TOWARD THE DISTANCE Chapter 14

Cade threw himself into finding Elena with the same intensity he brought to closing deals — except this time, there was no strategy that worked. No leverage. No shortcut.

The police traced her phone signal to its last known location: a stretch of wasteland on the edge of the city. Overgrown with tall grass, littered with garbage, the kind of place no one went voluntarily. Cade drove there himself, and when he saw the empty lot — the dead grass, the broken bottles, the absolute nothing of it — his legs nearly gave out.

He thought she was dead. For one terrible, crushing moment, he was absolutely certain of it.

A female officer steadied him. "Mr. Harrington. Breathe."

"Did you find her?" His voice was barely recognizable. "Is she —"

"We haven't found Ms. An. But we did find this." The officer held up an evidence bag containing a single SIM card — small, ordinary, completely unremarkable.

Cade took it. Held it up to the light. Elena's phone card. Discarded here, deliberately, like she'd been shedding skin.

"Can I…" He swallowed. "Can I take this?"

They let him. He climbed back into his car, inserted the card into his own phone, and waited for it to power on.

The screen stayed black for a long time. The card had been sitting in damp grass for hours — maybe longer. Cade sat in the parking lot of a gas station, watching the screen, bargaining with a God he hadn't spoken to in years.

Then — faintly, stubbornly — the screen lit up.

Dozens of missed calls. All from him.

And hundreds of unread messages. Every single one from Lily.

Cade opened them expecting nothing. What he found made his blood go cold.

【Lily: Elena, I think you should know — Cade is the kind of man who holds onto things. He won't let go of you easily. But feelings don't have a waiting list. If he'd met me first, you two would probably just be old classmates by now.】

【Lily: A woman needs to know how to present herself. If you spent less time looking plain and more time making an effort, maybe he wouldn't need to look elsewhere. He complimented me again today, by the way.】

【Lily: Youth isn't everything, but it's certainly better than being middle-aged and competing with someone half your age. Cade told me I'm beautiful again today. 😊】

【Lily: Look at this! [IMAGE] Cade designed this necklace for me. He made it himself.】

【Lily: Elena, I hope you can understand. Cade and I are truly in love. If you agree to let go, the house can stay yours as severance pay. Cade will buy me a new one anyway.】

Message after message. Each one a small, calculated cut — wrapped in pleasantries, dripping with the kind of sweetness that was designed to wound.

And then the photos. Gifts Cade had bought her. Bank transfer confirmations — large, round amounts sent to Lily like love notes in numbers. Intimate photos of Cade asleep, his arm draped over Lily's body, taken without his knowledge.

Cade put the phone down and pressed both hands over his mouth.

He felt sick. Not because of what Lily had done — though that was bad enough. He felt sick because of what it meant about himself. About the kind of man he had become without realizing it. A man whose lover felt entitled to taunt his wife. A man whose mistress could send these messages — these cruel, humiliating messages — and feel completely safe doing it.

Because she was safe. Because Cade had made her safe, by giving her everything she needed and asking for nothing in return except her body and her silence.

The female officer who had lent him a charging cable caught a glimpse of the screen as he returned it. Her expression didn't change, but something shifted behind her eyes — a quiet, final judgment.

Cade handed back the cable without meeting her gaze.

"Thank you," he said. And then, almost to himself: "I need to go home."