No Ordinary Day (34 page)

“Still in Times Square,” Erik Bryson said, reading the tablet.

“She always had an extra day or two put into her contract when she was working in foreign locales so that she could visit their historic sites. The clients weren’t expected to book or pay for those days—her management handled the details, as they always do. But she wanted to take the time to see the history of the places she visited. I can’t remember any other model that ever wanted to see anything abroad but the nightlife. It was a colossal pain and meant she was unavailable for compressed bookings.”

“Good for her,” Erik said, typing on the tablet once more. “One less beautiful American acting like an Ugly American.”

“I don’t even know if she’s American,” Katherine Bruce said. “Someone suggested she might be from England, but in the few words she ever spoke in my hearing, I didn’t catch an accent. Maybe Canada.”

“Why did you think she might be British?”

The fashion editor shrugged.

“Probably because of that damned book,” she said.

“Which one—
Paddington Bear
?”

“Yes. I saw her in a T-shirt once with a picture of him on it, in his stupid black hat and his stupid blue coat with his stupid note pinned on it, and asked her if it was her favorite book or something. She smiled and said no, it just reminded her of home.”

Erik looked up. “Oh? That sounds promising.”

“Yes, yes it does, but it turned out to be nothing. When she first went missing, we did all kinds of looking into Paddington Bear. I’d never read the book before, but it quickly became my constant companion, if you can imagine that—me, carrying around a stupid paperback
kid’s book
in a Coach bag. We cross-referenced the author, tore the book apart searching for clues—I even sent a private detective to the famous address where that damned bear supposedly lives in London in the books—#32 Windsor Gardens—but all we managed to do is scare the devil out of a poor old couple who lived near there, who were used to being hounded by children, not detectives, about Paddington. There is no such place, by the way.”

The reporter suppressed a smile and continued typing on his tablet.

“When London crapped out, we even sent the private eye to ‘darkest Peru’—where the bear supposedly came from. You can imagine what he came back with.”

“Let me guess—nothing?”

“Nothing. Bupkis. Spent $1.2 million chasing an imaginary stuffed bear around the flipping world. And didn’t find a whiff of the Doce Cheiro spokesmodel.”

“And that’s all you’ve got—a wild goose chase and a voracious reader of history books?”

“That’s all I’ve got.”

“Not much to go on.”

Katherine Bruce blinked. “Wait, what am I thinking? There is one other twist to all this.” She picked up a slate gray folder and dropped it on the desk in front of him. “This is the only contact Briony has had with the world since her final shoot, which was for Dior, in January of last year.”

Erik opened the folder. It contained a thick stack of fashion photos, all from the same basic vantage point, but from slightly different angles, of many models, men and women in fall or winter clothing, walking the same runway. His trained eye told him the shots were impressive in their photographic quality, but nothing more. He looked up at the magazine publisher and raised an eyebrow.

“So?”

“These arrived, from her manager’s office, at the end of March last year,” Katherine Bruce said. “They’re shots of the autumn/winter line at Milan’s fashion week.”

“But none of them are of Briony,” Erik said.

“No.” Katherine reached over and flipped the top photograph. “But her name is on every one of them.”

Bryson looked at the stamp on the back. It was a plain ink logo, in a simple block font, reading
BRIONY
.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

Katherine Bruce leaned forward. “If it follows industry protocol, it means that Briony
took
the photos. If she did, I don’t know how she managed to do it—she must have been in disguise or something—and I have no idea where she got press credentials. There was no request for payment, no explanation, and Hanoway Ltd. was utterly silent on the matter. I have no idea what any of this means. But it never happened again.”

“Maybe she’s decided she wants to be behind the camera instead of in front of it.”

“That would be insane. The salary she made as a model has almost three more zeroes at the end of it than what a fashion photographer makes. If she’s sick of modeling, she can write a book, get a TV or a movie deal, or pitch products on QVC—”

“Not everything is always about money, Ms. Bruce.”

“You know, I think I may have heard that once. Nonetheless, no more photos from any other fashion week ever arrived. It’s driving me mad.”

The reporter stood and stretched. “I’ll look into it, but I’m not promising you anything.”

“Bring me Briony. Earn your reputation.”

Erik’s ice-blue eyes gleamed.

“I’ve earned my reputation every day since before I graduated from college, Ms. Bruce,” he said coldly. “That reputation is for
investigative journalism,
which has mostly been employed ferreting out the bastards that pass intentionally bad legislation, grease the palms of drug lords and exploit powerless men, women, and children in ways that would make your blood run cold if I described them to you—well, maybe not yours, now that I think about it. I don’t have time for this nonsense. So let me be clear with you—I will
bring
you no one, least of all Briony. I’m not a bounty hunter.”

“Hmmm,” Katherine Bruce said, rubbing her cheek. “Hadn’t thought of that. Bounty hunter. Might be my next option if you don’t come through.”

“If I
do
find out what happened to her, I will bring you the story,” Bryson continued. “And I will do what I can to get you in contact with one another. But if you ever again address me in a manner that makes you sound like a torturer from the Spanish Inquisition, that day will be the last blessed day you will ever see me. Do we have an understanding?”

The fashion editor stared at him frostily. Then she smiled with the same frost on her gloriously colored lips.

“Completely.”

Erik snatched the photo of Briony’s face from the desk. “All right. If your contact info is different than the text I received inviting me to this charming meeting, send me a better number or email.” He shouldered his camera case and turned away, heading for the door. He opened it quickly.

“Goodbye, Ms. Bruce,” he said.

“Mr. Bryson?”

Erik exhaled sharply.
“Yes?”

Katherine Bruce looked him up and down.

“You have a very nice look yourself. The cool blue eyes, the dark, sexy, loose curls, the cut body—you could be a model, too, and make a good living at it. If you fail in this assignment, you’ll need a new line of work anyway. Look me up if that happens.”

Bryson swallowed. Then he cupped his ear with his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said dryly. “I didn’t hear a thing you just said.”

He closed the door behind him with a decided snap.

Katherine Bruce waited until she heard the bell of the elevator closing. Then she touched the call button on her smart phone.

“Are you ready?” she said to the voice that answered. “Good. He’s on his way down now. Don’t let him out of your sight until he’s out the door. Then the pros will take it from there.”

The quiet voice posed a question, and she smiled.

“Yes—his camera case and phone were successfully tagged at security. The tracking signal was confirmed to be working before he arrived at my office. Thank you for distracting him, Zoe.”

‡

Geneva Cointrin International Airport, Switzerland

A
t the same
moment Erik Bryson was getting his marching orders in Manhattan, Sarah Briony Windsor, the girl who had morphed from a pretty but gawky sixteen-year-old into a worldwide phenomenon in 2003, was poking at the flobby prosthetic chin she had attached to her face in the Geneva airport bathroom, deep within a stall where no one could see her.

The contortions she had undertaken to keep from dropping the rubber chin, her makeup case, the bottle of spirit gum adhesive, and her camera bag into the lidless toilet could have qualified her for a role in a Cirque du Soliel show, she thought, pressing her fingers into the squishy layers. When the spirit gum had finally set, Briony held up the mirrored surface of her foundation case and examined her efforts.

A woman she did not recognize stared back at her, jowly, middle-aged and dark-haired.

Briony suppressed a little squeal of delight.

Quickly she touched up her unflattering makeup, put on her sunglasses, gathered her gear, and hurried out of the ladies’ room, making her way to the gate.

At check-in she had a moment’s nervousness when the gate attendant asked randomly for her passport.

“I did this downstairs, before I went through security,” she protested.

“This is an international flight, madam,” the young blond woman said curtly in accented English. “We check at will.”

Briony felt her cheeks burn as the attendant, whom she imagined was around her own age—twenty-eight—looked quizzically at her wrinkled double chin and bad dye job, then at her birth date. Her name on the document was as ordinary as it was possible to be—Sarah B. Windsor—and finally the woman handed her passport back and nodded toward the jetway. Briony had waited until she was halfway down the hallway leading to the plane door before she allowed herself a slight smile at the attendant’s clear disgust that a woman less than thirty had let herself go so terribly.

As she nodded pleasantly to the flight attendant and made her way to her seat, she thought back to what it had taken to get here, the first hurdle on her path back home.

Her assistant, Claire, an Englishwoman with impeccable manners in public and the salty tongue of a longshoreman over a glass of Pinot in private, had been skeptical of her insistence on a Coach seat.

“You have never flown anything but First Class, or at least Business, in your bloody
life
,” she had said during their Internet conference a few nights before. “At least not since you were sixteen and I’ve been making your travel and security arrangements.”

“You certainly have spoiled me,” Briony had agreed, looking out the hotel window at the gorgeous Swiss landscape. “But First Class is just asking for trouble. It may be nice to deplane before everyone else, but then you are paparazzi prey.”

“Most celebrities like it that way,” Claire had said fondly, her green eyes twinkling.

“I know,” Briony had replied as she prepared to hang up. “One of the many reasons I don’t want to be one anymore. Thanks for everything, as always, Claire.”

“Hmmph,” said Claire. “Hope you have an extra couch for me to sleep on wherever you end up—without that celebrity status, I’m going to need to downsize my salary expectations.”

Briony smiled at the memory now as she looked at her carry-on, and then at the storage compartment above her row. “Excuse me,” she said to the flight attendant who was counting seats in the aisle next to her. “Would you be so kind as to get two blankets and a pillow down for me?”

The man, blond, thin-faced, and three inches shorter than her, looked at her for a moment, silently noting her superior height, then curtly complied.

“Thank you,” Briony said breezily, ignoring the unmistakable annoyance in his expression. She tucked the camera case carefully under the middle seat in front of her and packed one of the blankets around it, wincing as a twinge went through her. She stood and stretched.

Suddenly she felt the wind knocked out of her as a sharp blow struck her lower back.

Briony dropped the pillow and the remaining blanket and grabbed the back of the seat next to her as the world went black for a moment. Nausea rose up inside her, leaving her faint.

“Austin! I’m so sorry,” said a young mother behind her in the aisle. The woman grabbed the rambunctious boy, seven or eight years old, who had just slammed his Tonka truck into her kidneys, and dragged him back, away from Briony. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

Briony nodded numbly, then folded herself into the window seat as the boy and his mother squeezed down the aisle toward the back of the plane.

“For goodness’ sake, Austin, be more careful,” she heard his mother admonish him. “You could have broken that poor old woman’s back.”

Yesssssssss,
Briony thought.
Victory.

She settled in with the pillow, covering herself with the blanket, and mentally thanked Claire again for insisting on buying both of the seats next to her.

She was right about Coach,
she thought as she half-listened to the cabin attendant’s emergency instructions.
Oh well. Better get used to it.

She was only able to stay awake long enough to bid the snow-topped peaks of the Swiss Alps in the distance farewell before sleep came for her.

“Goodbye, beautiful mountains,” she whispered at the heavy plastic of the oval window. “I’ll miss you—but not for long. Soon I’ll be back in the Adirondacks, and then I will forget all about you.” She pulled the window shade down and put her head against the pillow again.