Step Into My Web

by Cynthia Eden

  “You have two of the yearbooks?”

  “Yes.” She winced. “I suspect all the wreckage at Judith’s house was caused due to the perp looking for those books. Particularly Gregory’s senior yearbook. She had two copies of his junior year—I have no idea why—but only one copy of the senior year. When I left her, she still had a full set of all the school yearbooks from her thirty years as a librarian, all the years except…”

  “Senior year, right. Got it. And just exactly where do you have the yearbooks?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  His breath froze in his lungs.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fantastic. Best ever.” He heaved out a breath. “Someone attacked Judith because that person wanted the yearbook.”

  A nod. “And he or she probably didn’t want Judith talking. But she’d already talked to me.”

  “You have the yearbook upstairs.”

  “I have two yearbooks upstairs, I told you—”

  Joel glanced over at Reese. “When we leave, make damn sure all of the alarms are set at this place.”

  Reese bobbed his head in agreement. “Count on it. I’ll also stay extra close to Marie. She can keep me safe.”

  “Marie’s boyfriend won’t like that,” Chloe returned with a little wince. “Keep your hands to yourself or you’ll get cut.”

  “I was going to keep my hands to myself,” he muttered. “That was the plan. Don’t know why you would have thought otherwise.”

  Joel focused on Chloe. “What did you find in the yearbooks?”

  “I made the connection with the rings because of the yearbooks. I remembered seeing Gregory with his team. A close-up shot of his championship ring. I’d only thumbed through the pages but because of my—”

  “She’s gonna mention her memory again,” Reese rumbled.

  “That did help me to connect the men,” Chloe plowed on. “They were all on the same team their senior year. So when the other two became victims, I knew it was tied to their shared past on that team.”

  “Why’d you take the junior yearbook, too?” He was trying to follow along.

  “Because Judith told me that no one went missing that senior year. That no one vanished. That there was no traumatic event at the school.” A vague expression of guilt crossed her face. “By the way, I told Agent Richardson that I was going to ask Judith questions about what happened during that year. Oh, and did you know…he went to see Judith, too?”

  “How the hell would I have known that?”

  “She told him she couldn’t find the yearbook for Gregory’s senior year. Said she’d misplaced it. I…may have asked her to keep our visit private.”

  “Of course, you did.”

  “So when Richardson finds out, he won’t be happy.” Chloe didn’t seem bothered by that prospect. “Are we ready to search for the body now?”

  “No, we’re ready for you to back up and tell me why we have Gregory’s junior and senior freaking yearbooks! Why did you want them both?”

  “So I could look and compare the students in the classes. I wanted to see if anyone was there for junior year but gone for Gregory’s senior year.”

  “People transfer, Chloe. They switch schools all the time.” Didn’t mean something bad had happened.

  She gazed steadily back at him. Right. Yes. This was Chloe. She’d probably already figured something bad had happened. “Tell me,” he said.

  “There were five people who were in the junior class, but not the senior one. I got a friend at the FBI to look into missing persons’ cases. He didn’t turn up anything. No matches to those individuals. He even tracked them down for me. To be thorough, you know.”

  Joel waited.

  “Or, he was tracking them down. I received my last update from him as soon as I returned here today. Before I hopped in the shower. One woman wasn’t located. She was never reported as missing. She had a foster family, he said.”

  Joel’s shoulders straightened.

  “She was eighteen, and she’d threatened to run away a lot. She had run away from other homes. So her foster family thought she’d just hitched a ride with someone and never looked back. Her case worker should have known about what happened, should have checked on her disappearance, but it didn’t happen. She vanished, and it was as if no one noticed.”

  “Who was she?”

  Watching him closely, Chloe said, “Portia Strong.”

  His brows climbed. “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Does it?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “Okay.” Chloe nodded. “I think I know where she is.”

  “Sure, you do. You found out that she was missing like…what, thirty minutes ago? And now you know where she is. The cops haven’t found her in years—”

  “They didn’t know to look for her. No one noticed that she was gone. How can you find someone if you aren’t looking for the person?”

  “And you’re just going to magically walk right to her body?”

  “Of course, not.”

  Okay. Fair enough.

  “Magic won’t be involved. A cadaver-sniffing dog will be.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Give me five minutes alone with your brother.”

  “Fine. I need to check in with Cedric anyway.” She turned smartly on her heel and paced toward the kitchen. As she headed away from him, he saw her raise her phone to her ear.

  “At least the cops will be involved,” Reese noticed from the position he still held in the library’s doorway. “The last time my sister found a dead body, they thought she’d killed the bloke.”

  “Drop the English accent. It gets on my nerves.”

  “You get on my nerves,” Reese fired back.

  Joel grabbed him, half-dragged him inside, then slammed the library door shut.

  “You have a dead body to find,” Reese mumbled. “Don’t let me delay you.”

  “Who was her partner before me?”

  “Like…sexually?” A wince. “I am super not comfortable with this whole conversation.” Reese shook his head. “Her sex life is her sex life and I do not—”

  “I don’t want to know about her past lovers.” Didn’t want to even think about those jackasses. “I mean—whatever this shit is that we do. Crime solving. Killer hunting. Who helped her before me?”

  A quick laugh. “She doesn’t need help on that end, if you know what I’m saying—”

  “She prefers doctors because she can’t stand the sight of blood. When you’re tracking down bastards who murder, blood is typically involved. She has to have someone on hand for that part of the job.” And that’s why I’m really here. “Who was it?”

  Reese scrunched up his face. “She was hanging around with a guy a few months back. But he wasn’t like you. She didn’t move him in and offer him an actual job. That’s something she’s only done with you.”

  He filed that important point away. “Was he a doctor?”

  “I think he was wearing scrubs once? Younger guy. Younger than you, anyway.”

  Joel took a stab in the dark. Because he’d recently seen Chloe being chummy with one other doctor. “Let me guess. Black hair. Green eyes. About two inches shorter than me?”

  “If you know him, then why are you asking me about the fellow?”

  Because I didn’t know him. Not until that day. “Why’d she stop working with him?”

  “Ask her. I have no clue.” Reese reached for the doorknob. He started to open the door—

  Joel pushed it closed. “Chloe was there when her parents were killed.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a question.”

  “She hates the sight of blood because she got their blood on her.”

  Reese swallowed. “This all seems like stuff you should be talking to her about. Why are you coming to me?”

  “You’re supposed to be her brother—”

  “I am her damn brother!”

  “Her brother disappeared. Ran away when he wa
s fourteen. I don’t believe for one single moment that someone like Chloe wouldn’t have hunted for him.”

  Reese glanced at the floor. “She was a kid when I vanished. Super smart. Always was. Used to scare our parents because she was so smart. Parents aren’t supposed to be scared of their kids.” That last line…it was different. Deeper. It held the ring of truth.

  Joel latched onto what Reese had finally revealed. “They were afraid of Chloe? Because she was smart? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does if they were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. If they thought Chloe would figure them out.” Reese’s voice turned raspy. “They’d leave her alone so much. Shut her away. I know they could hear her calling for them.”

  Chloe’s voice whispered through Joel’s mind. “It was an estate. Quite large. Had been in the family for a long time. It could be quite possible to be in one wing of the house and have no idea what was happening in another location. You could even scream until you were hoarse from one room, and the people having a party downstairs would never hear you.”

  Joel’s heart ached. “Their killers were never caught.”

  Reese looked up at him.

  “Chloe solves murders all the time,” Joel continued, voice roughening. “But she didn’t find the person who killed her parents?” I don’t buy it. She would have hunted him. Would have searched until she found the killer.

  “Some cases are harder than others.”

  He stared into Reese’s eyes and searched for the truth. “Do you know who killed them?”

  Reese licked his lips. “I’m not as smart as she is when it comes to killers.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “But I know what you’re thinking. I know why you wanted to see me alone. I know what you suspect.”

  What he suspected…what was curling in his gut like a snake getting ready to strike…

  “Chloe isn’t like that.” Reese shook his head. “She didn’t take a knife and hack her parents to pieces. She didn’t slice them over and over until blood soaked her skin. That’s not what happened that night.”

  “But you weren’t there,” Joel said softly. “So how do you really know?”

  Reese didn’t reach for the doorknob any longer. He squared his shoulders and kept staring Joel dead in the eyes. “If you honestly think that shit about my sister, then get the hell out of our house, right now. Get the hell out and stay away. She doesn’t need you. You aren’t good enough for her. You aren’t worth her. You aren’t—”

  A rap at the door. “Joel? I hate to rush you, but we need to get going. We only have so much daylight left, and Cedric said he’d meet us for the search. If you’re occupied with Reese, then I can certainly do this without you.”

  “You’re not going anywhere without me,” he called back. His eyes pinned Reese.

  “She tried to save them,” Reese whispered. “They’d been terrible to her. But she still tried. That’s what she does. She’s not the monster. I don’t care what you hear. I don’t care what lies you’re told. That’s not her. Back then, she’d been reading anatomy books. Fucking anatomy. She tried to put them back together. Tried to stop the blood loss. That’s why she was soaked when the cops arrived.”

  Joel thought of what he’d done that day. Of the way he’d insisted Chloe stay with him in that room with Judith. She’d wanted to leave.

  But she hadn’t.

  “Fuck me.” Now he was the one grabbing for the door.

  “Be good to her,” Reese snapped behind him. “Or I will kick your ass.”

  Joel threw a frown at him.

  “Fine. I’ll get Marie to kick your ass. And you will be so sorry because she happens to be fantastic at ass kicking.”

  Joel yanked open the door.

  Chloe was glancing at an empty drinking glass in her hand. “All done?” She didn’t look up. “Finish interrogating him about my parents’ murder?”

  “You knew I—”

  “I was listening at the door,” she confessed quietly. Chloe raised her eyes. “I went to the kitchen just to get the glass. Old school, but effective, I assure you.”

  “You listen at a lot of doors?” Joel asked to buy himself time. Time to figure out how to say…I’m sorry.

  “More than one would expect.” Her spine seemed very straight. She put the glass down on a nearby table. “We should hurry. Cedric is sending teams to the five locations I’ve suggested—”

  “Five?”

  “Well, it’s not like I know the exact spot for the body. But five locations are most likely. We’ll start at the top of the list and work our way down. That’s why we have to hurry. Losing daylight and all that.”

  She made her way to the door. Her steps seemed a little fast. And that spine of hers? Still stiff and straight.

  “You hurt her.”

  Jesus. Joel spun around. “Reese, don’t skulk up behind me.”

  “You need to apologize.”

  “Yeah, I get that shit.”

  “Chloe didn’t kill our parents.”

  “I never said she did.” He made his way for the door.

  “Oh, yeah? Then what was that whole interrogation scene about—”

  “I thought you’d killed them.” He looked back because he wanted to see Reese’s reaction.

  And he saw it. Would have been impossible to miss the other man’s flinch.

  But Reese snapped, “I didn’t.”

  No, but maybe her real brother did. Chloe wasn’t waiting, so he followed her outside. He pulled on sunglasses as he saw her going straight for the motorcycle. She climbed onto the bike. Didn’t put on the helmet. She gripped it tightly in her hands.

  With silent steps, he closed in on her. “I’m an asshole.”

  “No, I don’t think that you are.”

  “You should think that I am.” His fingers slid carefully under her chin so that he could tilt her face up toward him. “At Judith’s place…staying in that room with me must have been hell for you.”

  “It certainly was not an experience that is going on my highlight reel.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because if I’d gone out of the room, I was afraid you’d follow. Then that woman would have died. You did an amazing job of saving her. I wish that I’d had your skills…back then.”

  He knew she meant when her parents had been attacked. Voice gruff, he said, “You were a damn kid, baby.”

  Tears gleamed in her eyes. “I was the only one there. They only had me. No matter how hard I tired, I couldn’t put them back together again.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill them. You didn’t leave me in that house with them.”

  He wanted to pull her into his arms and never let go. “I’m sorry that I didn’t understand you better from the beginning.” He could see the truth now.

  Her gaze focused on him. Sharpened. Not click, click. Not some robotic study. Never that. He’d read her all wrong. When she stared so hard, she was seeing past the surface. Trying to understand him—as he should have been doing with her.

  “You’re not cold,” he told her, voice still gruff. The sight of those tears in her eyes was wrecking him. “You’re not detached.”

  “Is that what you thought I was?”

  “Hunting killers isn’t some sort of game for you.”

  “P-please stop touching me.”

  That tremble in her voice…He removed his hand. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

  “You thought I was playing a game? That I’m cold?”

  “At the beginning, yes.”

  She flinched.

  God, I don’t want to hurt her. “I’m telling you everything. That’s our new deal, isn’t it? Full truth? I’m telling you what I thought. And how completely wrong I’ve been about you.” I will never be wrong again.

  Her gaze cut from his. “I want to protect you.”

  “And I damn well want to do the same for you.” Protecting her wa
s his priority. Making sure that she never, ever got hurt again. Not by any of the perps out there. Not by my own careless words. “You hit my life like a hurricane. Spinning and storming and I didn’t know what to do or think. I just got bits and pieces of you and I tried to force all of them to make sense.”

  She wasn’t looking at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Joel said again, and he meant those words. He sure as hell hoped that Ruben—the ever helpful medical examiner—had been right and they could truly be magic words. “I hurt you. When I was questioning your brother, he had it wrong. I didn’t think you killed your parents. I wanted to know more about you. If I know more, then I can make sure that I don’t hurt you again. Hurting you is the last thing I want to do.”

  A jerky nod. “I don’t particularly want to be hurt. Sometimes, it is unavoidable.”

  He didn’t speak. He waited. Waited…

  Her gaze reluctantly slid back to him.

  “I will avoid it,” Joel promised. “I can do that. You’re changing me. I feel like I’ve been sleeping. Or, hell, maybe I just haven’t been living. Ever since that bastard put me in the ground, I haven’t been the same. Nothing mattered. I dug myself out of the grave, but I felt like I was still buried. The days just passed and passed…”

  “We should go—”

  “Then I met you. You matter, Chloe. You matter.” She’d changed everything for him.

  She was searching his eyes. Searching—

  “Joel?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Please touch me again.”

  Please. A fucking magic word. He slid his hand under her chin.

  “Lean toward me.”

  He leaned close.

  Her lips pressed to his. A soft, tender kiss. “You matter, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They found her at the third park.

  Portia Strong had been a runner. In the yearbook—during Portia’s junior year—she’d been on the cross-country team. Smiling from ear to ear as she stood with her arms thrown around her team-mates.

  By senior year, Portia was gone.

  After her FBI contact had notified Chloe that Portia hadn’t been seen in years, she’d immediately contacted Portia’s former foster mother. The call had been brief. Chloe had identified herself and said she was working in conjunction with the NOPD on a missing person’s case regarding Portia Strong.