“Funny story, though. Adam looks a lot like you. No scars, but I didn’t see all of him, yet. Who knows what he’s hiding?”
I sucked in a big breath of air, ready to let it all out in a screaming match to match and conquer the biggest screaming match we’d ever had.
“Oh, look! We’re here. You want to stay hidden in the car or should I drop you off at the park?”
“Park.” I growled out the word with enough anger to vibrate the inside of the car. “The fucking park.”
Lauren smiled sweetly and pulled up next to a dog park. “This will have to do—right?”
I got out and slammed the door shut, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed to not stand out. I was leaning down to say something to her through the car window, but she took off. I stared after the car and made myself take a deep breath so I didn’t chase her down and shake her.
I wasn’t sure she was coming back. She was obviously pissed and lashing out. It would probably make her feel great to leave me at a dog park and just continue on with her investigation.
Still, I sat down at a bench outside of the park fence and made myself watch the dogs inside. I knew she’d be back for me. Deep down. She might hate it, especially in those moments, but she did care for me. She wouldn’t leave me. Even if she probably should’ve.
Chapter 14
Lauren
Katie May wasn’t at home. I had a work address for her, though, and it didn’t take me any time to get there. It was still just a couple of blocks away from the park I’d dropped Mercer off at. I didn’t really understand what the plan was. He was supposed to be there to protect me, but so far, he was just sleeping close by and driving me crazy. When I actually went out to talk to people, he hung behind. If I needed him, he’d be nowhere to be found. Not that I thought someone named Katie May was going to attack me in a way that I couldn’t fend off. Her name was Katie May, for God’s sake!
I’d seen a marriage certificate for her and a man named Mark Hilliard. Mark owned a frozen yogurt shop and Katie worked there, behind the counter. She conveniently had a blog that she wrote about her life, and according to her, working at the shop was fulfilling and fun.
When I walked into the yogurt shop, however, I didn’t see fulfilling and fun. I saw an older version of the girl in Sara’s picture, looking downright miserable. She was talking to a man behind the counter, her husband, I was assuming, and they were in the middle of what looked like a whispered screaming match.
I browsed the shop and ended up grabbing a cup of cheesecake-flavored froyo for myself, with Graham cracker crumbs, Oreos, and gummy bears to top it. As I approached the counter, Katie forced a smile at me and waved her husband away.
“Hi! Is that all for you today?”
I smiled and shook my head. “For the yogurt, yeah. I doubt I should eat all of this, as it is. I have a few questions for you, though, if that’s okay.”
She frowned. “About?”
“Jessica.” I saw her clamming up and held up my free hand. “I’m not a reporter. I’m a private investigator. I’m just trying to figure out what actually happened to her.”
“I’ve had a couple of reporters call me already. I don’t want to be put in some crappy paper, talking about someone who deserves way better.” She rubbed her temples and looked back at where her husband had gone. “I don’t know.”
“I talked to Sara yesterday, Jessica’s cousin. She mentioned that you might know more about Jessica’s life at that time.”
“Sara? Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her or talked to her. After Jessica disappeared… we just didn’t talk anymore.” She rolled her shoulders. “How is she?”
I did a light laugh. “I think she could use a friend, if you’re free. Four kids, one on the way, and an asshole husband.”
She looked back towards her husband again and gave an ironic laugh. “They’re all assholes, aren’t they?”
I shoved a big bite of yogurt into my mouth. “From my personal experience? The only ones who aren’t assholes are the ones who aren’t anywhere near you.”
“Okay, we can talk. There’s a coffee shop just across the street that has amazing sandwiches. We can go there. It should be empty at this time of day.”
I watched her glance towards her husband again. “Is everything okay? Do you need anything?”
“Yeah. A divorce and a way to get the hell away from here.”
“I could arrange half of it.”
“Ugh. It’s fine. I’m stuck here.” She took off her apron and tossed it on the counter. “Mark, I’m going out for a second.”
He came over, a dark frown on his face. “What? You can’t just—”
“I’ll be back.” Katie came around the counter and took my arm. “Let’s go before he realizes that I just took a twenty from the drawer.”
I couldn’t help but laugh and feel a little wilder as we rushed across the street and inside a tiny coffee shop. My froyo was forgotten as the smell of baking bread and pastries hit me. I looked at the display case full of fresh-baked goods and sighed. “That’s everything.”
“Yeah. Working so close to this place made me add a good twenty pounds on.” When she saw me glance at her small figure, she grinned. “Cheating on my husband made me work it off.”
I nodded, like it made perfect sense to me. “Are you going to be offended if I throw this yogurt away to get food here?”
“Shit, no.”
Five minutes later, I was scarfing down an amazing sandwich and lusting after the Danish I’d gotten as my dessert. I’d also grabbed an extra sandwich and Danish for Mercer.
“I convinced myself for years that Jessica had run away with some rich man, you know?” Katie polished off her sandwich and sighed. “I was pissed that she never called me, but she was like that sometimes. We both were. We’d go on bingers and forget the other person existed for a few weeks at a time. I just thought she was having the time of her life.”
“The rich guy she’d been seeing?”
“No way. That creep was a giant pervert. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere with him. He was awful.” She laughed. “She was never short of men, though. Jessica was so beautiful and fun. She trapped men in her web like it was nothing.”
“Mercer?”
Katie nodded. “Even Mercer. That was one fine man. I would’ve loved to snatch him up first, but she saw him and made her move right away. Even he wasn’t enough for her, though.”
“Do you know the man she was seeing?”
“No. I wish I did. She was scared of him. She would tell me these things he said and it was so creepy. She started seeing him as soon as Mercer left town, I guess. She met him when she was running an errand for her dad. She was always bragging about how she’d bagged a big fish. He was important and had tons of money.”
“What would he say?”
“Hell, I couldn’t tell you exactly anymore. It’s been a lot of years and a lot of bottles of wine since then. I remember it was something about how he should lock her away and keep her all for himself as his sex slave.” She blew out a big breath. “He did handcuff her one night. He cuffed her to a bed and left her there while he went to do something for his wife. That’s what pissed Jessica off enough to threaten him. She told him she was going to tell his wife and he snapped.”
“How?”
“She wouldn’t say exactly, but I think he attacked her. She was jumpy when she came back from his place. She was scared.” Katie shook her head. “I should’ve known she didn’t run away. I was just so drunk and stupid those days that I didn’t think about it. It wasn’t completely abnormal for us to piss men off.”
“Did you ever have an idea of who you could’ve thought he was?”
“I thought he could’ve been a cop. He talked a lot about locking her up. And the cuffs. I just assumed cop. I don’t know how many loaded cops there are, though.”
My brain tickled a bit with that information. “A cop…”
“It was just a feeling I got.
I doubt it was anything real.”
I looked over her shoulder and thought it through. “The local cops are saying Mercer did it. Had you heard that?”
“I did. It’s bullshit, though. Anyone who knew Mercer and Jessica would know that. I saw him that weekend he came back to town. I was surprised because Jessica told me she’d dumped him and he was supposed to be at war or something, but he was there. He was hugging her goodbye.”
I shook my head. “He would never have hurt her.”
“Not a chance in hell. He was crazy about her. She pulled all kinds of shit on him and he just let her get away with it. He was a good guy.”
“He still is.”
Katie whistled. “Are you bagging him now?”
“Nope.”
“But you want to be.”
“Nope?”
She laughed. “I heard he got pretty fucked up in some blast over there. Is he still hot?”
Suddenly, I couldn’t be far enough away from Katie. I was sure she was a nice woman, but she was definitely still a wild child. Too wild for talking about Mercer like that. “Thanks for talking to me about this. Is there anything else you can think of that could help me?”
Katie shook her head and glanced across the street, towards her shop. “Be careful. After they found Jessica’s body, I knew it was whoever she was seeing. She played with fire and she got burned. Whoever that guy was, he’s not going to want to be found. He was willing to kill then. I’m sure he’d be willing to kill again.”
I thought of Jade and her death that seemed to be senseless, besides making Mercer look even guiltier. “I’m not so sure he hasn’t.”
I said my goodbyes to Katie and carried my goods back to the car. I sat there for a few minutes and thought about the man who’d killed Jessica. Katie thinking he was some sort of cop was something that I hadn’t even considered. This man was rich, powerful, and dangerous. Apart from the rich part, the profile could fit a cop.
If the man had been in Ambrose, there weren’t many powerful positions. Mayor, city councilor, doctor? If he was in law enforcement, he could’ve been sheriff or… I wasn’t sure. There were a few lawyers and a judge, but I didn’t think they’d fit. I just didn’t know. I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who the man was. I was out of people to talk to, besides the man Mercer wouldn’t tell me about, the man who did the illegal business of faking papers. I had to go see him. Without him, I was stuck.
I drove around to the park and waited for Mercer to get in. As soon as he did, I tossed him the sandwich and then started in. “I have to go see the guy you sent Jessica to. Katie was helpful, but she didn’t know who the guy was either.”
Mercer frowned. “Not anything about him? No name, no nothing?”
“Same as what you knew. Rich, powerful, dangerous. The only thing that she told me was that Jessica said he made a lot of comments about locking her away. Katie thought he was a cop or something like that. She didn’t know, though.”
“A rich and powerful cop?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Maybe a sheriff, though? I don’t know. That’s the problem. I’m out of answers and people to talk to, without your guy.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Well, then, go with me. We can’t just stop now. I need to finish this thing.”
He hesitated. “I think it’s too dangerous. I was fine with you going and talking to a few women, seeing if anything stood out, but I don’t think you’re ready to go deeper. It’s too much.”
“So—what? This is it? I talked to a few people and now we just give up?”
“It’s the best thing for you.”
“No. I’m not giving up. You tell me who the guy is or I start diving into the darker parts of Ambrose to see if anyone knows anything.”
“Lauren…”
“I’m serious, Mercer. I’m not going to just throw in the towel because it’s a little dangerous. I’m going to figure this out and clear your name. You came this far. Do you want to help or not?”
“Fuck!” He punched the back of the passenger seat and growled. “I want this shit to all be over.”
“Then help me.”
“Fine.”
I felt a weight lift from my chest. “Good. Now, tell me where to go. I have research to do about who was in office and who was on the police force back then, but I can do that anywhere.”
“Memphis. Get back on I-40 and go east.”
I nodded. “Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Chapter 15
Mercer
Watching Lauren work had always been like looking at a work of art. Not that I would ever admit that to her. She curled into herself like a little kid and piled her hair on top of her head. Chewing on a pen or pencil, she scribbled down notes while mumbling to herself about whatever she was thinking. She was striking.
As she worked on finding whatever she was looking for, I sat across from her, watching. I couldn’t help myself. I’d been furious with her earlier in the day, but after driving for several hours and then checking into a motel and eating dinner, I was sedated. I thought about the years we’d been side by side. All the fighting, the ways we drove each other crazy. I was never nice enough to her. She was just always looking at me with her bedroom eyes, biting her lip and luring me in when I had no business being lured in. It was too hard to be nice to her. When I was nice to her, she looked at me like I’d hung the moon and the stars—and I didn’t deserve any of that.
“Luke loved you more than anything in the world.” I spoke without thinking and worrying about the consequences. “You’re all he talked about at first. This baby sister of his that he couldn’t wait to go home to. I remember him talking about you. He’d left you with the officer who recruited him.”
Lauren sighed, a sad sound. “Jamie and Nick.”
“Yeah, Nick Frankton. He hadn’t wanted to. You were just a baby. Five, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“He didn’t know what else to do, though. Your parents weren’t good enough, but he thought that maybe Nick would be good for you. He would tell us all about you. Every time he would come back from breaks, he’d be so excited to tell us whatever new shit you’d done. Everyone gave him so much shit about it. It was like he thought he was your dad.”
“He might as well have been.”
“You were seventeen when Nick brought you to the base to see him, since he couldn’t get away for whatever holiday it was.” I closed my eyes and remembered. I was twenty-seven at the time and way too old to be looking at a seventeen-year-old, but it’d been hard to look away. “Luke told me later that he thought Nick had brought you in hopes of Luke taking over. Nick couldn’t handle you anymore. He was older; you were wilder.”
“Luke was busy. He couldn’t.”
“I know. He would’ve in a heartbeat if he could’ve, though. That day you came, wearing this tiny dress, Luke flipped out on all of us. He went on a rampage about how we should never look at his baby sister, how we weren’t good enough for you. I’d never seen him so angry.”
Lauren shifted. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. He wasn’t happy. He was so protective of you. As much as he could be. He was devastated when you ran off.” I looked at her and shook my head. “He blamed himself. He felt like he should’ve stayed home with you, raised you by himself.”
“That’s silly. He was just a kid himself.”
“You were his whole world.”
“I broke his heart. He came to get me in Vegas. I remember the look on his face when he saw me. It killed him to see me like that.”
“He threatened us that day, too.”
“What do you mean?”
I grinned. “He brought his whole team with him to get you from Vegas. He said you’d always been stubborn and figured he’d need backup. We got there and you were on stage… No one expected it. He made us close our eyes in the van going back to our lift zone. He didn’t want anyone seeing you in anything less than your nun
garb.”
“You were there?”
I nodded. She’d been so pale and thin. Her eyes sunken, she’d looked close to death. “I was also there when we beat the shit out of that boyfriend of yours. That was fun.”
Her eyes went wide. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, yeah. Luke didn’t play about you. He wanted only the best for you. None of us would’ve ever been good enough.”
“That’s stupid.” She pushed her laptop away and pulled a pillow into her lap. “You were all soldiers, the top of the top, kicking ass and taking names. How could you not be good enough for an addict who couldn’t get her shit together until after burying her brother?”
“He wasn’t wrong. You were too good for us. Even then. Especially now.”
“You don’t actually think that.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I do. Luke would agree, too.”
“So, Luke told you to stay away from me and that’s what you’re doing? Is that what you’re saying?” She leaned forward, a fire burning in her eyes.
I hadn’t meant to open up that can of worms, but I was there. I was at my wits’ end. “He meant it. He didn’t want any of us with you. His dying doesn’t change that.”
“And if he hadn’t said that?”
I looked away from her. “I still wouldn’t be with you.”
The little burst of air leaving Lauren sounded pained. “Wow. Okay. I guess you’d made that point plenty before.”
“You still see me like I was before. You take care of me. Like you used to do. I’m just a patient to you, someone to clean up after and take care of. I couldn’t be with someone who can’t see me as a whole man. Not that I am. I’m not. It would be nice to have someone see me as one, though. You shouldn’t be with someone like that, anyway. You can’t ‘pity care’ for someone and still be happy.”
She exploded off the bed like a stray bottle rocket. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“You think I just look at you and see some sick man who can’t take care of himself? You think that when I look at you, I don’t see you as whole? You’re fucking off your rocker. I’ve never looked at you like that. Even when I was helping you get well, I didn’t see you like that. I didn’t fucking jerk you off because I felt bad for you. I wanted you, you dumb ass. Even back then.”
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