by Marci Bolden
She swallowed before confessing something she’d been denying. With a single nod of her head, she let Alexa in on her deepest secret. She did want more. She was tired of being on her own with no one to turn to. She was tired of feeling as if the weight of the world was hers alone to carry.
That simple move, that unspoken confession, struck a nerve, and the unfamiliar sensation of tears stinging her eyes surprised her. Blinking several times, she cleared her throat and looked at the papers scattered in front of her. “I’ve been digging into these women’s lives, learning everything I can about them. They had everything, Lex. Husbands who loved them. Children they adored. Beautiful houses to call home.” She lifted a photo of Penelope surrounded by smiling faces. “Friends they spent time with.” She creased her brow as a light went off. “Wait a second.” Sitting up, she started sorting through Julia’s file.
Alexa leaned forward. “What?”
Instead of answering, Holly pulled out a photo and looked between the images for a moment, comparing the backgrounds behind each group of women—one that included Julia and the other that included Penelope—and then showed the photos to Alexa. “Does this look like the same place to you?”
Alexa took the pictures and did the same, looking from one to the other and back again several times. “Not only the same place but the same bartender.”
Holly took the photos back. Lex was right. The same young, Caucasian, well-built man was serving drinks in the background.
“These women were taken in broad daylight. It didn’t make sense before, but bartenders work nights, right? He’d have the time in the middle of the day and he’s seen both women.” She tapped the photos together and then smirked. “That’s him. It has to be.”
Patience wasn’t at the top of Jack’s list of assets. As soon as Holly had e-mailed him copies of the photos, he’d taken them to the detective leading Penelope Nelson’s case. That was enough to get the bartender on the radar. The lead detective, Jason Meyer, made some calls to the women’s friends and located the bar. By six p.m., the bartender was brought in for questioning.
“It’s gotta be him,” Jack said for what was likely the tenth time since the detective had taken the man to interrogation. He looked at Holly, sipping yet another cup of terrible coffee from the carafe of the old-style coffee pot, and smiled—pleased they were going to be able to wrap up this case any time now. “Where do you want to go for dinner?”
She stopped drinking and lifted her brows at him over the paper cup.
“You did it. You found him. I owe you dinner.” He smiled. “And more.”
She hesitated before lowering her cup. There was a smirk on her lips, but she pushed it away. “We don’t know that it’s him.”
“It’s him.”
“We don’t know that. We haven’t compared all the employees on their matching services. It could be—”
He ran his hand over her hair until he cupped the back of her head. She gasped and he smirked, pleased his bold move had surprised her. He liked getting those little reactions from her. He guessed very few people could conjure up those moments of shock before she quickly buried them behind her cool exterior. “It’s him. He’s going to tell us where to find them. Thanks to you.” He started to pull her closer, forgetting where they were, forgetting the need for professionalism. He forgot everything except the need to feel her against him.
“Miss Austin?”
She jerked back from Jack’s hold and faced the man who’d called out to her. “Mr. Fredrickson, what are you doing here?”
The way his face tensed as he looked between Holly and Jack was unmistakable. He was angry, and Jack suspected, from the glare on his face, Fredrickson didn’t approve of the way Jack had been leaning in to kiss Holly.
“Is it true? Did you find the man who took Julia?”
Holly creased her brow. “We have a suspect. The police are questioning him now. How did you—”
“When you didn’t answer your phone, I called the office. Whoever answered told me you were here.”
Holly frowned. “Well, she shouldn’t have done that. We don’t know if this is the man who took your wife. We just noticed that he appeared in photos that both Mrs. Fredrickson and Mrs. Nelson had taken while at a bar with friends. It could just be a coincidence.”
He looked at Jack again. “That’s not what your boyfriend said.”
The clip in his tone confirmed in Jack’s mind that his annoyance was that he’d caught an intimate moment—even if it was just a touch—between the woman investigating his wife’s disappearance and the detective helping her. Jack hadn’t intended to cross the line of professionalism. It was just a moment, just a brief lapse in judgment. Guilt clouded over him as Fredrickson clenched his jaw, making the muscles in his face bulge.
“We don’t know anything for certain yet,” she said softly.
“I’m just trying to be positive,” Jack said.
Fredrickson looked beyond Holly’s head, and she and Jack turned to see what had distracted him. Their suspect was being led down a hallway toward them without any sign that he was still in custody. No handcuffs, no defensive cop, and no attorney. Jack exhaled as he glanced to Holly, checking to see if she was thinking the same thing. She clearly was by the way she looked at him with disappointment in her eyes.
This wasn’t their guy.
“Is that him?” Fredrickson asked. Before either could confirm, he started toward the man. “Where’s my wife, you son of a bitch?”
“Mr. Fredrickson.” Holly blocked his way and put her hand to his chest. She gave him a sorrowful look, her eyes soft and her mouth dipped into a slight frown. “It’s not him. I’m sorry.”
Meyer walked by, narrowing his eyes at Holly and Jack. “He’s got a rock-solid alibi for both kidnappings. This was a waste of our time.”
Fredrickson let out a breath so hard his nostrils flared. Holly opened her mouth, but the man pointed a finger in her face. “I hired you to find my wife. You’ve had over two weeks now.”
Jack wanted to again tell the man that she was doing all she could, but he opted to heed her previous warning that he not defend her honor. She could handle herself and anything Fredrickson threw her way.
“Yes, sir,” she said softly.
“So stop drooling over this guy and do your goddamned job.” He stormed out of the police station as Holly watched, hands on hips, before turning to face the other angry party waiting to lecture her on her mistake.
Meyer crossed his arms over his chest, looking at Jack just as hard as Fredrickson had looked at Holly. He didn’t even try to hide his irritation, not that he ever did. This was one moody son of a bitch, and Jack had just tripped his trigger. “I need to see you, Tarek. Now.”
“Detective,” Holly started, “this is my fault.” Her attempt at taking the blame went unanswered.
“Now, Tarek.” Meyer stalked off.
“I’m so sorry,” Holly whispered.
Jack pressed his lips together as he tilted his head, eyeing her curiously. “Were you just trying to protect me, Austin?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it.
He smirked, despite the shitstorm they’d just found themselves in. “So it’s okay for you to jump to my defense, but I can’t jump to yours?”
“But this is my fault. I brought the bartender to you, and you stuck your neck out by bringing him to the lead detective.”
He shrugged, dismissing her justification for doing exactly what she’d warned him against. “I reviewed the evidence you brought to me and took said evidence to the lead detective because I agreed. I didn’t do that for you. I did it for those two missing women.”
Meyer cleared his throat from across the room.
Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Time to face the music.”
“Will you come see me when you’re done?”
He smiled and winked. “Was planning to. Hey,” he called when she started to leave. “This was the right call, Holly. Don’t beat yo
urself up that it didn’t pan out.”
He watched her leave, taking a moment to appreciate her slender body before going to get his ass ripped for sticking his nose in where he had already been told it didn’t belong.
9
Holly stared at the files she had on Julia and Penelope. Nothing stood out. Nothing hinted at who had done this to them. She had nothing. The one lead she’d been convinced she’d found had ended up being a dead end that got Jack in trouble.
Standing in front of the whiteboard, she looked at the evidence she had collected. She needed to focus on the company she’d discovered that serviced both the Fredricksons and the Nelsons. She’d been so convinced that the bartender was the guy, she hadn’t even followed up on the other leads. Now they’d have to wait until the next day to talk to the cable provider. One more day that Julia and Penelope might not have.
Damn it. Why hadn’t she just let Jack handle the bartender while she took care of the other possibility? Why had she let herself get so damned confident that she’d found the man who’d done this? She should have known better than to put all her money on one bet. She shouldn’t have gotten so cocky. She knew better than that.
“Beating yourself up?”
She looked over her shoulder at Jack. He looked more concerned about her wellbeing than his own. Frowning, not wanting to see the sympathy in his dark eyes, she scanned the board again. “Yeah. A little bit.”
“Why?”
“You mean besides following the wrong lead and wasting even more precious time these women don’t have while I simultaneously got Fredrickson’s hopes up for no reason and your ass ripped for stepping all over another detective’s investigation?” She finally worked up the courage to fully face him. “You okay?”
“Meyer doesn’t intimidate me.”
“Jack?”
Pushing himself from the doorframe, he stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled to her. “He gave me two options: I can stay out of his case or he’ll file a complaint.”
“So you’re going to stay out of it.”
He shook his head. “I promised my mother I’d help her friend.”
“You did. You brought her case to me. Let me take it from here.”
“No.”
She held up her hand. “I won’t screw up again.”
Grabbing her hand, he pulled her the last step to close the distance between them. “You didn’t screw up. You caught something that had slipped by all of us. It was a solid lead. It just didn’t pan out.”
“Which made it a bad lead and one that landed you in trouble.”
“Stop.” He gripped her sides, and somehow the suffocating guilt she’d been struggling with seemed a bit lighter. “You aren’t responsible for every single thing that happens around you, Holly. My choice to take this to Meyer isn’t on you. The fact that it was a dead end isn’t on you. Whatever has happened to those women isn’t on you. You can’t control everything.”
She tried to step back, but he dug his fingers just a bit deeper into her ribs, holding her still.
He bored his eyes into hers until she couldn’t look away. “It’s been a week now since Penelope went missing. We both know the likelihood of her coming home safe decreases every day. The fact that Julia has been missing for so long all but ensures that she’s not coming home alive, Holly. You know that as well as I do, don’t you?”
She closed her eyes. She didn’t need to be reminded of the reality that was always lurking in the back of her mind. “Yes,” she whispered. “I know.”
“But do you know that isn’t your fault? Look at me,” he insisted when she kept her eyes closed.
She slowly lifted her lids, and the intensity in his near-black eyes deepened.
“Do you know that isn’t your fault?” he repeated.
She drew a slow breath, hating that he was so good at reading her. Pushing his hands away, she moved to the whiteboard. “I’m going to call the cable provider and gardener first thing tomorrow. It has to be one of their guys. Because…” She turned and faced him. “If these were random kidnappings, we’re screwed, Jack. We’ll never find them now.”
“Holly.”
She shook her head and stepped around him to the table, where she had the files spread out. Planting her palms on the cool surface, she scanned over the papers and photos she’d reviewed a thousand times. “He chose them, right? There are too many similarities for him not to have chosen them. They represent someone. His wife or his mother. A sister. Someone who rejected him. Someone who hurt him. Maybe we should look for older cases. Maybe if we find the first victim—”
“That’s a lot of digging, Holly.”
“Well, we have to start thinking outside the box now, Jack. We have to start looking for a bigger picture.”
“Not tonight. Not right now.” He stepped beside her and rested his hand on the small of her back. “Right now, we need to get some rest and wait until morning, when we can follow these other leads. Right now, we need to clear our heads so we can think more clearly tomorrow.”
She exhaled harshly as that fist of guilt gripped her again. “I wasted too much time today. I was so certain I had him that I didn’t even follow up on anything else. I could have sent other members of my team to follow up on the other leads. But I didn’t. I was so sure this was him. I cost them time. Time that could mean life or death. I could have killed them, Jack.”
“Don’t do that.”
“You know I’m right.”
He scoffed as he creased his brow and gave his head a hard shake. “Jesus, Holly, you can’t save everyone. This man, whoever took them, you can’t control him and what he does any more than you could control…” He gestured his arm wildly. “Any more than you could control whatever happened in the Army that made you leave.”
His words hit a mark she hadn’t even realized was vulnerable to him. She leaned back a bit and narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“You couldn’t save everyone in your battalion—”
“This has nothing to do with—”
“And you can’t save every missing person who comes across your desk. You aren’t responsible for every single thing—”
“Enough!”
His words took her breath away and made her want to vomit until the unexpected waves of pain eased. Until the faces of every person she’d ever lost stopped rolling through her mind.
“You don’t know me,” she said with a quiet calm that sent a chill down her own spine. “You don’t know anything about me.”
She jerked away from him and paced as she tried to control the tornado of emotions whirling inside her. Who the hell did this guy think he was? Who the hell was he to stand there analyzing her, to tell her what she was and wasn’t capable of? With her back to him, she put her hands low on her hips and drew a slow breath to calm herself. One-two-three. Exhale. One-two-three. Inhale.
Jack moved to her side and dipped his head down to look at her. “I know enough to see that you are blaming yourself for things you can’t possibly control,” he said gently. “And I know that kind of approach isn’t healthy. Having an unyielding sense of responsibility for the world around us doesn’t end well for people in our line of work.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Save your pep talk for the rookies, Tarek.”
“Rookies aren’t the only ones who need to be reminded they can’t save everyone.”
No. She couldn’t save everyone. But she could have saved her mom. If she’d been brave enough, strong enough. She could have saved her mom if she hadn’t been so scared.
As far as the members of her battalion… She was their leader. Their lives were her responsibility. Their deaths were on her hands. Her burden to carry.
The missing women… Someone had to be responsible for them. Someone had to shoulder the blame.
She swallowed as she tried to find the right words to tell him all that she was thinking. But there were none. Taking another deep breath, she ground her teeth together to stop the swel
l of emotion from filling her chest.
Jack put his hands on her shoulders and whispered her name.
The tenderness of his action sent another lightning bolt of pain through her. She jerked around and shoved him as she felt hot tears drip from her eyes. “Leave.”
“No.”
She ground her teeth as every muscle in her body tensed. Pushing her breath out with a huff, she pointed to the door. “Leave!”
“No.”
He gripped her upper arms, gently holding her. Before he could say whatever Pollyanna bullshit was on his mind, she knocked his arms away and shoved him back several steps. She didn’t verbalize her warning, but she silently dared him to touch her again. He either missed her warning or chose to ignore it. He reached out, aiming for her hips this time. She grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm, and had him turned and grunting—not in pain, but she had no doubt there was definite discomfort shooting through his muscles. She was expecting him to fight her, to get pissed off enough to try to get out of her hold. To push back so she could push even harder to release some of her pent-up frustrations.
He didn’t. But he didn’t give up, either.
“Tell me you don’t blame yourself for every shit thing that has happened in your life,” he said. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
She leaned in close, bending his arm just a touch farther. “Are you done trying to touch me?”
“No.” He proved he had his own set of defensive moves by turning and reaching for her with his free arm. Pulling her against him, he brushed his nose against hers. “I’m just getting started, Princess.”
She jerked her arms, slamming her forearms against his, knocking him away, but he responded just as quickly. By the time she prepared to shove him away, he’d wrapped his fingers around her wrists and held her firmly to him, even when she twisted to get away.
Breathless, she stopped struggling before they both ended up bruised. “You don’t know me, Tarek.”
“I know you better than you think, Austin.”
“No. You don’t. Those women—”
