by Cynthia Eden
“Is that what you do?” His voice roughened. “You let the team at LOST see part of you and hold the rest back?”
“We aren’t talking about me.”
“Aren’t we?”
Her shoulders straightened. “There isn’t anything back here to see. Someone hosed off this area.” She turned around and walked toward him. “We need to get back to the case we were brought in to cover.” She started to skirt around him.
But Wade moved, deliberately blocking her path. “What if I told you . . . I want to learn about all the parts you hold back? That I want to know all of you?”
Won’t ever happen. It couldn’t happen. Not with Wade being the kind of man that he was. Oh, sure, he had a hard edge. He knew how to fight and play plenty dirty. But the man was an ex-cop, for goodness’ sake. That kind of went hand in hand with being law abiding. And her past?
Her secrets?
Not so law abiding.
“I’d say too bad,” Victoria told him quietly as her chin lifted the smallest bit. “Because that won’t be happening.”
He leaned toward her. “Into your bed, but not your head? Is that how it works?”
The breath she sucked in felt cold as it filled her lungs. She’d worried that sleeping with him had been a mistake, but at the time there was no way for her to pull back. In that moment, she’d just wanted him too much.
Now, her cheeks iced, matching that cold breath, and she pushed around him. Her steps were fast and hard, but he caught her at the edge of the building.
His fingers curled around her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
She stilled.
“I’m fucking this up, and I don’t know how to stop.”
Breathe. Play the game. Act as if you have control. “Stopping is easy. You just walk away.”
“That’s not happening.”
His words sounded like a threat. She opened her mouth to reply.
“Hey!” a sharp voice called out. “What’s going on over there?”
She looked back.
A tall, broad-shouldered man with dark coffee skin rushed toward them. “There a problem here, ma’am?”
Wade stiffened. “No problem,” he said, and a hard smile curved his lips.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t asking you, buddy,” the guy fired back. “I was asking the lady. Because from what I just saw, she was trying to get away from you and you pulled her back.” He edged closer, casting a suspicious glance Wade’s way. “So I’ll say again . . . is there a problem here?”
Victoria slid away from Wade. Some of her hair had come loose from her ponytail, and she tucked that lock behind her ear. “No problem. My partner and I—” Those words felt awkward. “We were just—just looking for a woman who didn’t return home last night.”
The man’s dark eyes narrowed and he pointed to Wade. “He looks like a cop.” Then his hand slid toward Victoria. “You don’t.”
“Me? No, no, I’m not.”
“Then what are you? And how long do you plan to hang around my bar?”
His bar? She shot a swift glance back at Wade. Then she focused on the man, who still stared at both her and Wade suspiciously. “My name’s Victoria Palmer, and this is Wade Monroe.” She didn’t tell the stranger he was right, and that Wade had once worked as a cop. “We work for an organization called LOST. Our job . . . it’s to find people who have gone missing.”
The man seemed to absorb that detail for a moment. “And who is this missing woman?”
“Well, right now . . .” Wade stepped to Victoria’s side. “We’re looking for a woman named Melissa Hastings. She was at your bar last night. She left, and she never went home.”
The bar owner laughed. “She’s probably still sleeping it off! That stuff happens all the time. Don’t worry. She’ll show . . .” Then he turned and headed toward the entrance to Vintage.
Wade and Victoria followed him.
“Her roommate is worried,” Wade said. “Apparently, it’s not like Melissa to just vanish this way. We don’t normally take cases like this one . . .”
They hadn’t officially taken it, but Victoria didn’t point out that fact.
“But we were in the area already,” Wade added, “so we told the roommate we’d look around.”
The owner paused at the club’s door. “You want to come in my bar, don’t you?”
Wade’s smile was wide. “Well, since you offered.”
The guy sighed. “Come in. Look around. You aren’t going to find some woman hidden inside.”
“Thank you, Mister—”
“Luther. Luther Warren.” He pushed open the bar door. “Try not to spend all damn day inside, would you?”
They’d try.
Victoria and Wade slipped inside. Luther flipped on the lights as he made his way toward a door marked private and went in. Then they got busy searching. Nothing seemed undisturbed. It was easy enough to imagine the space packed at night, but during the day, the cavernous place seemed . . . hollow. Empty.
There were no security cameras inside. Just a stage. Chairs and tables. A long bar.
And, as Luther had said . . . no missing woman.
MELISSA’S HEAD FELT . . . funny. Aching and heavy. And she couldn’t seem to think quite clearly. Her eyes opened and she squinted against the darkness around her, trying to figure out where she was.
But—she couldn’t see anything. Just the dark. So heavy.
She wasn’t in her bed. Melissa knew that with certainty. She didn’t feel her soft mattress beneath her. Instead, she was lying on something harder, rougher. Thinner? Like a cot. Yes, she was on a cot—long, narrow, and hard. And her hands—they were tied to some kind of pole above her head. She could feel the pole with her fingertips. Her hands were tied, and so were her feet. Each foot was bound with rough rope, locked in place near the bottom of the cot.
All of these details sank in slowly for Melissa. So slowly. At first she just shook her head, certain that she was stuck in some kind of nightmare. Because she wasn’t really waking up . . . not to this. She couldn’t be waking up to this.
Her hands stretched and she felt the pull of the rough rope on her wrists.
Real rope that was scratching her skin.
She jerked then, hard, as fear spiked through her.
But the rope didn’t give. Melissa screamed, as loud and as hard as she could. “Help me! Someone help me!”
Only there was no answer to her call.
So she screamed again.
And again.
Someone had to be close by. Someone had to hear her. Help would come. She’d get out of here . . . wherever the hell here was.
“Help me!”
She yanked at the ropes, pulling with all of her strength, and Melissa kept screaming.
“I TOLD YOU,” Luther said about thirty minutes later, after Wade and Victoria had searched the entire bar, “no woman is in here.”
No woman, no cell phone. Nothing. “Did you wash the back of your building?”
Luther blinked. “I pay a crew to come by every day. If the place smells like piss, it won’t exactly attract a high-end clientele, now will it?”
The man had a point. Wade rubbed his chin. “So the folks who come in here . . .”
“They’re college kids, tourists, folks with money to spend. This isn’t some dump on the edge of town. I bring in great bands and the place is packed every night.” Luther stood behind the bar now, his shoulders were ramrod straight. “I have a bouncer at the door—his name’s Slater. He makes sure no trouble gets in here, and if someone had taken a woman out of this place—unwillingly—Slater would have noticed.”
Victoria moved to stand near Wade. She’d been quiet while they searched the bar, but now her fingers were tapping against the bar’s surface. Her gaze darted around, and he could
practically feel the wheels turning in her head.
“Will the bouncer be back today?” Wade asked. “Because I’d like to talk to him.” Then he took out his phone and pulled up the picture of Melissa that he’d gotten from Jim. He pushed the image of the smiling blonde across the bar. “I want to know if he saw her leave with anyone.”
Luther frowned down at the picture. “Pretty girl.” He glanced back up. “But I doubt Slater will remember her. Do you know how many girls come in and out this place every night? Hundreds. It’s not like we can keep track of them all.”
No, Wade had known it would be a long shot. But you never knew just what someone would remember . . . “Were you here last night?”
Luther nodded. “I’m here every night.” His gaze slid back to the phone and the picture of Melissa. “This one . . . she doesn’t stick out to me. I’m sorry. I really hope you find her.”
“When will Slater be here?” Wade pushed. He wasn’t ready to give up.
“An hour before the sun sets. We open early, you know, for the tourists. So come back then and you can talk to him.”
Wade gave Luther his card. “If you remember anything else about her, you let me know, okay?”
Luther’s fingers curled around the business card. “She’ll turn up. She isn’t the first girl to come home late, you know.”
She also isn’t the first girl to never come home at all.
Wade nodded and turned away.
Victoria thanked Luther, her voice quiet, subdued, then followed Wade outside. When they were in front of the club, Wade lifted a brow and slanted a quick glance her way. “What are you holding back?”
She shook her head.
“Victoria . . .” Wade sighed out her name. “I get that you haven’t worked with a partner before. So I’ll clear up a few things for you. When you work with a partner, that means you’re part of a team. It means you share things with your teammate, even if all you are sharing is a hunch.”
“Roofie.”
He blinked.
“In a crush like the one in a place like this, with so many people inside, it would be easy to roofie a drink. That’s what I was thinking. That’s what I always think in bars now. Because of LOST.” She rubbed her arms. “You can’t let your drink out of your sight. Just a few seconds is all it takes, and the drug can be in your drink. You won’t see it. Won’t smell it. Won’t taste it. But it will hit you hard and knock you for a loop. Other people will just think you’re drunk, not drugged, so they won’t even notice if—” She broke off, clamping her lips together.
But he knew exactly what she’d been about to stay. “They don’t notice if some kind asshole helps you out of the bar.”
She nodded. “It could’ve happened. Or . . .” The wind caught the hair she’d tucked behind her ear and slid it over her face. “Or maybe Melissa is home now and this search of Vintage was a waste of time.”
He looked back at the bar. Every instinct he had screamed that no, this wasn’t a waste of time. He couldn’t ignore this case. Not with his past.
Not with the shit that had gone down before in his life.
“We should get back to Kennedy’s case,” Victoria said. “She deserves to be found, too.”
Right. He knew she did. All the victims out there deserved justice—and that was why he worked with LOST. He absolutely intended to continue working the case that had brought them to Savannah. “Let’s go talk to the police detective who handled Kennedy’s case.”
Victoria blinked, seemingly startled by his quick agreement.
What? Had she really thought he would argue? No, he wanted to help Kennedy and Melissa. So while they were down at the PD doing recon work on Kennedy’s disappearance, he could see just what else he could possibly discover about Melissa Hastings.
He and Victoria headed toward the SUV that Gabe had rented for them. They’d followed Jim to Vintage earlier, a fairly short drive from the university. He opened Victoria’s door but she didn’t slide inside. Instead, she stood there, that light, sweet lavender scent sweeping up over him.
“I have . . . a hard time figuring you out.” A faint furrow appeared between her eyes. When you looked deep enough—and he always did—there were flecks of gold hidden in those green depths.
He leaned toward her. “Ah, baby. I’m an open book. You’re the one with layers.” Layers he was dying to discover.
Her gaze held his a moment longer, then Victoria slid into the vehicle. Wade slammed the door shut and walked around to his side.
But before he climbed in, he glanced around the area once more. Melissa Hastings had been there before she vanished. Vintage had been her last known location.
So where the hell was she now?
BARELY DRAWING A breath, he watched as the black SUV headed down the street and away from Vintage.
Those two were going to be a problem. Asking questions that they shouldn’t. Stirring up interest when everyone else would have just been oblivious to what the hell was going on in that town.
The man—he would be disposable. He was not anything particularly interesting. An alpha. Strong and aggressive, nothing more. The woman—she was different. One look into her eyes and he’d known that truth about HER.
She was just like him. Pretending. Lying to the world.
Because the world didn’t accept monsters easily.
He’d make her reveal herself, though, before this was over. She’d show the world just who she was.
Just as he was about to show everyone . . .
Who I really am.
The world had better fucking be ready.
THE SAVANNAH POLICE Department was like a bee hive. Men and women in uniform bustled left and right, moving frantically as they tried to do their jobs. Witnesses were questioned, suspects were led off in handcuffs, and Detective Dace Black slowly led Victoria and Wade past the madness and into the relative quiet of his narrow office.
As soon as he closed the door behind them, Victoria did a quick visual sweep over the room. The desk looked as if it were about to sag beneath the weight of the manila folders on top of it. There was a framed picture of a woman, half hidden behind the files. No other photos were in the room. No other personal touches at all—except for the empty coffee mug that sat on the detective’s desk. It was a mug that sported a pair of handcuffs on the front.
“I told the LOST rep who called me . . . there is no new evidence on that case.” Detective Black pushed his fingers through his short brown hair. “I sure wish I had more to offer, but . . . there’s just nothing.”
“We read all the original case files,” Wade said. “But I wanted to talk with you. What was your take on the abduction scene? On the crime itself? Was she taken? Or did Kennedy Lane walk away?”
“My partner thought she walked. I—I didn’t.” Dace looked a bit uncomfortable. “She never came back.” His shoulders slumped a bit as he leaned against the side of his desk. “I listened to my partner back then and I didn’t think there was much of a crime, not at first.” He exhaled on a long sigh. “But time kept passing and she didn’t turn up.” A muscle flexed along his jaw. “When I got that call from LOST, hell, I was actually grateful. I’m supposed to be territorial and all that shit with my cases, right? I’m not. I want you to look into it. I want you to see if I missed something.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “It’s the five-year anniversary. Today’s the big day. Five years, and never so much as a clue about what happened to her. That shit . . . it gets to me. It changed me.”
“And your partner?” Wade pushed.
“Morrison died last year. Heart attack. He was a tough sonofabitch who never liked to admit he was wrong.” Dace rolled back his shoulders. “But he was wrong on this one. He was wrong, and I was a green detective who didn’t know enough to follow my own instincts.”
“Where would those instin
cts have taken you?” Wade paused a beat. “Perhaps to Dr. Troy North?”
Dace’s brows climbed. “The professor? He was—”
“Involved with Kennedy,” Victoria said, because she’d stayed silent too long. She was in the field for a reason, and she’d do her part. No more hiding and watching. Step up, Viki. “We learned that today.”
Dace whistled. “Then he is one lying piece of work . . . because I have it in my files . . .” And he started fumbling with the files on his desk. “I interviewed the guy—twice—and he denied being anything but her advisor and—” He stopped searching the files as his shoulders sagged. “I was so fucking green back then.”
Silence.
He looked at Victoria, then at Wade. “Anything I can do to help you two, just say it, okay? Shit, you’ve been here only a few hours and you already know one witness lied to me. How many more probably did the same thing?” His cheeks flushed. “I just wish someone could bring Kennedy home.”
There was a personal note in his voice when he said her name. His tone changed. Softened. For some reason, that change pulled at Victoria.
“But I guess . . . she doesn’t have a home anymore, does she?” Dace said, shaking his head. “Her mother’s dead. No other family left. No apartment. The world just kept right on spinning, even when she vanished from sight.”
Just as the world was doing now . . . when Melissa Hastings was gone? The fact that it was the anniversary of Kennedy’s disappearance made Victoria’s stomach feel hollow. Two abductions, two women from Worthington . . . exactly five years apart. “There is something you can help us with,” she said, even as Wade reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone. She knew he was pulling up the picture of Melissa.
“While we were at the Worthington campus today, we found out that this woman is missing,” Wade announced. “Melissa Hastings. She disappeared last night around ten, and she hasn’t been seen since then.” He handed Dace his phone.
The detective’s eyes locked on the photo. “She’s close to Kennedy’s age. But Kennedy was a brunette, and . . .” He exhaled. His gaze rose from the phone as he looked at Wade. “Last night at ten?” he murmured. “Not enough time has passed for an official investigation. You both know that.”
