The Blue Zone

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Yesterday Kate was in Portland. Today Seattle. Bellevue, actually, a stylish suburb just across Lake Washington.

She knew she was running out of options.

This morning she had driven downtown to the Seattle Athletic Club. To no avail. The same for two other squash clubs in Redmond and Kirkland. And one at the University of Washington, too.

Kate knew this one was pretty much it. A banner over the doorway read PRO SQUASH IN BELLEVUE. She had followed the band’s tour. She had put together the details she’d been able to glean from her family’s e-mails. But this was basically the end of the line. She had run out of cities, squash centers. If this was a dead end, too, Kate didn’t know where she was going to go next.

Except home.

The club was a gray, aluminum-sided building tucked into the rear of a small business park off a commercial highway. Someone had told her the Pakistani pro there was pretty much world-renowned. The main strip had all the icons of an upscale place to live: Starbucks, Anthropologie, Linens-N-Things, Barnes & Noble. The cabbie let her off in front of the entrance, as he had four times earlier today, and waited.

Kate stepped through the doors. By now every squash club in America seemed to have the same look to her. This one had four clean, white courts, glass-enclosed, with a spectator balcony overhead. It was crowded. The balls echoed off the walls. It was the end of the day, and the courts were filled with kids. Some kind of after-school youth program going on.

Okay. She drew an anxious breath, facing a pretty young woman behind the desk, in a white piqué shirt with the club’s logo embroidered on it.

One last time…

Kate unfolded Emily’s picture. “I don’t mean to bother you,” she said. The young woman didn’t seem bothered at all. “Do you happen to know this girl?”

As Kate handed over the photo, she was already going through her options for what she would do next. Call Cavetti. Say she was sorry for ditching his agent. For probably involving the FBI in a manhunt to find her. Then beg him to break the rules and reveal where her family was. Face Greg. That option wasn’t sitting well either. Kate realized she had her share of explaining to do there, too.

The girl behind the counter nodded. “That’s Emily Geller.”

“What?”

“Emily Geller,” the girl said. “She’s one of our best players. She moved here from back east.”

Kate’s blood surged in shock and exultation.