Kristof to check out Liam Wolf and I'll tell him what we know about Kip. The trail on her is cold, but he's a f*cking genius. He'll Sherlock Holmes the shit out of it and you can finally put this to rest."

If Kristof starts poking around in the past he's going to uncover what happened the last time I saw Kip. That will jeopardize my future. As much as I want to know how she is after making it through the hell storm of that night and finding her way out the other side, I can't risk exposing my part in it.

"Don't call Kristof," I say evenly. "We both know that finding Kip is impossible. We know nothing about her. You're right. It's time to drop it."