Page 109 of Gone Before Goodbye
Maggie gets up in her face. “I lost the man that I loved,” she says.
And Nadia replies, “So did I.”
Silence.
“What are you talking about?”
Maggie almost takes a step back. She shakes her head.No way. No way.
“Wait, if you’re trying to say that you and Marc…”
“No,” Nadia says.
Maggie stops. “What then?”
Maggie looks Nadia over as though looking for a clue—and finds one. She hadn’t focused on it before, but once Maggie’s eyes latch on to it, she can’t wrest her gaze away.
Nadia is wearing a ring on her left hand.
She hadn’t been wearing it in Russia, that’s for certain. But she’s wearing it now. Maggie slowly reaches out for Nadia’s hand. Nadia pulls back at first, but then she lets her.
It’s a square-shaped emerald.
The one from that faded photograph in Trace’s apartment.
The same one Trace had clutched at his mother’s funeral.
Oh, damn.
Those puzzle pieces on the table? They start to shift into place.
Maggie meets Nadia’s eyes. “You and Trace…?” Her voice drifts away.
Nadia nods.
Maggie closes her eyes.
“Trace is missing,” Nadia says. “Do you know where he is?”
Oh man, she should have seen this. Maybe not immediately. Not when she first got to Ragoravich’s or even when she met Nadia—but as soon as Maggie realized that Nadia was, in fact, Salima, she should have figured it out.
“We’re in love,” Nadia says.
More pieces drop into place.
“Where is he?” Nadia asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You claim he went to Bangladesh,” Nadia says.
“Whoa, I don’t claim anything. That’s what Trace told me.”
“Told you how?”
“On the phone. He called me. After Marc was murdered. He’d thought about coming back to the States. Pay his respects. That kind of thing. He wanted to make sure I was okay.”
“Were you?”
