Chapter 3

The delay announcement played on loop through the departure hall.

I found a seat by the window and bought a hot coffee to warm my hands. Outside the glass, low clouds hung heavy over the tarmac, which gleamed wet with drizzle.

My phone screen lit up with a notification from our mutual friends' group chat.

I opened it and immediately saw a screenshot Sophie had just posted of her social media update. In the photo, she and Ethan were standing downstairs from the apartment, both holding their tickets to Bath, wearing the aggrieved look of two people fresh out of an argument.

The caption read: "I just wanted to help my friend lighten up a little, and I got treated like a criminal. I guess some people can only suffer with you, not enjoy life with you. I'll never wear my heart on my sleeve for anyone again."

The first comment was Ethan's.

"She's stubborn. Give her a few days to cool off and she'll come around. Ignore her."

Mutual friends rallied around Sophie. Some said I was too sensitive, some said it was just a train ticket and not worth destroying a years-long friendship, and others asked if they could still go ahead with the trip.

Reading those lines, I couldn't even summon anger. The whole thing was just laughable.

I didn't argue in the comments. I just screenshotted the post, the comments, and the chat, and saved everything to the evidence folder.

Just as I was about to turn off my phone, a flurry of hurried footsteps came from outside the departure area.

I looked up, and my eyes met Ethan's anxious gaze.

There was a thin sheen of sweat at his temples. One shoulder of his dark coat was soaked from the rain, and he clutched two crumpled rebooking receipts in his hand. When he saw me sitting safe and sound in my chair, the relief was visible. He strode over to me.

His first instinct wasn't to ask where I was going. Instead, he reached out and touched the side of my coffee cup.

"At least you had the sense to buy something hot. You're not stupid enough to wreck your own health."

That familiar thoughtfulness made me waver for an instant.

There was a time when I craved those small gestures more than anything. He would tilt the umbrella toward me in the rain. He would check with the waiter about peanuts before I even had to ask. In winter, he would tuck my hands into his coat pockets.

But the very next second, Sophie's voice dragged me back to reality.

"Nora, I was just telling Ethan you probably don't have anything real in that suitcase. It's all for show."

She poked her head out from behind Ethan, her eyes bright with the thrill of having caught me in the act. "You never actually planned to leave, did you? You just ran off to the airport to trick us into coming after you."

I ignored her and looked only at Ethan. "How did you know which terminal I was in, let alone which gate?"

Ethan took out his phone. The screen showed a location map. A green dot sat right on top of the departure area in front of me.

"I was worried about your lens set getting stolen, so I put a Bluetooth tracker in the hidden pocket of your camera bag a while back."

He put his phone away as if it were the most natural thing in the world, his voice even carrying a hint of self-congratulation. "Didn't think it'd actually come in handy today. Nora, stop all this, okay?"

My heart went cold, degree by degree.

I'd logged out of the shared cloud drive, unlinked the travel app, turned off location sharing, even changed my phone password, and none of it had stopped this kind of surveillance dressed up as protection.

What did he think I was?

An object he could track and retrieve at any time?

"We rebooked our Bath train to come find you." Ethan looked at me with the patience of a man doing me a favor. "That makes us even now, doesn't it? You cost us two rebooking fees, and we didn't even blame you."

Sophie immediately chimed in. "Exactly. Who actually runs away from home like some movie character? What if something happened to you out there alone? Have you even thought about the people who care about you?"

As she spoke, she reached for the camera bag at my feet. "Let me see. If you were really going to leave, there's no way it's still empty, right? Or did you just stuff in some snacks and a jacket?"

I shot to my feet and blocked her. "Don't touch my bag."

Sophie flinched at my reaction but didn't let go. "What's the big deal? Looking at it won't break anything."

I tried to pry her hand off, and she gripped tighter. In the tug-of-war, the camera bag's shoulder strap let out a sharp ripping sound.

The next second, the entire bag crashed onto the marble floor.

The zipper hadn't been fully closed, and my most-used telephoto lens rolled out, hitting the floor with a clear, shattering crack. The glass fractured into a spiderweb pattern, and the lens hood bent out of shape on impact.

The memory card case popped open, and several black SD cards slid across the floor, toward the shoes and luggage wheels of passing travelers.

My ears started ringing.

The announcements, the crowd, the rumble of rolling luggage in the departure hall seemed to vanish all at once. I stood frozen, staring at the cracked lens.

I had bought that lens when I was eighteen, with the prize money from my very first photography award. It had been with me through the mines of Wales, the coast of Cornwall, and the very project that had just been destroyed.

In the shattered glass, my ashen face stared back at me.

My chest suddenly felt like a fist was squeezing around it. I instinctively reached for the emergency medication in the side pocket of my camera bag, but my hand came up empty.