She’d never even heard Isaac move, much less leave. One moment he was behind her; the next there was nothing but air where he’d been. How someone that size could pull off a disappearance like that was astounding.

Of course, it hadn’t taken a genius to figure that he’d gone out the back stairwell—so she’d punched through the fire door and started after him, taking her high heels off and jogging down in her stocking feet. She went all the way to the bottom of the stairs, pushed out of the exit, and glanced over at a guy who was lighting up a cigarette. When she’d asked him if he’d seen a big man leave, he’d just shrugged, blown a milky white cloud into the air and wandered off.

After she’d put her stilettos back on, she’d gone to the underground parking garage, gotten in her car and driven over to her client’s apartment again. There had been no lights on upstairs, but she hadn’t expected any. The last place someone on the run went was the address they’d given the police.

She’d known her client was a flight risk. What she hadn’t counted on was him being like that smoker’s exhale in the breeze, gone as fast as he had appeared.

Coming back to the present, Grier put her warm chardonnay on the tray of a passing waiter—just as her phone started to vibrate against her hip.

Excusing herself, she ducked out into the hallway. “Hello?”

“Hey, Miz Childe. How you be?”

“Breathlessly waiting for your call, Louie, that’s how.”

“Aw, now that’s sweet, right there. You’re a good woman.” Louie dropped the affable routine and got down to business. “You’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

Why am I not surprised? she thought. “Let’s get to it, then.”

“He’s a ghost.”

No disagreement there. Still, considering she’d been chatting up her dead brother lately, ghosts could be real. “He looked pretty corporeal to me when I was sitting across the table from him.”

“Well, the Isaac Rothe I was able to locate died about five years ago. Down in Mississippi. He was found dead in a ditch on a cattle farm, and he was nineteen at the time. The newspaper articles I read said he was busted up beyond recognition, but the photo of him while alive that ran with the obit matched the mug shot taken at the police station yesterday night. It’s the same guy.”

“Jesus . . .”