One to Save (One to Hold 6)

Back to my computer, I pull up the file I’ve been studying for ten days—the one that’s had me so distracted. I keep telling Patrick we don’t do domestic work, yet I always end up being the one old friends or acquaintances call when they need help.

That’s how it started—a runaway case for a friend of a friend.

I was culling through mug shots of beat-up teens and file photos of dead girls. Patrick would say this is the worst part of our job, but truthfully, I don’t mind it. I can see past the tragedy to my role here, giving people closure. I know what it’s like to need it, and I don’t mind helping people get it.

Then I saw Jessica Black. Dead.

The name was so familiar, but I couldn’t place her at first. Staring at the photo, trying to think, I’d been struck by her appearance—fair complexion, petite frame, and long brunette waves. She looked a lot like Melissa—minus my fiancée’s bright blue eyes.

I’d clicked on the thumbnail to read the report. Runaway. Missing five years. Arrested for prostitution several times. Found beaten once. Badly. Now deceased under mysterious circumstances.

Minutes passed as I stared at her photo. Why was she so familiar? She wasn’t from Princeton. Her hometown was listed as Raleigh. Shaking my head and chalking it up to overprotectiveness spurred by her similarity to Mel, I closed the document and went back to searching for the runaway.

Nikki had interrupted me that day as well, stopping in with a BLT from the cafeteria.

“I know it’s your favorite.” She placed the thick sandwich in front of me with a smile. “You need to eat.”

I only nodded. “Thanks.”

She didn’t leave. “Remember the last time I brought you lunch? It was the day Melissa showed up here so angry and unexpected. I was sure I’d never like her, but now she’s the sweetest...”

Nikki continued talking, but I wasn’t listening. Cold realization flashed in my brain like lightening striking a tree.

Jessica Black. It was the name on the email Melissa had put in front of me that day she visited our offices. The day she dropped a nuke on all my dreams of a life with her, when she revealed my former “mentor,” her ex-husband Sloan Reynolds’s secret double-life. He had high-end escorts all over the country, and Jessica Black was his first careless slip. Melissa had found it.

Nikki was still reminiscing as I spun around in my chair, shaking my computer awake. Fingers flying over the keys, I pulled up all the information I could find on the dead girl.

She’d been living in Baltimore for a year. I wondered if she followed him from wherever they’d hooked up the first time. Why would she do that? Was it possible she was in love with him? Was it for the money? Had he promised her anything?

It didn’t matter. She’d disappeared off the police blotter from the time she arrived there until now, when she’d turned up dead.

Reasons scrolled across my brain of all the possible causes of death, but looking at her beaten face, all I could see was the photo Melissa had put in front of me all those months ago.

My instincts were on high alert. Sloan was getting antsy, and I knew what he wanted. Jessica Black might look like the real thing, but she wasn’t it.

Substitutes would never fill the possession he felt. I’d followed enough of these twisted fucks to know. He was coming for Melissa, and it was just a matter of when.

All last week, I’d tracked down every misstep I could find on him, looking for anything that would stick, that would get him off the streets or at least keep him in Baltimore. I hoped to find a recent paper trail linking him to Jessica, but every lead came up cold. He was either too slick, or his people buried everything.

Even the guy I had watching Sloan in Baltimore had nothing. Jessica disappeared a week before I’d hired him, a month after Sloan had broken into Mel’s beach cottage and then gotten off with a slap on the wrist. Apparently I’d moved too quickly when he waltzed into her home threatening to rape her. We had to wait until he actually committed the crime for his money and position not to matter.

The thought clenched my jaw. It was the one thing above all that caused the “stress” Nikki kept texting Melissa about. Only “stress” wasn’t what I felt. What I felt was flat-out fucking rage.

The best part was when he threatened me in court with police brutality charges. I’d nearly brutalized him on the spot, but Melissa held me back. I’ll never forget her face. She went still as a stone, as if it was the ending she always expected. It was like a heel-kick straight to my gut. I couldn’t let her down that way.

Now all she’ll say is she wants those memories left in the past. Just let it go, she tells me.

Fuck that. That asshole is a threat to my family, and it’s clear he’s dangerous. Priority 1 is devising a plan to bring him in, and it has to be something that won’t ooze off his slimy back.

Snatching my phone off its base, I hit the speed-dial button.

Patrick answers, cocky as always. “Don’t tell me. You’ve come to your senses and realized life at the beach is the only way to live.”

“I need you to up the watch on Melissa.”

I appreciate how his tone becomes immediately serious. “What’s going on?”

“I have to finish a few details for our new Houston client, and then I’m headed your way, possibly for a while.”