Page 135 of Hunting Pretty

Her eyes kept trailing toward the door or through the dark velvet curtains framing the frosted glass windows.

She hadn’t bothered with an umbrella or rain jacket. Water still clung to her bare arms as she chewed at her chapped, lipstick-stained lips.

It was hard to see Aisling like this, with stooped shoulders and greasy hair, her usually manicured nails bitten down to the quick.

Grief had carved lines into her face, hollowing out the brightness in her eyes. She looked smaller, fragile in a way that wasn’t just physical.

It was like they stole her too, when they took Liath.

“Were you followed?” she asked, giving me a darting glance.

“No,” I said.

Aisling nodded like she accepted what I’d said, but she looked no less nervous as she played with the sugar packets instead of drinking her tea which I suspected had long ago gone cold.

The waiter appeared to take my order. His presence, though unobtrusive, seemed to shatter the fragile silence.

When he gestured toward Aisling, asking if she wanted anything else, she flinched, like the simple motion had startled her out of her own skin.

It felt cruel, almost, to bring up Liath in this state. To remind her of the loss she was drowning in. But she had messaged me, reached out for a reason, and that was excuse enough.

I reached out and carefully placed my hand on hers, my chest tight with guilt and sympathy.

“Aisling,” I said as softly as I could, “you said you wanted to talk about… Liath.”

She didn’t say anything at first, she just looked past me, her gaze distant.

“I don’t know how to do this anymore, Ava,” she whispered, her voice raw, barely audible. “It’s like… she’s justgoneand I’m the one left behind. I don’t even know who I am without her.”

The pain in her words hung in the air between us, thick and suffocating.

A strange, overwhelming urge gripped me, pulling at the edges of my heart. I wanted to wrap her in cotton wool and protect her from whatever darkness had hollowed her out. She looked so breakable, like a single touch might cause her to shatter.

When the bartender returned with my tea, I pressed it across to Aisling.

With a distant look in her eyes, she wrapped her hands around the big steaming mug as a shiver racked her thin frame.

I could sense this was my moment. She was ready to talk. Or as ready as she could be.

But I couldn’t rush at her. I needed to coax out what she knew, gently and slowly, the way you would a skittish foal pressed to the back of a stable.

I leaned forward, lowering my voice to a whisper. “I’ve been investigating for the newspaper…”

I watched Aisling closely, gauging her reaction. Her fingers twitched, but she didn’t look up.

“…and I don’t think Liath ran away.”

Her grip tightened on the mug, the tension in her body rising, but still she said nothing.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, pushing through. “I know Liath was kidnapped.”

Aisling’s shoulders hunched as if the weight of my words pressed down on her.

I could feel her fear, thick and palpable in the space between us, but I had to keep going.

She was Liath’s best friend. They’d been more like sisters, living out of each other’s pockets. If anyone knew anything about Liath’s disappearance, she did.

I leaned in closer, my heart pounding. “I know that Liath was being stalked before she disappeared.”

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