Page 139 of The Ruse

“Yeah.” I looked at the car behind us and yelled to the driver, “She can come with me, right?”

“I don’t think the Vanderbilts would like that very much,” the driver yelled back through the open back door.

“Well, since she’s the reason the Vanderbilts even knew where to find Bailee—” I pointed to Elyse. “—I’ll just lead with that if they have a problem with Elyse joining me.”

The driver’s eyes widened, but she lifted a shoulder in a shrug that said she wouldn’t stop me—a gesture that was probably also sign language for: “Your funeral.”

So I pulled Elyse with me down the snow-covered steps and helped her into the back of the car.

I thoughtElyse and I would have time during our drive to talk about what she’d said about being friends with Nash and how she didn’t want me to pick Bailee. But we barely had time to text everyone back at the ball the details on where we were going, because we had pulled up to the towering stone building that I’d seen on the news report this afternoon.

“We’re already here?” Elyse asked, bending over to look up at Bailee’s building through my window.

“I guess?” I slipped my phone into my coat pocket. “Somehow, that was a lot faster than I expected.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten somewhere so fast in New York.”

“Me either.”

Not that I came to New York on the regular or anything.

“Here, you can wear my coat.” I started shrugging out of it, realizing I probably should have given it to her when we first got in the car.

“Thank you,” she said.

I wanted to help put it over her shoulders, since I had been craving a chance to touch her for the past two weeks, but the doorman for the Vanderbilt’s building opened my car door and I had to explain why I had brought Elyse with me and why she was someone they could trust not to run to the gossip magazines.

For a long moment, it looked like the doorman wasn’t going to let Elyse inside the building. But after a quick call up to the Vanderbilts, he said that she could come up with me.

I took Elyse’s hand in mine and held it tight as we rode the Vanderbilt’s private elevator to the top floor.

“So what are you here for, anyway?” Elyse asked in a quiet voice as the elevator started climbing floors.

“I think Bailee just wants to talk.” I still wasn’t really sure what this meeting would entail. “She called me at the end of dinner. When I told her I was in town, she asked if I could just come over. Maybe she just wants to tell me what she’s been up to these past eight months.”

“Or maybe she knows she needs to apologize for leaving you to deal with the mess she made by disappearing.” Elyse sounded like she might not be Bailee’s biggest fan right now.

Which I definitely understood. Knowing that Bailee had planned this whole thing and let everyone drag my name through the mud was something I was still trying to decide how I felt about.

Like, had she seen any of the news reports that named me as a person of interest in her case?

Had she just sat back in Alaska, or wherever she’d been at the time, and laughed at how far off everyone was in figuring out where she went?

Maybe she had. She’d laughed about a lot of things when we’d been together.

“Maybe I don’t want to do this,” I said as I watched the floor number in the elevator climb, a surge of anxiety hitting my chest. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“We can leave if you want.” Elyse hugged my arm, stepping closer to me. “But it’ll be good for you to get some answers, right?”

She was probably right.

Before I could be mentally ready, the elevator doors opened to reveal the entryway of a beautiful home with light-blue walls, a shiny gray floor, and extremely expensive-looking decor.

A short woman wearing a gray pantsuit came to greet us, and she led us into a formal sitting room with two couches and four chairs arranged in a square.

Elyse and I sat on the white couch while the woman left to go get Bailee.

“So I’m guessing Bailee’s family is, like, super rich?” Elyse asked after taking in the surroundings.

---