Vulnerable (Morgans of Nashville 4)

In the center of the path lay a shoe. It belonged to Elisa. She was close, hiding in the thicket. “Elisa, come out, come out, wherever you are. I won’t hurt you, baby. You can run, but you can’t hide forever.”

A twig broke. Leaves rustled. Another car raced down the road, chased out of the park by the darkness. Time stilled, sharpening all the senses. The hunter noticed the cracked branches beside the freshly trampled path. And then Elisa’s soft, soft whimpers echoed in the darkness. The sound led down to a pale foot peeking out from under a log.

Five fast footsteps, and the hunter grabbed her ankle as Elisa dug her fingers into the dirt, fighting to stay burrowed in her hiding spot. The will to live gave her strength.

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home,” she screamed.

Fingers bit into her skin, tearing the flesh, yanking her free of her sanctuary. “Got to finish what we started, baby. Got to finish it.”

She drew in a breath but fisted fingers smashed against her jaw. She crumpled to the dirt, stunned.

Hoisting her wasn’t so difficult nor was it hard to carry her back through the woods to the entrance of a small cave, which had been their ultimate destination since the first day they met.

Elisa fell to the cave’s floor with a hard thud. “Please, just let me go. I won’t tell.”

“I know you won’t tell.”

CHAPTER ONE

Monday, October 2, 1:05 A.M.

Wrapping her hand around the microphone, the musical notes moved inside of Georgia Morgan’s head and heart as she closed her eyes. Her voice caressed the melody of “Blue Velvet” and a hush fell over the thinning crowd in Rudy’s, a honky-tonk on South Broadway. She transfixed them all with the smooth melodic words infused with layers of feelings few saw when she wasn’t on the stage.

In these moments, Georgia wasn’t simply singing but reaching out to her birth mother, Annie, whose single legacy to her only child was her golden voice. There were a few photographs, but no memories of the blond songstress who vanished thirty-two years ago, leaving behind an estranged husband, a secret lover, and a wailing infant.

Georgia gripped the microphone, angling her mouth close as moody emotions entwined the words, sculpting fresh angles and adding layers of dimensions. In her mind, the music became vibrant shades of reds, blues, and greens exploding like fireworks.

Georgia’s salute to Annie in no way diminished her love for the Morgans, the clan she joined when she was five days old when her late father, homicide detective Buddy Morgan, carried her away from Annie’s bloody cinderblock home. Buddy and his wife, Adele, threaded her easily into their family already bustling with three active boys. They never hid her past. Georgia knew about Annie, understood her roots. She and her family considered her a Morgan. Period.

But when she sang, the music so rooted in her soul took hold, and for a few minutes, Annie came alive, not only for her daughter, but for all those who still remembered her.

The song slowly wound down and the guitarist played the last delicate chords. The room was silent, still gripped by the music. Georgia waited a few more beats and then she opened her eyes. Her vision focused. And she was back.

Georgia settled the microphone in its cradle, and rolled her shoulders, breaking the tension. She shouldn’t have stayed so late tonight for the extra set. But the allure of the music had been strong.

As she stepped back from the microphone, the crowd clapped, whooped, and hollered. A few rose to their feet and applauded. She swept her hand toward the grizzled guitarist behind her and smiled as she said into the microphone, “Y’ all give a big thanks to Freddie for letting me sit in on his set.”

The audience cheered and both Georgia and Freddie stood side by side as the applause settled.

“Nice set, Georgia,” Freddie said, as he stuck his pick into the guitar strings. He wore torn jeans, scuffed boots with a hole in the sole, and a faded black T-shirt he’d worn for years. To look at the guy, few would realize he played with some of the best country music artists in Nashville.

She brushed a long thick lock of red hair away from her forehead and tugged at the edges of a black silk top that hugged full breasts and caressed designer jeans that molded her figure. “Thanks, Freddie.”

“It’s always fun when you sing. Like having Annie back,” he rasped. “You should stop by more often.”

“You’re a charmer, Freddie.” She slid her hands into pockets trimmed in rhinestones as she glanced at the metal tip of her red ankle-high cowboy boots. “I could hear the lack of practice in my voice tonight. I was all over the place.”

He shook his head, the single gold earring in his left ear catching the light. “A few times I closed my eyes and I could hear your mama. Like she was standing right here.”

She winked at the guitarist whom she suspected had been half in love with Annie. When Annie’s murder case was reopened two years ago, the media had elevated the singer to the likes of James Dean or Patsy Cline. Beautiful, talented, and stolen from the world before her star could fully rise. Dozens still approached her to share their stories of Annie, who was loved by so many. Georgia always smiled and thanked them.

Freddie patted his flat palm over the inlaid wood of his guitar. “Don’t be a stranger. Everyone likes having you here.”

Laughter rumbled in her chest as she reached behind an amplifier and grabbed her purse. “Flattery wins my heart every time. But I’m not a singer. Catching bad guys is what charges my batteries. See you, sugar.”

Georgia was a forensic technician with the Nashville Police Department. She had been on the job nearly a decade and had proven herself to be detailed and driven. The consummate professional in the courtroom whom defense attorneys could not rattle.

She cut through the crowd, pausing to accept a couple of good wishes. She was never good with receiving compliments or attention, so she smiled, thanked everyone like her parents taught her and kept moving with no real need to strike up a conversation.

She moved up to the bar where KC Kelly, a tall, bald, broad-shouldered man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, polished a set of whiskey glasses fresh from the dishwasher. KC had been her late father’s partner in homicide for over twenty-five years. When he retired, he bought Rudy’s from the previous owner who had created a place where tourists and locals flocked to hear the up-and-coming talent. When KC took over the honky-tonk, cops initially came to show support for one of their own. Many discovered they liked Rudy’s and that KC could really run a bar. And so the tourists, locals, and cops kept returning to the safest South Broadway bar in Nashville.

“Did good tonight, kid,” he said. “The crowd loved you.” He pushed a fresh glass with ice and diet soda toward her.

She took a long sip. “Thanks for letting me share the stage. The day job has been crazy lately, and I haven’t had much time. It was fun.”

“So I hear big brother gave you a cold case,” KC said.

Big brother was Deke Morgan, who now ran the Nashville Police Homicide Department. He was joined by her other brother, Rick Morgan, who also worked in the same unit. Third brother, Alex, was the outlier. He worked for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or TBI.

“I should be more careful when I ask for extra work.” She scooped up a handful of nuts from a bowl on the bar and popped them in her mouth. “It’s taken me weeks to read through the files.”

“Deke tells me Dalton Marlowe is putting the squeeze on everyone,” KC said.

Dalton Marlowe was a very rich man whose son was one of three teens who went into Percy Warner Park five years ago. The students, from an exclusive high school called St. Vincent, went hiking in the southwest Nashville park that covered twenty-six hundred acres of wooded land crisscrossed by a dozen backroad trails, bike paths, and dead end roads. Their plan was to collect data for a science project and return home by dark.

When the teens had not reported in that night, search crews had been dispatched. At the end of the second day, volunteers found one of

the kids, Amber Ryder, at the bottom of a ravine. Her arm was badly broken and she suffered a head injury. When she woke up in the hospital the next day, she swore she had no memory of what had happened in the woods. Search crews continued to look for weeks but the two other students, Bethany Reed and Mike Marlowe, were never found.

Mr. Marlowe has been pressing the Missing Persons Unit relentlessly for answers. This year, he again made a sizable donation to the police foundation, a kind of gesture that expects a return. Marlowe was clear that he didn’t want to hear any more bullshit theories about his son Mike and Bethany running off like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet.

“So Deke’s balls are in a vise with the mayor?” KC asked.

She shrugged. “He’s getting a hell of a lot of pressure from City Hall, but it doesn’t look like it’s fazed him. He hopes to kill two birds with one stone. Give me a cold case that I’ve been clamoring for and pacify the powers that be. It’s a win all the way around.”

“I was still on the job then. But because the case was considered a missing persons investigation, homicide never got a crack at it. I think they pulled Buddy in once.”

“Well, it’s now being investigated as a homicide.”

“Too bad your old man and I didn’t get a real crack at it.”

“I wish you had. So far, I’ve got eighty hours invested in reading witness statements, search crew reports, interviews, and examining the forensic data.”

Dark eyes sharpened as they did when he’d been on a homicide investigation. “What about that kid that survived?”

“Amber Ryder. I tracked down her number through her mother, Tracy. The woman wasn’t thrilled to see me or talk, but she gave me a phone number. I’ve called it a couple of times but so far no return calls.”

A tall waitress with dark brown hair signaled KC she had an order. He filled three steins with beer and set them in front of her. As he moved back toward Georgia, he faced the register and punched in the order. “You working the case alone?”

Georgia swirled her drink in the glass. “No, as luck would have it, Deke has assigned Jake Bishop to the case with me.”

“He’s a solid cop.”

“Right.”

He shook his head, understanding that stubborn ran as deep in Georgia as it did in her brothers and her late father. “So, what now? You don’t want to share?”

“Not that. Jake irritates me.”

Amusement tweaked the edges of his lips. “How so?”

She leaned forward. “Started flirting with me in the last year. Hell, I stayed off his radar just fine and then suddenly I’m right in the middle after he caught one of my shows here.”

“That so bad?”

She held up a finger as if reading her lists of cons. “He’s a cop and I’ve always made it a policy not to date cops.”

“My late wife never had any issues with being married to a cop.”

“Well, Deb was a saint and we both know I’m not. I watched Mom do it with Dad and I don’t want any part of that.”

He pulled a bar rag from his shoulder and wiped up the few peanut shells she’d dropped. “I don’t think he’s looking to put a ring on your finger.”