Page 65 of Always

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I’m afraid not. Is anything wrong?”

“No,” she said hesitantly. For a moment, Anika considered spilling the whole story to Liam. She suspected that he already knew or had guessed most of it.

Actually, what she really wanted to do was ask him,Does James still have feelings for me?

But there was no real purpose to asking. Because regardless of Liam’s answer, Anika already knew that she was getting on a plane.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” she said firmly. “Only, if you speak to James, please ask him to call me.”

“I will,” Liam promised.

“Wait,” she said, before Liam hung up. “Do you know where he’s staying in Hong Kong? What hotel?”

“No,” Liam said, “I’m sorry. I can try to call him?”

“That’s alright,” Anika said. “I’ll let you get back to reading.”

Anika ordered a car again.

When the driver pulled up, she considered asking him to swing by her house first so she could pack a bag, grab her toothbrush even. But she felt compelled to hurry, hurry, as fast as she could. She couldn’t chance one more thing happening before she could speak to James.

So when the driver asked, “To the airport?” Anika replied, “Yes, please, as quickly as you can.”

The driver laughed and said, “Nobody ever wants me to get them there slow.”

And then, because he could see Anika’s anxiety, he assured her, “Don’t worry, not much traffic tonight.”

Still, every minute, every red light felt like torture to her.

She was glad she hadn’t stopped to pack. Thank god she always kept her passport in her purse, since she didn’t drive and had no license to use as ID. Maybe she could pick up a few toiletries at the airport after she checked in.

As the car sped ahead, she used her phone to book the first available flight to Hong Kong.

* * *

22

Though Anika had visited many places in her life, she had never been to Asia. Shortly before her mother fell sick, they had planned an elaborate, much-anticipated, trip to Japan, prompted by Anika’s teenage reading of the historical novelShogun,and her subsequent infatuation with all things samurai. Of course the trip never happened, and Anika hadn’t been able to muster the same enthusiasm to visit that corner of the world since.

She knew Hong Kong was nothing like Japan. But other than a few basic facts, she knew little else about the island nation. A long time ago, Aunt Molly had lived there for a few months when she was dating a British financier. That was before the territory had reverted to Chinese rule.

Anika expected it to be extremely wealthy, packed with people, and speaking a language of which she knew not a single character. This was a problem, since she also had no idea where she was going. She didn’t even know the name of James’s hotel.

She had already booked the first flight out of JFK the next morning. Once she arrived at the airport, she spoke to a helpful ticket agent who offered to put her on standby for an even earlier flight with Cathay Pacific. If they could find a space for her, she’d be departing at nine a.m.

The good news was that the flight was nonstop. The bad news was that it was sixteen hours and ten minutes long. And she’d be in coach. Anika pictured that stretch of time crammed into a stiff, narrow, upright seat, horribly close to a seat-mate of undetermined awfulness, and decided it was a price worth paying.

“I’ll take the standby,” she said.

Anika passed through security easily—it was quite a streamlined process, when all you had was the clothes on your back and a purse. With time to kill, she wandered around the airport looking for a shop to buy some basic toiletries and then somewhere to eat a midnight snack.

She found a little restaurant that served breakfast twenty-four hours a day. She ordered fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, and tea, and sat down to eat. Knowing that internet service would be spotty up in the plane, she wanted to use the opportunity to do some reconnaissance.

Anika was not nearly as versed in social media stalking as Stella or Hannah, but she had read more than a few Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as watched an inordinate amount of Law and Order. She knew that small details could contain a multitude of information.

Still, it was a ludicrous task she had set for herself. Even assuming that James was in Hong Kong proper, and not one of the outlying cities like Kowloon, she was still looking at a proverbial haystack of seven million people.

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