by Holly Rayner
But she wouldn’t give up.
There was something out there that would lead her to him. Eventually, she would figure it out.
And there was always a chance that he was out there looking for her too. Maybe he had changed his mind about not wanting to see her again. Maybe she’d be getting a friend request on social media any minute now.
She pulled up her social media page to check, but unsurprisingly, there was nothing there.
Chapter 12
Gwen
Four Months Later
“Nothing yet?” Gwen asked as she set down her lunch bag on her desk.
Mike glanced up. “Sorry, Gwen,” he said. “Same old.”
“I’ve got some more obituaries I can go through,” Finn chimed in, holding up his smartphone.
Gwen sighed. It felt like they had already been through a million obituaries, and it seemed highly unlikely to her that the next stack would be the one that contained a likely lead on Clay’s father.
But you never know. I don’t want to give up before we’ve had the chance to find our lead.
“You’d better set them aside for now,” she told Finn. “If Sergeant Kepler sees us working on this, he’s going to blow a gasket.”
Finn scoffed. “What’s he going to do?” he asked. “He can’t fire all three of us.”
“I don’t want you two getting into trouble for my sake,” Gwen insisted.
“We won’t get into any trouble,” Mike said. “Besides, Sergeant Kepler arranged a traffic stop on a woman he liked—to ask her on a second date.”
Gwen’s eyes widened. “He did? Really? How do you know?”
“I have a cousin in traffic enforcement,” Mike said. “She told me all about it. Apparently, he looked up her license plate number after their first date and put out a call on her. When the officer who made the stop pulled her over, instead of giving her a ticket, he gave her the Sergeant’s phone number.”
“Wow,” Gwen said. “Did that actually work?”
“No idea,” Mike said. “Would it have worked on you?”
“Hell, no.”
“But some women are into men who flex that power thing,” Finn said. He glanced at Gwen. “Not the kind of women who become cops themselves, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Gwen agreed.
“Anyway,” Mike went on, “if Sergeant Kepler tries to crack down on us for searching for the father of your baby, we’ll just bring up that story, and he won’t be able to say anything.”
Gwen wasn’t convinced that hypocrisy would stop Sergeant Kepler from giving her a hard time. She didn’t think even an act of God would stop him. And he had been particularly difficult since she had been forced to let him know that she was pregnant. Though she and her doctor had agreed that she was fine to continue with non-confrontational fieldwork for a few more months—meeting with women who had been in violent situations to check up on them, for example—Kepler had confined her to desk duty for the duration of her pregnancy.
“I’m not having you out there doing a substandard job in the field because you’re knocked up,” he said. “Consider yourself lucky I’m not putting you on unpaid leave.”
Gwen did consider herself lucky. She knew for a fact that he had no authority to do that, and if he could have done it, he probably would have.
She glanced toward Kepler’s office. The lights were off, and it was dark. He wasn’t in today—probably out meeting with somebody. Which was a good thing. If he wasn’t here, she and the others had a bit more freedom to look into where Clay might be.
“I really appreciate you guys helping me with this,” she said. “Have I told you that yet?”
“Only about a thousand times,” Finn said, laughing. “But we weren’t about to leave you high and dry. You deserve to get in contact with the father. It’s an easy choice.”
“Any guy worth his salt would want to know if he was going to be a dad for the first time,” Mike said loyally.
Gwen smiled. She really had sold Mike short in the past. “Thanks, Mike.”
He nodded. “I have a few things to file, but when I’m done, I’ll look at the sketch you had the artist do of him again. Maybe I can find a match in the database this time.”
“I doubt it,” Gwen said. “That was always a long shot. He’s not a criminal.” Besides, the picture the sketch artist had given her didn’t really look like Clay. She wasn’t sure why. The artist had gotten all the details right, but there was something missing.
Maybe it’s just that the shine in his eyes isn’t there.
Whatever it was, she hardly recognized the man on the page. She would never have picked the sketch artist’s rendering out as a picture of Clay if she hadn’t known for a fact that that was what it was.
“What are you going to do?” Finn asked her. “Have you had any new ideas?”
“I guess I’ll call the resort again,” Gwen said.
“They wouldn’t give you his information last time you called them,” Finn said. “Do you think this time will be any different?”
“Maybe,” Gwen said. “The last person I spoke to there was pretty savvy about what she did and didn’t have to tell me. Maybe I’ll be lucky this time and get some idiot on the phone.”
“Well, good luck,” Finn said. “I hope it works.”
Gwen pulled up the resort website, found the phone number, and dialed on her cell phone. She couldn’t use the police department’s phone for this, and she knew she would have to be very careful with what she said.
“Green Turtle Cay Resort and Spa, how may I help you?” a male voice answered brightly.
“Hi,” Gwen said. “I was a guest a few months ago, over the Christmas holidays. My husband and I stayed in room 108.” This was a tactic she hadn’t yet tried. It seemed like a long shot, but there was a chance it might work.
“How was your stay with us?” the man asked.
“Great, thank you,” Gwen said. “But my husband and I are having a bit of trouble figuring out which credit card we put everything on. It never showed up on our statements. Would you be able to tell us in whose name the room was booked, mine or my husband’s?”
“One moment.” She heard the sound of tapping on the keys of a computer.
She caught her breath. Was he really about to give her an answer? Could this plan really work?
“Okay,” he said. “So I have the record of who booked that room for December twenty-fifth.”
“What does it say?” Gwen asked, heart pounding.
“Unfortunately, I can’t give out guest information,” the man said. “But if you want to give me your name and your husband’s name, I can tell you if one of them is on the room.”
“Either Clay or Gwen,” she replied, hoping he would read the full name when he responded.
“The charge is on your husband’s card,” the man said.
Gwen’s stomach dropped.
Of course it hadn’t worked. This plan had been foolish right from the start. The resort employees were no doubt trained how to give out this kind of information. They would never tell her what she needed to know.
“Thank you,” she replied. “Have a good day.”
She hung up the phone, feeling despondent.
Four months had gone by, and she had nothing. She was no closer to finding Clay than she had been on the first day she’d realized she was pregnant.
And her baby was growing all the time. Clay was missing everything. He had missed the doctor’s appointments she had been on so far, the ultrasound that had revealed pictures of the baby for the first time. He had missed feeling the baby move, something that had happened for the first time just a few nights ago. Gwen had sat in wonder with her hands on her stomach, experiencing every flutter and movement of her child, feeling a strange combination of joy and guilt that she hadn’t yet managed to find Clay, that he couldn’t be present to share this moment.
She knew it wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t been able to contact him yet. There
was nothing she could do about it that she wasn’t already doing. But even so, she felt responsible. She felt guilty about the fact that her pregnancy was progressing without his involvement.
All she wanted was to be able to thoroughly enjoy this time in her life. But Clay’s absence hung like a shadow over everything.
That night, when she had eaten dinner and taken her evening shower, she sat on the edge of her bed in the comfortable cotton nightdress she had gotten used to wearing as her body had begun to grow. She held Clay’s cowboy hat in her hands, turning it around and around slowly. It was the only tangible link she had to him.
How she’d hoped that this hat would be the thing to bring the two of them back together! She had been so sure that he would use the fact that he knew she had the hat to try to find her. He would want to get it back.
But he hadn’t found her. He hadn’t reached out.
Was he really that bad at looking people up? Her identity wasn’t a secret at all. It wouldn’t take him more than a few minutes’ work to find her, if he really tried.
Was it possible that he simply hadn’t noticed the hat was missing? That he had never called the resort and figured out that it must be with her?
Or maybe he did know that she had the hat, and he just didn’t consider it worth the trouble of getting in touch with her. Maybe he would rather let his hat go than to speak to her again.
That idea settled like a lead weight in Gwen’s stomach. Could he really be so reluctant ever to see her again that he would be willing to part with his hat?
You don’t know that it means anything, she reminded herself. Maybe he doesn’t care about this hat. He probably has plenty of hats.
She sighed and was about to toss it aside and go find a book to read in bed, when something caught her eye. A flash of blue against the tan of the hat’s interior.
Something had been written there.
Carefully, she held the hat under the light, angling it until she could see the words written along the seam.
Here’s to the start of a lucrative new venture — David Fischer.
David Fischer?
What was this all about?
A “lucrative new venture” sounded like some kind of business dealing. But Clay wasn’t in business. He was a rancher. Of course, a ranch was a business, but the way the note had been written made it sound like Clay and this David Fischer person were going in on something new together. Something other than the ranch.
Her investigative skills began to work on the problem.
Clay had money. That much had been obvious during their time together in the Bahamas. Could he have invested in something? Maybe he was the financial backer for whatever David Fischer had been involved in, and as a thank-you for his support, Fischer had given Clay this hat.
Which meant that Fisher would have information about Clay. He would be able to point Gwen in the right direction.
Finally, a real lead! Through sheer luck, she had stumbled upon her first lucky break in four months—and the evidence had been sitting right here in her house the whole time. She hadn’t even thought to make an in-depth study of the hat. If she had, she would have had David Fischer’s name a long time ago.
It wasn’t much to go on. She knew that. She couldn’t imagine that David Fischer was that uncommon of a name—there must be thousands of David Fischers in the United States. It was likely that he lived in Texas, and she would start her search there, but that was by no means guaranteed.
But there were a few other clues buried in the note that had been inscribed in the hat. Whoever she was looking for, it would be someone who had recently embarked on a new business venture. The hat was comfortable but not well-worn, and she knew that it was one that Clay didn’t try to preserve by keeping on a shelf because he’d brought it on vacation with him. So it was relatively new. The message had been written recently, probably within the past year or so.
She longed to go right to her computer and begin a search for David Fischer. To see what her social media accounts could turn up. To message every David Fischer in the state of Texas, and to begin questioning all those who answered about their possible connection to Clay.
But she restrained herself. This was her first lead in months, and she wasn’t going to be cavalier about it. She wasn’t going to send her quarry into hiding by making it clear from the outset what she was looking for.
She would wait until tomorrow. She would discuss matters with Finn, and probably with Mike as well. And together, they would decide on the best course of action.
Thank God I have the two of them to help me with this. I would be losing my mind if I had to go through it all alone.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, that if she was unable to track Clay down, she would be going through the rigors of parenthood all alone.
She was looking forward to the birth of her baby, to being a mother and all that the title entailed. But at the same time, she knew it would be very hard. And going through it alone would make it that much more difficult.
And I won’t be able to turn to Finn and Mike for help with that. Finn can babysit occasionally, maybe. But three a.m. feedings? Diaper changes? Choosing the right school when the time comes? That’s all going to be on me.
She was up for the challenge, but the idea of going through it all alone was intimidating, to say the least.
God, I hope David Fischer is the key I’ve been looking for. I hope he can help me find my way to Clay.
She couldn’t allow herself to think any farther ahead than that. She couldn’t worry about what would happen when Clay learned the truth, whether or not he would be interested in being involved in their child’s life.
She had to focus on one thing at a time. She had to keep her mind on the next step. And right now, the next step was finding out who and where David Fischer was.
She would begin tomorrow. She would search his name in the database. She would look for signatures on file that matched the one inside the hat. She would find his contact information, and then she would call him and tell him who she was.
And she would hope that he would have the decency to help her find Clay.
Chapter 13
Clay
Clay had long since given up trying to reach Dave on his business line. That was the phone his friend had left in Ivy’s keeping when he had disappeared, and there was no chance, as far as Clay could see, of getting any more help from that quarter. Ivy was either determined not to give Clay any information or she had given him everything she had.
But there was still Dave’s personal phone number. He didn’t think his friend had meant to share that number with him—they had always spoken on the business line—but there had been one call, a few weeks before Clay had left for the Bahamas, that had come from Dave’s other phone.
He had hoped that he would be able to use that number to reach Dave. To get some answers.
But so far, it hadn’t worked. Every time he tried, his calls went to voice mail. The first few times, Clay had left a message, first pleading with Dave to call him back, and later disparaging him for running away. But he had never received a return call, and Dave had never picked up the phone.
Today, though, Clay had come up with a different idea.
He had driven into town for the first time in weeks. Clay liked to have his groceries delivered to him on the ranch, and though in better times he had sometimes gone into town for a drink at one of the local bars, he hadn’t felt up to it lately. Besides, he didn’t want to risk drawing the attention of people who lived near him when he knew the police might come looking for him any day now.
But he had dared to go to a convenience store and buy a disposable cell phone.
He’d done his best to dress in a way that would obscure his appearance—bland clothes and a hat to shade his eyes. He hadn’t been able to find his favorite hat, which was frustrating, but he’d made do with an older one. Pulling it low, he’d gone into the store and bought the phone—along with a bottle of
soda and a few bags of candy, so that his purchase wouldn’t stand out—and returned home, phone in hand.
Now he sat on his couch, staring at it. This was a great idea, but only if it worked. If this failed, he was going to be out of ideas again, and he didn’t know what he would do.
He sighed. There was nothing to do but to give it a try. Dave wouldn’t recognize the number he was calling from, and there was a chance—however remote—that he would answer the call.
Clay had to take the gamble.
He punched in the phone number and waited as it rang.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
“Hello?”
Clay felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He had not, he realized now, actually believed that this would work. But that was Dave’s voice. He would have recognized it anywhere.
“Hello?” Dave said again, sounding mildly annoyed now. “Who is this?”
“Don’t hang up,” Clay said quickly.
A long, pregnant pause.
“Clay,” Dave said, sounding resigned. “I said I was sorry. What else do you want from me?”
“I want the contracts you signed on our behalf, to start with,” Clay said. “Then I want the money you stole from me.”
“I have the contracts with me,” Dave said. “You don’t need to worry about them.”
“Send me copies of all those contracts. Right now.”
“I can’t,” Dave said. “I don’t have any way of making photocopies where I am.”
“Then send me the originals.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Dave said.
“Are you serious? I need to see them so I know what kind of trouble I’m facing here.”
“If I send you the contracts, you’ll have my location,” Dave said. “Even if I send them from the post office, with no return address…the postmark on the envelope will tell you where they’ve been. You’d cut a deal with the police. You’d sell me out in exchange for a pardon or something. I’m not an idiot.”