“You sound jealous. I’m assuming you went to public school?” Astra remarks with a smirk.

“Public school helped shape me into the woman I am today.”

“Yeah. That’s definitely Eau de Jealousy I smell.”

Paige laughs and shakes her head. “I hate you.”

Looking pleased with herself, Astra turns to me. “As much as I like standing here admiring the school and all, what are we doing out here? It’s not like we can go talk to the students. We do that, the story will spread quicker than a wildfire.”

“Her friends are bound to notice that she’s not in school,” Paige says. “They’re going to realize something’s wrong sooner or later. Especially the longer their calls and texts to Ashley continue to go unanswered.”

“That’s true. But I’m sure Barlow and his people will be able to run interference. They’ll be able to keep it contained for a little while.”

“Which brings me back to my original question,” Astra says. “Why are we standing here?”

“I just wanted to get a sense of the place,” I say.

“A sense of the place?” Paige asks.

“Ashley was taken somewhere between this school and her piano studio,” I say. “I wanted to get a feel for the place and see if we can figure out where she was taken—”

“Because if we can figure out the where, it might give us a clue,” Astra offers.

“Exactly.”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Nina, then press the phone to my ear. She picks up on the first ring.

“Talk to me, Boss,” she says.

“I need you to send me the location data from Ashley’s phone,” I say. “Drop a pin in her last location and send it to me.”

“Comin’ right up,” she chirps.

“Thanks, Nina,” I say, then disconnect the call.

A couple of minutes later, my phone chimes with the trail left behind by the phone-tracking app Ashley and her father used. It shows a clear line from the school that leads east and then cuts off where the phone was likely turned off or was otherwise disabled.

“Okay, follow me,” I say.

The three of us turn and head down the sidewalk, following Ashley’s route, and quickly find ourselves on a narrow street lined with high-end shops.

“It’s like a miniature Rodeo Drive,” Paige notes.

“Is that more jealousy I hear in your voice, Rookie?” Astra teases.

“I’m just saying when I was this kid’s age, I couldn’t afford to look into these windows, let alone buy anything from shops like these,” she counters.

“Paige, you forget that I’ve read your files and know for a fact you didn’t grow up poor,” I say with a chuckle. “And I know you did attend a private school for a year before abruptly transferring to a public school.”

“I never said I grew up poor,” she replies. “I’m just saying I didn’t grow up rich. My folks were comfortable enough, but this is… another level.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Astra says. “I’m curious about this abrupt transfer to public school.”

“There’s nothing to know. I just didn’t like the private school I went to.”

Astra gives her a wolfish look. “Could it be because your private school was filled with rich kids like these ones?”

“And they never let me forget just how much better they were than I was because part of my tuition was paid with a scholarship,” Paige said, her tone still acidic after all these years.

“I get that. But what precipitated your transfer? Granted, we’re still getting to know each other, but one thing I do know is you’re not a quitter. So? What gives?” Astra presses.

Paige sighs. “These kids… they were cruel. They never let me forget my family wasn’t as rich as theirs, and that was fine. I was there for my education, and I didn’t really care about them or what they said to me,” she says. “But when they started picking on another girl—Robin was her name—I saw that she wasn’t dealing with it as well. I talked to her and could see she was spinning out. She was depressed and in a really dark place. I was afraid she was going to harm herself. So, when I saw them getting on Robin really bad one day, I… snapped. I fought them all to get them to leave Robin alone and to let her see that somebody had her back. The school had a zero-tolerance policy on violence, though, so they kicked me out.”

“Wow,” Astra says soberly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know all that.”

“I know you didn’t. It’s fine,” Paige replies brusquely.

Having read through her files meticulously, I knew all this already. It’s an event that stuck with her because it was something that came up in her psych evals when she first applied to the Bureau. It showed me Paige’s character. While some have seen her temper as a negative and a reason to exclude her from their team, honestly, it impressed me. That she stood up to bullies on somebody else’s behalf, regardless of the consequences to herself, is something I see as a positive trait. That sort of selflessness can’t be taught.

I’ve known all of this since Ayad first forced her onto my team. I resented him assigning her to my team in the beginning and combed through the minutiae of her life, searching for some reason to remove her from my unit. Everything I’ve learned about Paige Boyle since then, though, has only left me more impressed. She’s not perfect. She still sometimes has trouble with that temper of hers, and she sometimes moves too fast on instinct without thinking things through. She doesn’t yet trust us completely. But I can’t deny she’s a terrific young agent with solid natural instincts. I feel like her potential, with the right coaching, is unlimited.

Beyond her abilities on the job, she’s an even better person, the sort any unit would be lucky to have. She’s simply a little rough around the edges and needs somebody to teach her to smooth those out. She’s got to learn to trust her teammates and fight for them the same way she fought for the girl in her school.

In this line of work where our lives are literally in each other’s hands, day in and day out, having that solid foundation of trust between us all is vital, and Paige is still something of a closed book. She doesn’t share much about her personal life, and it’s not my place to share what I know, so I’m glad to hear her opening up to Astra a little more about her past.

“Okay, this is where Ashley’s digital trail ends,” I announce.

We find ourselves standing on the street at the mouth of an alleyway between a boutique dress store and a designer handbag shop. Outwardly, there isn’t anything that stands out as particularly nefarious or ominous. The street is quiet and doesn’t seem heavily traveled at this time of day. Everything looks exceedingly normal.

“And there hasn’t been a ping since it was shut off here?” Paige asks.

“Not according to Nina,” I respond.

“And if Nina says there are no more digital breadcrumbs, there are no more digital breadcrumbs to be found,” Astra says.

“She couldn’t have just vanished into thin air,” Paige says.

I look around, studying the street. I’m pretty sure the alley had to have played a role in any potential abduction since, if Ashley was indeed taken by somebody, I doubt they would have done it in front of the large plate-glass windows of the shops on either side. If she was taken, it would have been brazen enough in broad daylight, but snatching her in front of those windows would have taken it from brazen to reckless. And nothing about this feels reckless to me. Everything feels scripted, carefully orchestrated, and worst of all, methodical.

As I study the surrounding street, I spot what I’ve been hoping we’d see. Beneath the awnings of the shops, I see security cameras discreetly tucked away. The camera just outside of the dress shop on our right isn’t pointed at the mouth of the alley. But the bougie-looking handbag shop on our left has a camera just under the awning at an angle that catches the front door but also might have a view of the mouth of the alley as well.

“Over here,” I say.

The electronic bell chimes as Astra and Paige follow me into the handbag shop. The decorations and design are minimal, but everything is antiseptically clean. A wide array of handbags that, in my opinion, are hideous, stand on shelves or podiums set at staggered intervals along the shop floor. I don’t have to look at the price tags to know I’m staring at bags that run into the thousands.

“That bag looks like a crab,” I mutter.

“It’s high fashion,” Paige says quietly.