Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men Book 9)

by Linda Kage

  I glanced at the time. Geesh, Tyla must’ve been particularly needy this morning. Poor woman. By the time fifteen minutes had passed and Julianna still hadn’t arrived to class, I decided that she’d taken off for a friend-pampering day.

  So I shot her a text, simply typing:

  I hoped she’d at least message something back because even a few words on a screen from her were better than nothing.

  Yeah, I was that far gone. Pull out the switch; I was whipped.

  Once class let out, I tried to call her but the call rang through until her voice mail picked up. Frowning, I shoved my phone back into my pocket just as it rang.

  “About time,” I announced, relieved she was calling back, only to realize it wasn’t Julianna. It was from home.

  Instantly worried about Aspen, I answered immediately.

  “Um…Colton,” she said, her voice hesitant and confused. “There are two police officers here who want to talk to you.”

  “What?” I slowed to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk just outside my history building. “Why?”

  “I don’t…” I could almost hear Aspen shaking her head with her own confusion. “They said it had to do with Julianna, but that was all they’d disclose.”

  Julianna? I shook my head too, utterly bewildered. What the hell was going on?

  “Umm…do you have a class right now, or could you meet them at the police station for some questions?”

  Questions?

  Now I was really fucking lost.

  Unless this was about something her father was trying to accuse me of, but I couldn’t think of a single reason he’d have to sic the police on me.

  “I’ll meet them at the station,” I said. I did have a class, but it didn’t seem as important as this. If this was about Julianna, I was finding out what was going on, right now.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Aspen answered.

  “You don’t—” I started, automatically wanting to protect her after how delicate she’d been lately. But then I realized she sounded alert and like her usual self, and I had no idea what I was walking into. I could do with a family member at my side. So I finished with, “Thank you.”

  As soon as I hung up, I tried to call Juli again. “Baby doll,” I said into her voice mail. “What the fuck is going on? I’m being called to the police station, and all I know is that it has something to do with you. Please call me back as abso-fucking-lutely soon as you can so I know you’re all right. Okay? Okay, thanks. Love you. Bye.”

  But when I hung up, my stomach knotted with tension. Why wasn’t she answering her phone? Maybe this didn’t have anything to do with her dad trying to frame some crime on me. Maybe something was wrong.

  Shit, something suddenly felt really, really wrong.

  My truck was parked nearly on the other side of campus. I was out of breath from jogging by the time I reached it. I didn’t pause to catch more air, though, just jumped in and revved the engine. I knew where the police station was located, but I’d never been inside before. I didn’t even know where I was supposed to park. So I pulled to a stop in the first available spot that didn’t have any kind of reserved marking on it, and I strode toward the front door.

  Aspen was waiting just outside for me in a skirt suit, her purse strapped over her shoulder as she nervously played with her wedding ring. When she saw me, she darted forward and took both my hands.

  “The officers we need to talk to are Detective Hall and Wilson.”

  I nodded. “Did they tell you anything else about what this is about? Is Juli okay?”

  “I don’t…” She shook her head and winced. “I don’t know, and they didn’t say.”

  “Okay.” I blew out a breath and clamped my fingers around hers before we entered the building together.

  Spread out in front of us was an open floor plan, full of desks and people mingling around, printers printing reports, men and women talking. It wasn’t quite what I’d always expected. It seemed like a normal office workspace with the occasional person wearing a uniform. To the right in an almost alcove kind of corner was a waiting-reception area where I saw Tyla, Sasha, and Chad sitting.

  Tyla wept into her hands, her chest heaving from the force of her sobs, and Sasha was draped across her boyfriend with her face buried in his chest as he stroked her back soothingly.

  Ice-cold fear shot through my veins. “What…?” was all I managed to say before my voice went hoarse.

  “Colton!” Tyla surged to her feet, rushing to me and clutching my arm. “Oh my God. We wanted to call you but didn’t know your number. Please say you know where she is.”

  I shook my head. “What?” My attention went to Chad and Sasha. “What the hell is going on? Where’s Juli?”

  Tyla merely stared at me as if I’d just broken her heart, and Sasha began to weep harder into her boyfriend’s chest.

  “Where’s Julianna?” I repeated with more force. “What the fuck happened? Is she okay?”

  “Colton Gamble?” a voice asked from behind me.

  I whirled around to find two officers approaching along with Juli’s dad, who looked pissed, pissed at me.

  “Yes,” I said, stepping forward. “Where’s Juli? What’s going on? Is she okay?”

  The officers didn’t answer but exchanged meaningful glances. I had no idea what that meant, but it pissed me off that no one was answering. “Hello?” I reminded them I was there. “Will someone tell me Julianna’s okay?”

  No one did.

  My stomach filled with dread. The worst, painful, most frightening dread ever.

  “If you’d just step into an interview room with us, Mr. Gamble. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  My gaze went to Juli’s father, who wouldn’t stop staring at me as if he wanted to rip out my spine with his bare hands. I returned my attention to the officers.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Whatever.” If this got me answers, of course I’d go with them.

  I started to follow them, Aspen tight at my side.

  But they paused when they realized she was tagging along.

  “Ma’am,” they told her as if ordering her to let me go. I tightened my grip on her fingers.

  She tightened hers on mine right back. “I’m his legal guardian,” she said, letting them known she wasn’t about to leave my side without a fight.

  Surprise filled Detective Wilson’s face. “You’re under eighteen?”

  I shook my head. “I am eighteen.”

  “Oh.” He sent my sister-in-law a regretful wince. “You’ll have to wait out here, ma’am.”

  She looked up at me, and I knew she didn’t want to leave me alone with them. I kind of wanted her by my side too, but if doing this alone got me answers sooner as to where Julianna was, I’d do whatever I had to.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, leaning over to kiss her hair. “Thank you for being here for me.”

  She nodded and regretfully let go of my hand.

  I followed the two detectives back to a soundproof-looking room with nothing on the walls. It was only large enough to hold a folding table and three chairs, one in the corner with the back against the wall, the other two nearest the door. When I glanced up at the camera in the top corner, I started to get a little uneasy.

  “Take a seat,” Detective Wilson offered, motioning me to the side where my back would literally be against the wall. Then he sat off to the side instead of taking the chair directly across from me, letting me know the other guy, Hall, was going to be in charge of “questioning” me.

  We waited there for nearly half a minute in silence, enough time for me to rest my forearms against the corner of the table and clasp my hands tightly while my knee began to jiggle erratically.

  The door opened again, and Detective Hall entered, carrying a clipboard with a clear bag that said Evidence at the top with a form looking thing below it. As he sat and placed the clipboard on the table in front of him, my gaze strayed to the bag. Through the plastic, I noticed a set of keys a
nd cell phone. From the key ring hung a small silver dream catcher, a brown rabbit’s foot and a small bottle of breath spray.

  “Those are Juli’s,” I said, sitting up in alarm. My gaze went to the phone. That was her phone case. And the screen was broken.

  I guess now I knew why she hadn’t returned any of my calls.

  Doom settled hard in my gut. I blinked at the evidence bag one more time before lifting my gaze to the detective. “What…?” I tried to ask but the words stuck in my throat. I honestly couldn’t remember being this afraid in my entire life.

  “When was the last time you saw Julianna Radcliffe?”

  My hands immediately went to my mouth as I tried to keep myself together. Mind racing with what could’ve possibly happened, I shook my head and blinked rapidly. “This morning,” I was finally able to choke out. “Just…just a few hours ago. I needed to go home and shower and change before class. We were supposed to have philosophy together at ten. She didn’t show. I thought…” I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to say. I wanted to demand answers, but I was also too afraid to hear them.

  “So you stayed the night with her?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And what did you do all night?”

  “Uh…” I shook my head. “Slept mostly. Are you asking if we had sex?”

  The detective sent me a dry glance before saying, “Did you and Miss Radcliffe have an argument?”

  “What? No! Not at all. We parted on good terms, great terms. She smiled and kissed me and told me she’d see me in philosophy class. What the hell happened? Is she okay or not? Can you at least tell me if she’s…” I had to pause a moment and blink rapidly before rasping, “Is she still alive?”

  The detectives shared a glance. What the hell did that mean? Did that mean no? Did it mean yes?

  Oh my God, was she alive or not?

  My breathing went all kinds of crazy. My hands shook and I started to rock back and forth in my chair while my eyes got a little wet.

  “Ms. Radcliffe’s father said you guys had an argument last night,” Detective Hall pressed.

  I gulped and tried to swallow down my fear before answering, but my throat was so dry only a croak emerged.

  “Do you need a drink, Colton?” Detective Wilson asked.

  When I squeezed my eyes and nodded, I heard a chair scrape when one of the men stood to leave the room. I opened my lashes and leveled a look at Detective Hall.

  “Why can’t you just tell me what happened?” I asked from a crackling, dry throat.

  The other man let out a breath before picking up the evidence bag and setting it to the side so he could reach for an eight-by-ten photo underneath. Turning it around so I could see it, he said, “Miss Radcliffe’s roommate left her apartment this morning to find this outside in the parking lot.”

  “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  It was a picture of Juli’s car, mostly just the driver’s side door, which stood wide open. Juli’s keys and broken cell phone lay on the ground just outside the opened door. Julianna, however, was nowhere in the shot.

  “No one’s been able to locate her since,” Hall explained.

  “So, what? She just…vanished?”

  Hall lifted his gaze, which I took for a yes.

  I shook my head. This…it didn’t make any sense. Someone had taken Julianna?

  Where?

  Why?

  “Was there any sign of a struggle? Blood?” I demanded.

  “There was a trace amount of blood,” he admitted.

  “Oh, shit.” I gulped, trying not to throw up. “And you have no idea where she is?”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out right now, Mr. Gamble.”

  Oh. Right. The questioning. I suddenly needed to get this out of the way so I could go look for her. “We didn’t fight,” I repeated. “We argued with her dad, but Julianna and I didn’t argue with each other. Not at all. We were a united front.”

  Detective Hall nodded. “What did you argue about with her dad then?”

  I shifted impatiently and glanced toward the door. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “I’d like to hear it from your point of view.”

  Detective Wilson returned with the water, and I took a gulp because it felt as if I’d been swallowing shards of glass. As I sat the Styrofoam cup down, I said, “He doesn’t like me. Well, that can’t be true. He doesn’t even know me. We just met last night. I should’ve said he doesn’t approve of me. He basically told Juli he’d cut her off if she stayed with me.”

  Detective Hall glanced at my black eye. “Why doesn’t he approve of you?”

  I shrugged. “As far as I can tell he doesn’t want a white boy dating his daughter.”

  That answer seemed to surprise the two, but they didn’t comment. Instead, Hall looked at my eye again. “Where’d you get the shiner?”

  I shook my head, growing irritated because that was so not important and explaining it was a huge waste of time. “Just some altercation with a drunk guy on the sidewalk over in Aggie Ville. That has nothing to do with this at all.”

  “Miss Radcliffe wasn’t involved?”

  “Well…” I scratched my ear. “Yeah, but…that dude was a complete stranger. He—”

  “What happened?”

  I ran through the events of that night, giving them Cliff Notes. “We both gave a statement to the officer that night. And that guy didn’t know us from Adam. He was just some idiot drunk stranger bugging people walking by, and he went to jail for it.”

  “We’ll look into it,” Detective Hall murmured as he jotted down some notes. “So…you last saw Miss Radcliffe in her apartment at approximately eight this morning. You two parted on good terms and hadn’t argued recently. Do you know anyone who might want to do her any harm?”

  I began to shake my head before I remembered, “Yes! Her ex, Shaun.”

  I explained to him Julianna’s short marriage and why she told me she’d divorced him, then went on about how he’d been bothering her and how I had almost talked her into coming here to file a restraining order against him.

  “But you never came in?” Detective Hall wondered.

  “No.” And I was probably going to hate myself for that for a very long time, too. I told them about how our families had waylaid us and then how Tyla had needed moral support. “I probably would’ve made her come in today after classes, though.”

  Would’ve.

  I hated saying that.

  I still would. Just as soon as I found her.

  The detectives asked me a handful more questions. By the time they walked me out of the interview room, Noel, Brandt, and Caroline had shown up to wait on me with Aspen.

  My two sisters immediately converged to yank me into a hug. I hugged them back, needing their support.

  “She’s missing,” I told them in a hollow voice, glancing with worry toward my two brothers. “They found her keys and broken phone laying on the ground outside her car with her driver’s side door hanging all the way open, and she’s just… She’s gone. She didn’t make it to class. No one knows where she is. They…” I shook my head, trying to wrap my head around all this. “I think they thought I took her.”

  “Of course you didn’t take her,” Caroline said, rolling her eyes.

  “But they had to ask,” Aspen returned logically.

  “They don’t have any leads at all?” Brandt wanted to know.

  Noel just studied me with watchful eyes.

  From behind us, a throat cleared. “I find it very interesting,” Juli’s father started, his voice dripping with disapproval, “that this happened to my daughter on the very night after I learned she was dating you.”

  I spun to him and narrowed my eyes. “And I find it very interesting that she disappeared the very morning after you showed up in town, issuing threats to her.”

  “Excuse me?” He straightened with offense. “Why would I abduct my own daughter?”

  “To keep her away fr
om me,” I shot back before countering, “Why would I take my own girlfriend? If we were trying to run away together, wouldn’t I be with her right now?”

  “I couldn’t even pretend to know what kind of schemes you’d carry out to hide your nefarious plans.”

  I took a step toward him, growing fed up with this shit. “You want to talk nefarious plans, why don’t you look at your little pet project, Shaun. He’s been harassing her for almost two years now. Just the other night, he confronted her at work and grabbed her arm.”

  “That’s true,” Brandt confirmed. “I work with her, and some guy showed up, grabbing her and yanking on her wrist. She was so shaken up afterward, I followed her home to make sure she made it there okay.”

  Julianna’s father sniffed before shaking his head. “Shaun’s not like that. He’s a good kid. He—”

  “He slapped her,” Sasha said, speaking up and surprising me because I hadn’t known she and Tyla and Chad had joined our conversation. “That’s why she really divorced him. Because he slapped her. And he cheated on her, too.”

  Brandt eased in closer to me, asking from the side of his mouth, “Did she just say divorced?” When I nodded, he turned to me fully, his mouth falling open. “When the hell was she married?”

  “Don’t worry. That was way before you,” I answered, gaining the curious attention of both Sasha and Tyla as they took in the very Brandt Gamble they’d heard so much about before I’d come along.

  As I wiped my face, Juli’s father thundered, “Shaun slapped my little girl? Why the hell am I just now hearing about this?”

  No one had an answer. Fed up with this entire conversation, I said, “I’m going to go find Juli,” just as Sasha gasped and grabbed Chad’s arm.

  “There’s Shaun.”

  We all looked over at the same moment to see two uniformed officers escorting Julianna’s ex into the police station. I started for him, my jaw set, only for my two brothers to grab me back.

  “Easy,” Noel said into my ear.

  “I just want to find out where Juli is,” I demanded.

  But I needn’t have bothered, I guess. Her father stormed toward him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt.