Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

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.”