Phase Two began on a Thursday morning with Sophie arriving at my penthouse armed with nothing but enthusiasm and a pastry bag from Marlene's, and Kevin following behind her with his laptop and a small duffel bag of equipment that he refused to explain.
Sophie called it "The Penthouse Raid" with the kind of dramatic flair she applied to everything, and Kevin called it "Systematic Physical Search of Primary Residence" with the clinical precision that was his trademark. Marlene had packed us a basket of sandwiches and pastries and a thermos of tea large enough to fuel a small army, and when I tried to thank her she had waved her hand and said, "You'll forget to eat. You always forget to eat when you're focused. Take the basket."
I did not know how she knew I forgot to eat when I was focused, but the old Vivian must have done the same thing. The thought was strange and comforting and unsettling all at once, evidence that some parts of me had survived the amnesia even if I couldn't access them.
Sophie's reaction to seeing the penthouse for the first time was exactly what I expected, which was to say she stopped in the middle of the living room and spun in a slow circle with her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide.
"THIS IS WHERE YOU LIVE?" Her voice echoed off the marble floors and the high ceilings and came back to her smaller and more amazed. "This is INSANE. This is the most insane thing I've ever seen. You have a VIEW of EVERYTHING. I can see my apartment from here... I think. Maybe. Everything looks tiny and insignificant from up here."
Kevin arrived a few minutes later, having taken a separate elevator because he wanted to "test the building's security protocols," which I decided not to question. He looked around the penthouse with quiet assessment, his eyes moving from room to room and cataloging and measuring and planning.
"The square footage is significant," he observed. "This will take several days to search thoroughly even with three people working systematically."
"Several DAYS?" Sophie stopped spinning. "It's an apartment. How big can it be?"
"Three floors. Approximately twelve thousand square feet, not including the rooftop terrace or the private elevator lobby or the service corridors that connect to the building's maintenance systems."
Sophie's mouth dropped open again. "Twelve THOUSAND. I live in five hundred. With a roommate and a cat that hates me and a kitchen that's also my living room that's also my bedroom."
Kevin was already opening his laptop. "I've created a floor plan based on public records and Lucas's descriptions. We'll divide each floor into zones and search systematically while documenting everything we find. No room twice, no drawer overlooked."
I watched them prepare... Sophie bouncing with barely contained energy, Kevin calm and methodical... and felt a strange fondness for these two people who had appointed themselves the search party for my forgotten life. They were so different and so completely opposite in every way, and yet they worked together like they had been doing this for years.
Maybe they had. Maybe the old Vivian had brought them together, and maybe this partnership was one of the few good things she had created.
"Before we start," I said, "there's something I should show you."
I led them to my closet, the enormous walk-in closet full of funeral clothes, and Sophie's reaction was immediate and dramatic and exactly what I had hoped for.
"OH MY GOD." She pushed through the racks with her hands outstretched, touching everything. "It's like a rainbow died and only the sad colors survived. Black and gray and white and... is that beige? One single beige coat like a tiny rebellion against the monotony?"
"Keep looking."
She kept looking, pushing past the identical black blazers and the white blouses and the gray everything, and then she found them at the very back behind a row of black heels: the unicorn pajamas.
She pulled them out slowly and reverently, like she was holding a sacred artifact that might crumble if she breathed too hard. Her eyes filled with tears, and I was starting to think this was just her natural state whenever anything emotionally significant happened.
"You kept them," she whispered. "I gave these to you three years ago for your birthday, and you said 'Thank you, Sophie' in that voice you used when you hated something but were too polite to say so. I thought you threw them away or donated them or had Lucas dispose of them quietly. But you KEPT them."
"You gave them to me for emergency cuddles. I found the sticky note."
Sophie pressed the pajamas to her face, and her voice came out muffled and thick. "They still smell like you. The old you. The one who pretended she didn't need anyone but secretly kept my ridiculous gift buried in her closet like a treasure she was afraid to acknowledge."
Kevin appeared in the doorway with his laptop balanced on one arm. "I've mapped the first floor and established a search grid. We should begin with Zone A, which includes the main living area and kitchen and dining room."
Sophie wiped her eyes with the pajamas and carefully folded them before placing them on a shelf. Not buried or hidden, but visible and accessible, like she was giving me permission to keep them in the light.
"Right. Search. Notebook. Focus." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Let's do this."
We started in the living room, and Kevin's system was impressive in its thoroughness. He had divided the penthouse into zones based on the floor plan, and each zone had a checklist of every drawer and cabinet and shelf. We worked methodically while Sophie searched with chaotic energy, opening everything and touching everything and exclaiming over everything she found. Kevin followed behind her and recorded each discovery in his spreadsheet with calm precision.
"Zone A, Section 3, Drawer 2: Restaurant menus organized alphabetically. Approximately forty-seven menus, mostly high-end establishments with average entrée prices exceeding five hundred thousand rupiah."
"Who keeps forty-seven menus?" Sophie asked.
"Someone who orders a lot of takeout," I said.
"Or someone who likes to be prepared for every possible dining scenario and delegates the actual ordering to her assistant." Kevin closed the drawer and checked it off his list. "Nothing red. Nothing notebook-shaped. Moving to Section 4."
We searched for hours, through the living room and the dining room and the kitchen and every cabinet and drawer we could find. Sophie discovered a collection of vintage teacups I apparently never used, and Kevin found a folder of insurance documents organized by date and category and cross-referenced with corresponding policies. I found a drawer full of charging cables for devices I didn't recognize and probably never would.
No red notebook.
We moved to the second floor and searched the bedrooms and bathrooms and the study where Lucas worked when he was here. Sophie was starting to flag, her initial energy fading into something quieter and more tired, but Kevin remained steady and checked items off his list and documented everything.
And then Sophie tried to connect to the penthouse Wi-Fi.
"I just want to check something," she said, pulling out her phone. "Kevin sent me a photo of what the notebook MIGHT look like based on Vivian's description, and I want to compare it to..."
She tapped her screen, and the lights flickered. A soft beep echoed through the penthouse, then another, and then a voice... calm and robotic and completely devoid of mercy... filled the air.
"SECURITY BREACH DETECTED. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT. LOCKDOWN INITIATED."
The lights went red. Actual red. Emergency lighting that I didn't know existed flared to life and bathed everything in an ominous crimson glow. A siren began to wail, not loud enough to damage eardrums but loud enough to make conversation impossible.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?" Sophie screamed over the alarm.
"I JUST TRIED TO CONNECT TO THE WI-FI."
"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?"
"I WANTED TO SEE THE NOTEBOOK PHOTO."
Kevin was already on his laptop with his fingers flying across the keyboard. "She triggered the security system. It thinks she's an intruder and is initiating lockdown protocols. I'm trying to override."
The siren continued and the red lights pulsed, and Sophie had her hands over her ears with her face a mask of panic. I stood in the middle of my own home and watched it treat my best friend like a criminal.
And then Lucas arrived.
I didn't hear him come in because the siren was too loud, but suddenly he was just there in the doorway of the study with his tablet in hand. He tapped the screen once, twice, and the siren stopped and the lights returned to normal and the robotic voice said, "SECURITY OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. LOCKDOWN DISENGAGED. WELCOME, MR. GREY."
Silence. Beautiful blessed silence.
Lucas looked at Sophie, who was still crouched with her hands over her ears and her face pale. He looked at Kevin, who was frozen mid-type with his fingers hovering above his keyboard. He looked at me, standing in the middle of the chaos.
And then he looked at what Sophie was wearing.
Somewhere during the search, she had wandered into the spa room and emerged wearing a plush white bathrobe over her clothes, the kind intended for guests, the kind made of Egyptian cotton and probably costing more than her monthly rent. She had accessorized with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban.
"I see you've made friends," Lucas said flatly.
I looked at Sophie... bathrobe, towel turban, expression of pure guilt... and then at Kevin... still frozen, still clutching his laptop, his mouth opening and closing like a fish... and then back at Lucas.
"They're helping me find a notebook," I explained.
Lucas blinked. "A notebook."
"A red one."
His left ear twitched. "And the bathrobe?"
"I got cold," Sophie said weakly. "And the spa room was right there, and it looked so soft. I'm sorry. I'll take it off."
"Please don't. Not in front of me."
Kevin finally found his voice. "I'm sorry about the security system. Sophie just wanted to see the notebook reference photo, and I didn't think connecting to Wi-Fi would trigger anything."
Lucas's expression didn't change, but his ears... his beautiful tell-tale ears... were turning pink. Not from embarrassment, but from something else, something that might have been the effort of not laughing.
"The security system is calibrated to recognize authorized devices," he said. "Your laptop is authorized, Mr. Chen. Sophie's phone is not. The system interpreted her connection attempt as a potential breach and responded according to its programming."
"You authorized Kevin's laptop?"
"You mentioned he was helping. I took the liberty of adding his device to the approved list."
I stared at him. Lucas Grey, my impossibly efficient assistant, had authorized Kevin's laptop to access my penthouse Wi-Fi without being asked and without mentioning it, simply because I had said Kevin was helping.
"Thank you," I said.
His ears went from pink to crimson. "It was practical. He needed access to perform his search functions effectively."
Sophie slowly unwound the towel from her head. "So we're not going to jail?"
"No one is going to jail."
"And I can keep searching?"
Lucas looked at her... at the bathrobe and the chaos she had caused in under four hours... and then at me. "Would you like assistance? I know this penthouse better than anyone, including the places you might have hidden something important and the locations that don't appear on any floor plan."
Sophie's face lit up. "You want to HELP us?"
"I want to be efficient. Three people searching randomly is inefficient. Four people searching systematically with access to complete floor plans and knowledge of hidden compartments is statistically more likely to succeed."
Kevin nodded. "He's right. An additional searcher with specialized knowledge increases our coverage and probability of success."
Lucas looked at me and waited, and his ears were still pink and his expression was still careful, but underneath all that control I could see something else. He wanted to help, not because it was his job or because I was paying him, but because it mattered to me.
"Okay," I said. "Welcome to Operation Red Notebook."
Sophie cheered and Kevin created a new column in his spreadsheet, and Lucas didn't smile but his ears stayed pink for the rest of the afternoon. And somewhere in the penthouse, the red notebook was waiting.
We just had to find it.