“Hi, Mary,” she said, regurgitating the woman’s name in the same chipper tone in hopes it would soften the woman up to the ask she was about to make. “My name is Catherine Clark, and I’m calling about my daughter, Lily Clark.”
“Hello, Mrs. Clark, so great to hear from you. How can I help? Is Lily doing okay?”
Grant’s eyes were wide with surprise, and her mischievous grin widened into a dark smile. Sometimes the best part of living in small communities was the inherent trust that came with it; fortunately for them today it could be used to their benefit—hopefully.
“Lily is just fine,” she lied. “I was just filling out some paperwork for an upcoming summer camp, and I was wondering if you could provide me with some information I have missing from my records. Would you be able to do that?”
“Hmm.” The secretary paused, as if she was considering what information she was willing to give. “What kind of info do you need?”
“First, we would need her vaccination records,” she lied, trying to think of what reasonable things a camp would need in order to sell her real ask. “Also, it looks like they have a question about blood type, as well. Would that be on record?”
The woman tapped away on a keyboard in the background. “Can you give me her date of birth?”
Elle rattled it off, thanking the real Mrs. Clark for being the ever-so-uptight mother—at least when it came to hiring the help—and also thanking law enforcement for not yet releasing the information about the murder and kidnapping to the media. Otherwise, Mary wouldn’t be dealing with her.
“If you like I’d be more than happy to email this information over to you,” the secretary said.
“That would be great,” she said, giving the woman her encrypted email address that she used for STEALTH. “By chance, did we have her typed and crossed?”
“Yep,” the woman said, “looks like she is O positive. Don’t worry, I will go ahead and attach those results to the email, as well.”
Elle smiled as she thanked the woman and hung up the phone. She looked over at Grant, her smile so wide that it was actually starting to pinch at her cheeks. “It is amazing what a mom can accomplish in five minutes. I don’t know if you are aware, but being a mom may actually be kind of magic.”
He nodded, but there was something wrong about him. Her smile disappeared.
“What’s wrong, Grant?” She slipped her phone back into her purse.
“She’s O positive?” he asked, a strange pleading tone to his voice almost as if he was hoping that he had heard the secretary wrong.
“Yeah, why?” There was a long pause, and with each passing second, her body clenched harder and harder, threatening to collapse in upon itself. What wasn’t he telling her? What did he know? “You have to tell me what is going on here, Grant. You can’t leave me in the dark.”
He looked up at her, and she could have sworn there were tears in the corners of his eyes, but as quickly as she noticed them, he blinked them back. “The examiner found some blood on Catherine’s sleeve. Blood that didn’t match. It came back as O positive.” His voice thinned as he spoke, becoming almost unintelligible.
She swallowed, hard. Lily had been injured...
Elle slumped back into the chair as the news flooded through her senses. She brought her hands to her mouth, chewing on the edge of her fingernail.
Lily was out there, hurt somewhere. She was sitting here and doing nothing. Yet, what could they do? Who could they talk to that would know anything, that could lead them to her?
Futility. This was pure hell.
Grant moved to come closer to her, like he wanted to somehow take back the words he had said to her, but the findings weren’t something he could control. This wasn’t his fault. None of this was his fault—it was all hers. She put her hand up to stop him from moving closer, and he sat back down in his chair across the desk from her.
He looked dejected. Had he needed to be consoled just as she did? Or was his need to comfort her for her alone?
Right now, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting Lily back.
“Grant,” she said, her voice hoarse from the silence and stress.
“Hmm?” he asked, watching her.
“I can’t just sit here and hope to find answers.”
He nodded, sadness marking his features. “I know. But there are only so many doors we can knock on to get answers. This case, it’s proving to be far more complex than what we had initially assumed it would be, especially with federal law enforcement involved. It’s been hard getting anyone to answer our calls in DC, let alone share much beyond what we already know. According to the feds, the senator has had the usual string of death threats, and he’ll share those with us when we see him. I hope you know I have been stopping at nothing to get Lily home.”
He grabbed some papers as they spit out of the printer and handed them over to her, waivers for her to ride along. She signed them and slid them across his desk. “Can you print out the autopsy findings, too?”
His eyes darkened, and he shook his head. “I can answer questions and give you information, but that could get me into some hot water.”
She sighed, but she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t understand the whys and hows of his thinking. “Fair. But what else did they find? Is there anything? Did they ever manage to get into her phone?”
“iPhones are known for being ridiculously hard to get into without a password. I was hoping that when we meet up with Senator Clark he would give us that.” As he spoke, he glanced down at his watch. He picked up her signed forms and stuffed them into the basket on his desk. “In fact, we need to head his way.”
She didn’t want to stay here and be helpless, but she didn’t really want to go and question the senator, either. The good news was that he probably wouldn’t even know who she was, as they’d never met each other in person, but that wouldn’t stop the growing dislike she held for the man.
How could it have taken him so long to get back to the state when his daughter was missing? She would have taken advantage of every possible resource—hell, she had been already, to help Lily.
Grant stood up and pulled on his jacket. “His plane, if it’s on time, should be arriving in fifteen minutes.”
“Do you really think he is going to freely give us information? And you know whatever he has to say, it will be nothing but lies.” She felt the fire on her tongue as she spoke.
Grant glanced over at her, his eyes widening. “I take it you don’t like Dean Clark?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like him or his political ads, but in reality, I don’t even know him. He is never with his daughter. In the months I have been working there, I have not once actually seen him in person, let alone heard Lily talk about him. I honestly couldn’t tell you one time that she said the word Daddy.”
He checked his utility belt and then stepped toward the door, motioning for her to walk ahead of him. “That’s interesting. You ever have any idea why he is so distant?”
“From the family or from Lily?” she asked, walking into the hall as he closed up and locked the office behind them.
“Both, either... I’m curious. I don’t have any kids, but if they didn’t talk about me, I would take it pretty hard. I would like to think most men want their children to love them.” They made their way out as they spoke.
“Not all men want to be fathers, and I think it’s fair to assume he is one only because then he can pull constituents from the suburbs. If he is anything like Catherine, you know what he is focused on—and it most certainly isn’t actually being the person he pretends to be.” As she spoke, all of her secret and pent-up feelings about the family came boiling to the surface.
In fact, she hadn’t even realized she had been thinking such things, and yet there they all were coming out of her mouth like she had opened up some kind of fire hose full of unspoken opi
nions.
Grant was silent as they made their way outside and to his truck. He opened up the door for her, and as she climbed in, she couldn’t help feeling as though she had perhaps said too much and had come off as something and someone she wasn’t. She didn’t hate Dean or even wish him ill; she just couldn’t understand him.
As Grant closed the door and walked around the other side, she watched him move. His coat was stretched tight over his shoulders, and for the first time she noticed how wide they were and how his body was the perfect V-shape of a man who worked out. He stopped and picked something up, and as he moved, she couldn’t help but stare at his round ass. That ass. Damn. He must have been the master of squats.
The animalistic part of her brain, the part she wished she could control, made her wonder how it would feel to have him in between her legs. She could almost feel his ass in her hands as he made a few of her wilder fantasies come true.
Maybe it was the tension of the case that turned her thoughts to carnal pleasures and away from the grimness of reality.
What would it be like to feel his breath mix with hers? To have him whispering all the things he wanted to do to her in her ear?
She shifted in the seat, trying not to let her thoughts reach her body but already knowing that there were some things—just like her thoughts about Grant—that she could not control.
It had been incredible just to kiss that man. Yet things had gone all kinds of wrong when they had. It was up in the air as to what would happen if they were ever to try again, but damn if she didn’t want to.
She licked her lips as he got in, and she sucked at her bottom lip before letting it pop out of her mouth as she gave him one more sidelong glance. He started to look over at her, and she quickly glanced away. He didn’t need to know the thoughts she was experiencing about him right at this moment. If he did...well, she didn’t want to know where it would lead. At least not yet, not right now.
Maybe if they finally found Lily and put Catherine’s killer behind bars, then she could focus on getting back into the dating world. Her loneliness could have been the driving force behind everything she was feeling when it came to Grant.
There were a million reasons they couldn’t be together. First and foremost, that they worked together—but that wouldn’t be a permanent thing. And well, for all intents and purposes, she didn’t really know him. She wasn’t the kind of woman, or at least she didn’t think she was the kind, who fell head over heels for a man after having just met him. She was far too methodical for that kind of nonsense. Then again, Daisy had approved, and that spoke volumes about what kind of man he was.
“Lily is going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay,” he said, looking as though he wanted to reach over and touch her once again.
He kept doing that. “Why don’t you want to touch me?” she asked, looking down at his hand.
He balled his fingers into a fist and then extended them toward her. “I want to. Believe me, I really want to touch you, but I have to be careful. In my job, if we lay hands on someone, those folks are going to jail.”
She tilted her head back as she laughed. “Well, then don’t touch me. I have shit to do.”
Now he was the one laughing, and she ate up the rich, baritone sound of him cutting up. That would be an amazing way to spend a day, in his arms and listening to that sound.
She reached over and extended her hand to him, palm up. “If you promise not to arrest me, I think we can try this thing.”
He slipped his hand into hers, pulling their palms tight. It felt secure there in his grasp, and the image of him bending over and all the things she wanted him to do to her body flashed through her mind.
“I’m glad you wanted to touch me again. I was afraid that I had scared you away.” He smiled at her.
That smile...she wasn’t sure which part of him she liked best. His eyes pulled her into their medley of colors and lines, but then he spoke. Even his voice...oh, his voice.
“You are something special, Ms. Spade.” He lifted her hands and gave her a soft kiss to the back of her knuckles.
Her legs tightened together, giving away all the places her body was responding to his lips on her skin. She didn’t know what to say to him. Did she compliment him back, or would it be too forced and inauthentic? But she couldn’t just say nothing—maybe she should say thank you, but if she did that, would she seem like a narcissist?
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him. Self-love and knowing her self-worth wasn’t narcissism, it was power. And damn it, she wasn’t a doormat.
It felt strange and wonderful to claim her power and go against so many of the life lessons that had been thrust down her throat as she had grown up. Her mother had been a powerhouse and her father had been supportive of having a wild child as a daughter, but it was ridiculous how the world worked to stuff a woman in the submissive patriarchal box. If a woman didn’t cook for her man, she was lazy. If she liked sex, she was a whore who must have been with hundreds of men. And if she could see the power in herself, the fire within her, she was a stuck-up brat.
His smile widened. “It’s nice to hear a woman accept a compliment for once.”
She forced herself to look over at him instead of coyly looking down at her hands. “Well, I appreciate you telling me what you are thinking and feeling. Seriously, it is amazing what two people can accomplish if they actually just say what they are thinking and feeling to one another—at least in the way they can.”
His grip loosened. “I’m sorry about that. That I can’t give you everything you want in the investigation.”
Crap.
“That’s not what I meant, not at all. I just meant in life.” She squeezed his hands in hopes it would reassure him. She wanted to explain it more, to tell him all the things she was thinking and how she wasn’t the kind to be intentionally rude or cruel, but they were pulling up to the terminals.
“It’s fine,” he said, letting go of her and putting the truck into Park. “I’m just glad I get to touch you, at least once in a while.”
She felt the heat rising into her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure what had caused it, his sweetness or the thought of his skin pressed against her again.
How could this hard-edged, stoic man who had intimidated her when they first met be such a soft-hearted guy when they were alone? He was full of contradictions, but damned if she didn’t have a growing need for what he was offering.
Like a true gentleman, he came around and helped her out of his truck. She cleared her throat as she tried her damnedest to stay cool. It was possible that his being a gentleman was a result of his job, and likely a habit of cuffing and stuffing. The thought made her giggle lightly.
“What are you laughing about?” he asked, closing the door behind her.
“Nothing.” And everything. How had she found herself holding hands with a man she could have sworn was hotter than the surface of the sun?
If he knew all the things she had done and seen, she had a feeling he would accept her for them. And yet, the thought of being with someone in their field—door kicking, so to speak—made her somewhat uncomfortable. Could two people in their world really work? She could be a bit manic about her job, and she had a feeling he could, too.
He hadn’t even called her for two days after their night in the woods. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
The doors at the front of the terminal opened, and a good-looking man with graying hair at his temples came sauntering out in a barely mussed Armani suit.
Though she had never met the man, she would have known Dean Clark anywhere. She had seen his picture over the fireplace every morning since she had started this job, and his photo ran in campaign ads. And damned if he didn’t look exactly like the oil painting of him and his family.
As though he could feel her staring at him, he glanced over at her and their eyes met. In the cold steel
blue of his, she could see she may have finally found answers.
Chapter Ten
Senator Clark was exactly the man Grant would have expected him to be after having watched him on the news over the years. He’d once heard gossip that the senator had opposed a Veterans Affairs funding bill for a new hospital, but then when the bill passed and funding was granted, he made sure to show up on the day they broke ground—nothing like a photo op at the expense of truth.
The senator swept back his pomaded hair as he spoke to a woman who was beaming up at him when they walked out of the terminal together. He smiled, and Grant wasn’t sure he had ever seen a more lustful, flirtatious gaze on any woman. If only the woman knew the truth—that the man she was talking to had come back to Montana because his wife had been murdered.
If anything, at least the senator had just moved himself firmly into the number one position on Grant’s list of suspects.
Grant gritted his teeth but smiled as he made his way over to the man. “Senator Clark, I’m Sergeant Anders. We spoke on the phone.” He normally would have extended his hand in a show of respect to those he was working with, but he had a hard time acting congenial when the senator had been so damned hard to get in touch with.
The senator kissed the woman on the cheek and slipped something into her purse as he bade her farewell, then he finally turned to Grant. “Hello, Anders. I thought we were going to meet at my hotel?”
His hackles rose and he started to say something, but the man cut him off.
“Regardless, I do appreciate just getting this all taken care of as quickly and as efficiently as we can. I need to get Lily back and find justice for my wife,” the man said, a look of concern finally flickering over his features.
Grant wondered if his reaction was nothing more than a staged response and a canned script. He hated to have hope this man was genuinely concerned for his wife and child.
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