by Amy Faye
"Um. Yeah."
"I'm sorry, but it is important."
"I know, I'm just. A little nervous, is all."
"That's totally understandable. Hey. We're going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of this and get your daughter back, okay?"
It's always been hard to know that someone is telling Anna the truth. They say what they think she wants to hear. Everyone but Mitchell. He would say whatever he thought, no matter what.
But somehow, she finds it easy to believe the detective when he says it.
"Stay right here, I'll be back in a second. I'll follow you back to the apartment."
"Okay."
She sits at the table for a minute. She breathes in and counts to three before she lets it out. In again. Count to four. Out again.
Then she starts counting her breaths. Just focus on the counting and the breathing. One in. Two out. Three in. Four out.
She almost gets to ten before she breaks and lets a panicked thought about what she's going to do break her record.
She starts again. She's at fifteen when Detective Meadows opens the door. He's got a jacket on, now. Still warm enough outside not to wear a coat. The jacket fits well, but it's not as nice as Mitchell's jackets.
Still, somehow it fits him. Very official, very police-looking. It makes him look good.
"Are you ready to go, ma'am?"
Anna pushes herself up from the table, cringing at the sound of the chair's feet scraping across the floor. She should be more conscious of the noises she's making. It's important not to piss off Detective Meadows—he's the only one who can help her right now.
He doesn't look upset when she looks up, though, which is good. He holds the door open for her as she passes by him. As she passes, she smells the mildest scent of cologne on him, earthy and grounded and attractive in a man.
She follows him out at a respectful distance until they get to the door back into the lobby and he holds the door for her again. He stops just outside the door. "I'm going to go get my car and bring it around. I'll follow you, alright?"
Anna nods. She can do that. She'll just wait right by the end of the parking lot and wait for him to pull around. Easy. She takes a breath and holds it. Three, two, one, and release.
She's got everything under control. She can handle this. And as long as Detective Meadows is working on it, maybe everything's going to be alright.
Chapter Four
It's not that he likes driving, because he doesn't. But when Josh Mitchell slips into his car, it feels like freedom hits him all of a sudden. He waits until the door closes, and then gives himself another moment to look around.
Then his fist comes down hard on the wheel. It makes his hand hurt, but he hits it again.
"Fuck!"
He shouldn't be letting it get to him like this. He'll have himself under control again by the time that he slips the car into drive, but letting the steam off just for an instant, he hopes, will give him time later to figure out how the fuck he's going to keep himself in check for the rest of this investigation.
There aren't many possibilities. Outside of her famous ex-boyfriend, she doesn't seem to have many acquaintances, which makes the list of possible suspects very short.
In fact, there aren't more than three or four right now. Every one of them is upsetting. The one thing that concerns him the most, though, is the idea that the child is hurt.
Because without Mitch Queen in the picture, there's no money to be had here.
He takes a breath, squeezes the wheel hard. The heel of his palm hurts where he hit the wheel with it, and squeezing down just makes it hurt more. As he lets his hands loosen, though, he reclaims his control.
He can't let himself get distracted. There's too many possibilities, and the case is still fresh enough that there's time for things to change. Time for new ideas to form. Ideas he hasn't even thought of yet.
He takes a breath. No use in getting his cage rattled before he even knows all the details, right? Right.
So he'll keep control of himself. Somehow. In spite of the fact that it feels like it's impossible to do so.
He puts his hand down on the shifter and slides it from 'P' to 'D' and takes his foot off the brake. The car starts moving forward, and he's got himself under control again.
He rolls the window down. The wind that had been gusting hard earlier that morning seems to have thankfully abated for a moment. There's a beat-up Chevy Impala that waits by the exit, and he can about make Anna Witt out through the tinted windows. He waves out at her before turning around.
It's easy to follow her, even though he knows the area she meant. He's passed by the apartment building a dozen times, at least. So he had a pretty fair idea of where she meant, but it's still useful, just in case he got the location wrong.
There are a few different buildings. She pulls up in front of one and cuts the engine; he pulls up beside her and steps out to meet her on the curb.
"You ready to go inside?"
She smiles at him nervously. "Sure."
He tries to reassure her with his expression, but it's easy to see from Anna's reaction that she's not an easily-reassured woman. She smiles back as best as she can, though, which is progress.
She flips the keys in her hand and fits one of them into the outside door, uses it to pull the door open. Josh takes it from her and holds it open. The door is heavier than it looks, steel and not hung in a way that makes it easier to open.
He stops it from falling closed too hard behind them before he follows her to the door.
"Which apartment is your parents' room?"
She points across. "They, uh. Don't seem to be home right now, though. Their car's gone."
He files that information away for later. It probably doesn't mean anything at all, but his opinion on that could change in an instant. Every detail counts, again.
Anna gets the door unlocked and puts her keys back into her purse. She steps back like she expects him to open the door, so he does, slipping his shoes off as he steps inside and setting them inside the door. It's easier to be safe than sorry.
Then, after that, he takes a look around.
The place isn't large, and it's set up like a long hallway that leads back to the bedroom, a little room next to it that must have been the lavatory.
"Do you mind if I take a look around?"
She seems surprised to hear him ask the question, and then shakes her head. "No, go ahead."
He nods and starts walking. The floor is carpeted, but it's kept clean. For a new mother, the place is kept in fairly good shape.
"I'm sorry about the mess," she says, as if she were reading his thoughts.
"This is a pretty nice place, actually," he says. There's a little bit of mess, sure. But that's completely to be expected, with a new baby. Especially as a single parent.
"I try," she says. She hasn't moved from the door. He hears the noise of the deadbolt sliding shut, even though he's standing there with a gun on his hip.
There's nothing on the table. Very little on the walls. A few pots and pans in the sink. The front room is furnished like a home decoration magazine, too little stuff for a real person to live in the space.
"The bedroom's back here?"
"Uh, yeah," she says. Still not moving from right by the door. It puts Josh a little on edge. Whatever's got her nervous, it's pretty extreme. Then again, there's a lot to put a woman in her position on edge.
Never mind the stranger in her home, with a missing baby girl and the only people she knows being her parents and the son of one of the single wealthiest people in the state. Who wouldn't be a little on-edge? He doesn't let it affect his opinions.
It's not until he steps inside the bedroom that she starts moving. She walks up to the entrance of the bedroom, but she doesn't go in. He keeps her on the edge of his attention, which is hard. It's too easy to slip into thinking about her. Worrying about her. Worrying about her daughter.
He's not going to do any good for anyon
e if he doesn't stay objective and keep his mind open to whatever little evidence there is. He keeps his hands in his pockets just in case.
The sheets on the bed haven't been made. They're twisted and piled in a way that suggests that the bed might not have been made for a while.
The crib is right by the bed. Not quite close enough for someone sleeping in it to reach out and touch it, but almost. A dresser in the corner has a pile of unfolded clothes on the top.
Like she said, there's a sheet on the crib pad. It's got the remnants of a spot where the baby might have burped up on it, and in spite of cleaning it didn't quite come out.
"This is how you found it? You didn't change anything?"
"No, sir."
"Did you move anything at all?"
Her eyebrows press together and her eyes close long enough that it couldn't have been a blink. "Um. No, sir. Just, uh. The door. And I got some clothes on."
He takes a moment to regard the clothes that she's wearing. She's lost most of the baby weight already, which is pretty impressive. The clothes might have been fashionable, but they've got a light spot where the baby spit on them and she didn't clean it fast enough.
"Do you know when your parents are going to be home? I'll need to talk to them. And do you know how to get in touch with Mr. Queen?"
She stiffens visibly. "Mitch? Why?"
"I need to talk to him, and you would know his schedule."
She takes a deep breath. "I can give you his cell number, but he told me not to call it."
Josh's jaw tightens. "Okay, give me that."
Chapter Five
Anna watches Detective Meadows punch the number into his phone, and turns away when he hits the "call" button. It's too tempting to listen in. Too tempting by a lot. What if she heard Mitch's voice?
She knows better than to eavesdrop. So, instead, she steps outside. She can still hear the detective's low, rolling voice even in the front room. She undoes the deadbolt and steps into the hall, and finally she's away from it.
She tries to count her breaths again. In, one. Out, two. In, three. No other thoughts. Keep her mind clear. Just keep counting. It's easier to get to fifty than it was when she started. It's just a skill, like anything. Like smiling, like keeping her composure in public.
None of those skills work any more. Not without Mitch there to keep her acting in a correct way. But the breathing, the clear mind, that still works. She steps back inside the apartment.
Detective Meadows smiles when he sees her, almost as if he's happy to see her. Not that he has a reason to be, but it still makes her heart skip a beat for a second—to be looked at like that, by a guy like that.
"I'm going to meet Mr. Queen, in a few minutes."
"Okay." Anna doesn't know what she's going to do after he's gone. When she's alone in that apartment again. It was the worst the weeks before the baby was born. When everyone was trying to get in touch with her, but only so know whether or not it was time yet.
Once she had Ava, it was that much better. To have something to focus on. Something to do. She wasn't the best mother in the world. She made mistakes. But it felt like something that she wanted to work at. Without Ava there—
The panic threatened to rise. Ava held her breath and counted.
"Thank you, Detective."
He steps close. "This isn't going to be a formal questioning."
She can smell that cologne again, now that she knows what to smell for. Now that she's in her own space, where every smell is accounted for. It's a heady scent, and his deep blue eyes, rimmed with those heavy eyelashes, they're looking right at her.
"But you'll find Ava?"
"I want you to come with me, if you don't mind."
"What? But, shouldn't you—"
"I want to see how he reacts to you. You don't have to say anything."
"I don't know if that's…"
He doesn't cut her off, so she stops herself. What use is she going to be? None at all, probably. She's nobody special. She's just going to be in the way, and she's going to piss Mitch off. He doesn't want to see her.
"You won't have to say a thing. I'll be right there, the whole time."
"Are you sure it's okay?"
She doesn't know whether or not to believe him when he says that he's sure, but she chooses to believe it in either case.
"Come on. We'll go together."
Anna watches his hand gesture her out the door. She grabs her purse and makes sure to lock the door on the way out. What if something were to happen?
The thought doesn't occur to her until a moment later, that there's nothing that could happen now. The most important thing in that apartment was Ava, and now she's gone.
Anna does breathing exercises as she walks behind. In, one two three, out, two three four. In, two three four, out two three four. In, three three four… out, two three four.
The detective clicks a button on his key-fob and the car loudly clicks unlocked. He slips inside, but it feels wrong for Anna to get in. She hasn't been in the passenger seat since she started showing. Since everything in her life started to go sideways.
She forces herself to ignore the nerves that are building up, threatening to overtake her. There's nothing that she's going to do about any of that right now. She's got to stay under control, or she's going to go crazy.
If she's not crazy already.
She slides in next to the detective. The leather seats are soft and comfortable, and the seatbelt goes across her body easily. It doesn't catch, like the passenger seatbelt in the Impala.
Anna settles back in her seat. Her head's got to be back, so it's out of the detective's way. Mitch taught her better than to let her head sit forward in the car, and she wasn't going to forget one of his lessons just because he wasn't in her life any more.
Detective Meadows pulls the car out and starts driving. "What can you tell me about Mr. Queen?"
"Um, what do you want to know?"
"Just anything. Tell me about him."
Her throat tightens up, even as she feels a shine of happiness that she's got something she can do to help.
"He's, um. He's real smart, and real particular. He likes things just right. I used to be pretty good at that."
The detective nods, his eyes not coming off the road.
"Had a temper?"
"Not more than anyone else."
"What does he do for work?"
"I'm sorry?"
"It's not really something that they get around to in the tabloids."
He was always in the tabloids, Mitchell. They always misunderstood things. Saw him with girls, they said he was dating them. But he wasn't. It was always just a misunderstanding. A foolish misunderstanding.
They'd have known that, if they'd just talked to Mitchell. But they never did, so they were always printing mistakes like that.
"Well, um. He does a bit of this and that. He builds things, with his hands, you know? Furniture. He does a lot of that. You should see it, it's really good work. He did this entire set of chairs for the house—"
Anna cut herself off when she realized she was babbling. Nobody wants to talk about that sort of stuff. Just her. So there's no reason to talk about it.
"But that's more of a hobby, you'd say?"
"I guess so," Anna says. It was real impressive stuff, for a hobby. It blew her mind when she saw it. Mitch was never pleased, though. Never happy with the work he'd done.
Just like he was never satisfied with her. He was never satisfied with himself, either. So it wasn't a problem with her, per se.
Just a matter of Mitchell's perspective, and she had always tried to do her best to meet the expectations that he set for her, even though he'd never have lost it with her. He was always real nice.
She takes a deep breath.
"Are you sure you can do this, Anna?"
She doesn't tell him that she doesn't want to disappoint him. Mitch always hated it when she did that. Said it made him feel guilty, and Anna never wanted to make
Mitch feel guilty.
She doesn't tell him that she wants to see Mitchell, either, because she shouldn't want to see him. He told her not to, and she good at following instructions, even when it's hard. It's one of her best qualities.
The detective's hand moves off the wheel, and touches the back of her hand. Anna likes the way that his skin feels on hers. It's a little calloused.
It reminds her a little bit of Mitchell's, but there are differences, too. She's surprised that it's not the comparison that makes her heart skip a beat.
Anna looks up. She's getting her heart ahead of herself. She needs to not do that. She can't put herself in that position again, for one thing.
But worse than that, she can't afford to make another guy mad at her. She's pushed away too many in the past. Too clingy. Too needy. Too—too everything.
She needs to keep herself under control, this time. Because she needs Detective Mitchell to keep liking her long enough to find Ava.
Chapter Six
I've got a few feelings about this guy, and none of them are proof of anything just yet. Which means that I've got to dig a little. But without any real solid suspects, I give the boys a call.
They'll go through more official channels and get photos of the scene. They won't find anything. The photos won't mean anything, in the end. But that doesn't mean that we can just skip the step because it's an inconvenience.
We'll have to do what we can, in spite of the fact that I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that we find much of anything in the place. Because there are procedures to follow, even when they're useless.
***
Josh takes a look around the estate before getting out of the car. It's a big place. There are bigger, maybe. One or two.
But this one was built by the old man, Mr. Queen the elder, practically with his own two hands, so big or not was his own decision to make. Not the decision some asshole two hundred years ago made, and the man living there now just liked well enough to shell out twenty million for.
There's a guy outside the door, to compliment the guy at the gate who let them in. Unlike the guy at the gate, there's no little stool here, which probably means that he's either less senior—or, if this were the military, more senior.