But I couldn’t muster the calm, the cool I would need to schmooze my way into what I wanted this time.
This was Jules we were talking about here.
To hell with charm.
I’d knock the man out and take what I wanted if he didn’t cooperate.
The door pulled open, revealing a guy around middle age with thinning blond hair, brown eyes, and a ruddy red rash across his cheeks.
I could talk you up for an hour, get you to show me the security footage without a hint of resistance. But I don’t have the time,” I told him, watching as he stiffened up, knowing what I was asking was against the rules. “Do you have daughters?”
“Three,” he confirmed, chest puffing up slightly. It was a crapshoot going that route. I took a chance thanks to the ring on his finger and the Grandpa mug on his desk.
“How would you like it if one was missing, and some guy behind the cameras won’t let you get a peek, so you could see if something happened to her?”
“You look young to be a father.”
“The woman I love is missing,” I admitted, the emotion leaking into the words, and I couldn’t have cared less about that.
Let him hear how raw I felt.
Let him know how panicked I was, how my heart was a frantic base beat in my chest.
“If anyone asks, I’ll say you forced your way in,” he warned me.
I didn’t care.
“I’d happily take the jail time if she was safe,” I told him, shrugging as he moved inside, letting me follow, closing the door.
“What’s your girl look like?”
I didn’t correct him.
I didn’t tell him she wasn’t my girl.
Because, quite frankly, she was.
She was my girl.
Even if I wasn’t her man.
“Thin. Red hair pulled up. In a purple dress and flat feet.”
“Flat feet? You two have a fight?” he asked a bit absently as he moved out his chair to sit down.
“Yes. She was getting some air. About… an hour ago. I already searched the common areas, outside, took a drive to see if she was walking or getting coffee somewhere. There’s nothing. And the cops won’t hear me out until she’s been missing for a while longer.”
“And any idiot who watches crime shows knows it is usually too late then.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, moving in behind him to watch over his shoulder as he rewound the footage, catching Jules coming out of our room.
If I wasn’t completely mistaken, she didn’t look frustrated or angry or shut down.
She almost looked… hurt.
My heart, still speeding, took a hit at the very idea that I had done that. Hurt her. The last thing I would ever want to do.
“Getting in the elevator…” he narrated, skipping from screen to screen, pointing her out like I wasn’t as diligent as he was in finding her. “Into the lobby. Getting coffee…”
If I wasn’t mistaken – and I wasn’t because I was watching her more intently than I ever had before – she reached up to rub at her eye.
To swat a tear, maybe?
Damn if that didn’t knock my air out.
“And here she seems to notice everyone looking at her in all her barefoot glory,” he went on, pointing to Jules walking outside to get some air.
It wasn’t long.
Just after she moved away from the valet, getting almost out of eyesight of the camera.
She couldn’t see it, the shadow, being that it was behind her.
But we could see it.
I could hear the guard suck in his breath at the same time I did.
My body braced for it as though it was going to happen to me instead of Jules.
I’d much rather it was me.
But wishful thinking wouldn’t change the reality. The reality where Jules had a piece of metal piping slamming down on the back of her head, surely sending pain shooting off for the split second before she crumpled down to the hard ground. There was no sound on the video, but I could swear I heard her land. Hard.
Then the shadow wasn’t a shadow anymore. It was a man.
I knew.
I knew before I had any reason to know.
Even though it could have been anyone.
I knew it was him.
Then he was moving into the camera feed like some damn amateur, looking a little different, but mostly the same, leaning down, dragging up Jules’s body like it was nothing more than a sack of grain, something he need not take care with. And I guess, why would he start now? After all the damage he had already done.
“Son of a bitch,” the guard hissed, already reaching for the phone as he scanned one last time, catching the corner of a car as it pulled away. Not much. But enough for a make and partial license plate. I could work with that.
“Do me a favor?” I half-asked, half-demanded.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell the cops about me until they come here to see the tapes.”