The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [121]
The theory made sense. More than that, it seemed irresistible.
Nathan mumbled beside her, his arm still draped across her stomach, but Alice was suddenly too energized to sleep. Easing herself from under his embrace, she slipped out of bed and pulled a crumpled blanket around her shoulders. Tiptoeing past discarded clothing and her high-heeled shoe—tossed against the door in what had been a pleasant blur of hands and lips—she crept out of the bedroom, carefully pushing the door closed behind her.
Nathan’s flat was modern and minimal, with a study area set up on the far end of the open-plan living area, complete with gleaming desktop computer system. Alice padded across the room, her feet bare on the cool wooden floor. Settling in front of the computer, she said a silent prayer; after everything Nathan had learned from his career, she was expecting a raft of passwords and security checks, but when she reached for the wireless keyboard and hit the spacebar, the computer woke from sleep mode with a low whir.
Perfect.
The computer display showed four a.m., but Alice was wide awake as she reached for the mouse. She ran searches of the name, “missing,” and any other pertinent phrases she could think of, filtering to the rough time span Nathan had mentioned. If Ella really was Kate Jackson, then this Kate would have disappeared years ago: fading into nothing so other, false names could take her place.
Two dead, one missing—that was what Nathan had said about the original short-list.
Working swiftly, Alice quickly verified the deaths from online articles and local newspaper archives: a slow decline from cancer, a bloody car wreck. She skimmed over the web pages, already ruling them out. Besides, Ella wouldn’t be so dramatic as to fake her own death, not when it would be simpler just to slip away one day—go out into the world as one person and come back as quite another. No, Alice knew, that just wasn’t her style.
But the missing woman? Now, she had more potential.
Alice wasn’t sure how long she sat there, bathed in the pale glow from the desk light, but the longer she looked, the more the data led back to one specific suspect, the Kate Jackson from Devon, who had turned twenty-nine years old last Thursday—at least, that’s what she would have done, but since she disappeared during a trip to Australasia five years ago, nobody had a clue if she was even alive to celebrate. Alice read through every mention she could find, but sadly, a solo female traveler going astray in that part of the world wasn’t rare; the coverage was depressingly thin: a sidebar in a national paper and a few stories in the local press, showing her anxious parents and older brother urging for more police support—Alice squinted at the small photo that adorned every story, snapped from an earlier, happier stage of her travels. The woman was grinning in a pale blue bikini, brown hair, brown eyes, medium height and weight. Entirely forgettable. Easily disguisable. It could be her.
Gazing at the grainy photo, Alice tried to see Ella in the girl’s features, but no matter how long she stared at it, she couldn’t be completely sure if it was her—or not.
What had she been running from?
There was a sudden noise from the bedroom. Alice leaped out of the chair and quickly switched the screen off, casting the room into dark again. Dashing toward the kitchen area, she flung open the fridge just as Nathan padded in, sleepy in an oversized pair of athletic shorts.
“What are you doing up?” Yawning, he wandered closer, wrapping his arms around her in a lazy bear hug.
“Just getting a drink.” Alice relaxed back against his bare chest, reaching for the water purifier. She went through the motions of pouring herself a glass and sipping the drink, sneaking a look past his shoulder to check there was no sign of her