The Woman Next Door

Copyright © 2025 by Elle Gray | K.S. Gray

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

“I don’t understand.”

She sat beside her new husband, still clad in his tuxedo and pants that left no doubt he was her groom. She gazed up at the handsome, charming man she had pledged her life to. The wedding was beautiful, every bride’s dream, and no expense was spared as per her fiancé’s request. But now as she sat beside him, still clad in satin white, her veil next to her, the joy of her day dimmed as she looked into her new husband’s eyes. Her questions overshadowed whatever joy she might have been feeling and replaced it with dread.

What was she supposed to do with this? It had started with a phone call, an accidentally seen text message. Was he cheating on her? It had been her first horrid thought, so she’d seized the phone when he was in the bathroom, but what she saw wasn’t another woman’s name at all. It was something far worse.

But now, as he held her hand within his, his thumb stroking the top of her hand as if soothing away all doubts, she began to wonder if it was really as bad as all that.

“My love.” He leaned in, pressing a kiss to the curve of her neck. All her senses dissolved into nothing but the pleasure it gave her. He drew back, only far enough to let his warm breath caress her ear through the strands of her curled hair. “I know it’s a lot. And it makes me seem like a different person. But I have no choice. There’s a lot you don’t know about this, and I’m doing it for a good cause. Being this up close and personal with them can make it easier to send help. But I promise, I’m working to change things. Okay? You know why?”

How could he change something this big? “Hmm?” she asked, looking up at him with round, innocent eyes.

He leaned closer to her mouth, sealing her lips with a kiss that stole her breath, and pulled away before she could fully settle into it. “Because you have made me want to change.” He spoke to her between kisses he placed on her face, along her neck. “You have inspired me to become the best person in society I can be and because of you, I’m working on changing. I promise.”

He finally kissed her, fully, and held it for a few moments. When he broke away, he buried his gaze into her eyes, searching them as if seeking her soul’s deepest desire. How did he always know how to make her feel at ease, to comfort her with his words, to make her want more of him?

“You must never, never tell anyone. I need you to promise me that this will never leave this room. No one will understand why I have to do this, and they’ll cause all kinds of problems for us and make an even bigger mess. Can I trust you to tell no one?”

Trust her with so big a secret? What if she accidentally said something? Oh, but to whom? She didn’t really talk to her family much anymore; she was too wrapped up in her new husband. She swallowed and finally nodded. If she was doing this to protect him, protect his reputation, then she’d do it. He couldn’t be all that bad, and this had to be something of a misunderstanding. It was the only thing that made sense.

“Don’t worry,” she promised with all her heart. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Special Agent Olivia Knight couldn’t put the files down. She and Brock had been back from their undercover assignment to Cape Fremont, South Carolina, for a day now but she still couldn’t get the faces out of her head. In the early morning hours of her second day back, she sat at the window of their apartment, flipping through each picture in the folder she kept as their handbook throughout their case. A little over twenty young teenagers, including Susanna Webster and Ellie Cline, had disappeared, falling prey to a trafficking ring that shocked everyone in the small town. And only two had been recovered. What of the other kids who hadn’t?

She lingered on the picture of thirteen-year-old Melissa Downs, the youngest in the group that had gone missing. Her happy gaze and fiery red hair sent a wave of discouragement over Olivia, despite their victory in exposing the ring and taking down its operations. She couldn’t get the faces of the other missing teens out of her head.

Let it go, Olivia, she tried to tell herself. You can’t save everyone, remember?

Oh, but what if she could? Then what was her badge for, if not to do everything she could for situations like this? She clung to the realization that she had at least prevented it from happening to any more young lives in Cape Fremont, and who knew where else Carl and Angela Schmidt’s talons had reached. You can’t dwell on it, she told herself. And now it was time to let it go.

She went to her desk in the small area that served as an office, workout room, and storage, and tucked the file into the drawer of one of the only organized places in that room: her file cabinet. With a final close of the metallic set of drawers, the case was put to bed. She lingered a bit, staring at the cabinet, wishing she could feel a touch of satisfaction, but cases like this were hard to let go of. She knew there was nothing she could do, that the remaining teens were nothing more than dandelion seeds in the wind at this point in some foreign country, but she could still wish that she could do more.

With a final breath she turned, coming out of her office just as Brock emerged into the kitchen and dining area. The apartment smelled like shampoo and hot water as he stepped into the dining room, a towel hanging around his neck.

He looked over at her, a smile adorning his face. “Good mo—oof!” Before he could complete a sentence, his foot collided with a bag that Olivia had left at the end of the hallway that led to the kitchen area. He lost his balance, careened forward, and nearly crashed to the floor. He thrust out his hands and spun them around, struggling to right himself a little bit before looking back to see what had tripped him.

Olivia covered her mouth, mostly to hide her laughter after she realized he was okay. “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He turned to look at her. “You didn’t see that.”

“I saw everything.” Olivia came into the room, reaching for the culprit that had nearly sent Brock to the floor. “I’m sorry. I had to put that there because I didn’t have room for it.” Well, now, she was going to have to find room for it.

“That’s okay.” Brock laughed a bit as he tossed the towel on the back of the kitchen chair. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, glancing around as if thinking about where to put something. Or, perhaps, what to do.

Olivia tossed the bag on their bed, intending to find a less hazardous place for it later this afternoon, and came back out into the kitchen. In her absence, Brock had poured some coffee for them both. He handed a cup to her when she came in. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” Olivia took the cup in her hands and settled down into the chair across from Brock. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he was thinking about something very hard. “What’s on your mind?” she asked, reaching her hand across the table and taking his free hand within hers.

He met her gaze, his eyes conveying that his thoughts were busy. Maybe he was trying to sort them. “You know just now when you tried to kill me with that bag?”

Olivia snorted a laugh and returned her hand to settle around her coffee cup. “I seem to recall it happening differently, but sure, we’ll go with that.”

His lips lifted in a smile before he grew serious again. “I’ve been thinking. We can’t stay in this apartment forever.”

So they were moving on to this conversation, were they? Olivia knew it was coming. All gloomy thoughts from this morning faded in light of what he was suggesting and she let the smile overtake her lips. “What’s wrong with it?” She waved an arm around the room as if gesturing to some grand ballroom. “All this room, great interior design, our favorite place down below; what more could you ask for?”

Brock shared in her laughter for a bit. “My point exactly.” He gazed at her, lovingly, and he reminded her so much of a younger man, maybe a teenager who hadn’t graduated yet with nothing but his dreams ahead of him. “You know, we’re going to be getting married. What do you say about making plans to buy a house? That way we can really start our lives together.”

Getting married. Every time he mentioned it, the reality of it hit her with a new wave of joy. The thought of making progress toward building their lives together only sent that wave home even harder. “I like that idea a lot.”

“I know it’s not something we can do today or tomorrow,” Brock went on. “But we can at least start saving up for it and exploring our options. If we get a better idea of what we want, we’ll know how much we can budget to put aside each month. We can start there, and toss out ideas for furniture and all of that. Maybe a step up from the current interior decor we have.”

Olivia laughed as he referred to her tease from earlier. “Aw, well, I was just getting used to the piles of stuff everywhere, but I guess I’ll have to get used to something nicer.” She put her chin in her hands, her eyes sweeping around the room for a few moments. “What kind of house are you thinking?”

“It doesn’t have to be very big, for starters.” Brock leaned forward, already running numbers through his head. “Obviously nothing too small, either, but something nice. Two-story, room for a family to grow.”

A family. Olivia couldn’t hide her smile. She was getting married; she was starting a family with Brock. “You know what my favorite part about this is?” she asked.

“What?”

She scooted her chair around the edge of the table to lean into him. “Doing it all with you.” She leaned forward, placing a kiss on his lips. When she pulled away, he smiled at her.

“That’s my favorite, too,” he murmured.

Olivia let the moment linger until her stomach reminded her that there were things to take care of first. “But for now,” Olivia got to her feet, her destination the refrigerator. “Breakfast.”

“You really do love me.”

She creaked the fridge open, groaning at how empty it was inside. She grabbed the bacon from the top shelf and a bottle of what was left of some orange juice. This is what happens when you’ve been gone for a week or two. “Well, I know what I’m doing today.”

“What’s that?” Brock asked from his place at the table.

Olivia closed the fridge door behind her and set the bacon on the counter. “I’m taking a trip to the grocery store.”

“How exciting.” Brock dulled. “I’m going to catch up on some paperwork from the Cape Fremont case.”

“Oh, good. You get the easy work.” Olivia shot him a smile as she retrieved a pan from the kitchen cupboard.

Fighting the crowds and combing the grocery store for each item on her list always drained Olivia of all energy or desire to do anything else when she got home. Even in the tiny town of Belle Grove, it was an ordeal. She got to the apartment later that afternoon and climbed the stairs with the perishable items first. She preferred doing everything in an orderly fashion, such as getting the cold foods squared away before going back for the dry goods. After she had placed the perishables in the fridge, she started back out into the hallway for the rest. As she started to close the door behind her, she saw a young woman trying to get into the apartment next door. Olivia had seen her before, a young woman with her brown hair always done up in a scrunchie to hold her ponytail atop her head. She hadn’t spoken to her before now.

The woman pinned an entire armful of folded cardboard boxes against her torso as she tried to wiggle the doorknob with the other hand. As soon as the door pushed open, the boxes in her arms fanned out and fell to the floor.

“Here,” Olivia shot forward, gathering a few of the boxes in her hands. “Let me help you.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” The young woman looked grateful as she peered over the top of the boxes she was collecting. “These things have been slipping since the first floor.”

Olivia set to work, stacking the folds of boxes on top of each other before she grabbed them up into her arms. “No problem!” She glanced up at the woman as she stood back to her feet. “You’re our next door neighbor?” How had she never introduced herself until now?

The girl nodded. “Yes, that’s me. Abby Fisher.”

“Olivia Knight.” Olivia nodded to her.

“I’d shake your hand and properly introduce myself, but…” she nodded with an adorable smile to the boxes in Olivia’s hands. “Don’t want a repeat of earlier.”

“Oh, that’s fine.” Olivia laughed a bit.

Abby opened the door and stood to the side, allowing Olivia to go through. “Just stick ‘em anywhere. I’m in the process of getting some stuff packed up. I’m going to be moving to France with my fiancé.”

“Oh, congratulations!” Olivia exclaimed as she set the pile of boxes down by the kitchen counter, hoping they’d be out of the way. Abby followed her example, stacking her boxes on top of Olivia’s, and then straightened, clapping her hands together to rid them of dust. “Now, I can shake your hand.”

Olivia laughed as she took hold of Abby’s hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you. So,” she smiled brightly at her, “France?”

“Yes.” Abby looked dreamily out the window as if already picturing a view of the Eiffel Tower. “I’m moving in with him next month sometime, which is why I’m going crazy trying to get all this stuff packed up.”

“Congratulations, again.” Olivia nodded toward the wall that separated her and Brock’s apartment from Abby’s. “It’s funny you should mention that because my fiancé and I were just talking about moving somewhere better this morning.”

“Really?” Abby’s voice rose a notch in cheerfulness. “Oh, congratulations to you, too! How long have you both been engaged?”

“A couple of months.” Oh, but it seemed like yesterday that Olivia had said “yes” in a restaurant in Barcelona. “But we’ve been together for a while.”

“I love that!”

“What about you?” Olivia nodded to Abby’s left hand where an oversized diamond winked back at her with sparkling lights.

Abby lifted her left hand, gingerly taking it within her right hand to examine the diamond. “It’s been a couple months for me, too. We haven’t set a date yet, but we’ve been busy dealing with all the travel. Not to mention the wedding planning.”

“I feel that,” Olivia nodded. “It’s always so exciting to say ‘yes,’ and then all the wedding planning hits you like a tidal wave.”

“I know!” Abby laughed with the radiance of a woman deeply in love and eager for her dream to come true. “It’s overwhelming enough just thinking about moving to a foreign country. Or, moving in general.”

“We’re not going anywhere exciting like France, though,” Olivia clarified with a small laugh. “Belle Grove is home for us.”

“Hmm.” Abby slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and glanced around the space. “Well, if you’re staying local, do you guys need furniture or anything for the new house?”

“We’re in the process of keeping our eyes out.”

“Well, if you need furniture or appliances, I’m not taking any of the big stuff with me. Since it’s just going to be donated or left out on the curb anyway, I’d love for you to take a look. If you see anything here you might want or need, you can have it.”

Abby’s generous spirit lifted Olivia’s lips into a smile. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Of course I’m sure! You’d actually be doing me a favor.” Abby winked and nodded her head toward the living room. “Come on, I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

She sprang into the living room and Olivia followed her. She was surprised to see a very nice couch and chair sitting there with the finest quality leather. In a tiny apartment in Belle Grove, it wasn’t something one expected to see. “Oh, wow, this is very nice.”

“My fiancé settles for nothing but the best. He insisted that I get new furniture instead of the ratty stuff I had before. Said I deserved better than a couch with gouges down the front.” Abby smoothed her hand over the plush leather as if it held a thousand memories for her. “He’s done so much for me. I only hope that I can give back to him as much as he’s given to me. Oh! There’s more.”

Abby led Olivia down the hall and flipped the light on in the bedroom. Her double bed had a very nice custom-carved headboard and footboard in red mahogany that matched the dresser and nightstand.

“This was a whole bedroom set,” Abby explained as she ran her hand up the bedposts. “They were custom made and I’ve taken good care of them, so they shouldn’t have any scratches or anything on them.”

“This is very nice.” Olivia ran her fingertips along the smooth front of the dresser. “And you’re sure you don’t mind parting with it?”

“Nah.” Abby shook her head. “My fiancé is buying all new stuff when we get to France. Can’t exactly take this stuff on a plane, you know? I’d rather give them to someone who can use them than just donate them to some thrift store somewhere. Besides,” she smiled and her cheeks bunched up under her eyes to give her an adorably youthful appearance, “I know that we only just met, but you can consider this a wedding present from me. So if you want anything, just let me know and I’ll set it aside for you! I won’t need any of it when we get to France.”

“Thank you,” Olivia looked over at her with a grateful smile. “I’ll talk to Brock about it and we’ll be sure to let you know within a day or two.”

“Thank you.” Abby switched off the light in the room and started back down the hall. “Here.” She half-ran to the counter that blocked off her kitchen from the rest of the apartment and grabbed a bottle of water from a flat she had sitting there. She handed it to Olivia with another smile. “Take this, and thank you for your help.”

“It wasn’t that difficult. Just moving a couple of boxes in.” Olivia accepted the water graciously. “Thank you, Abby.” She lifted the bottle of water in a wave before she twisted the cap off.

“It was really nice to meet you, neighbor.” Abby grinned at her. “Even though we won’t be neighbors for much longer. But, hey,” she shrugged. “Once a neighbor, always a neighbor, right? Even if we’re thousands of miles away in different countries.”

“Right.” Olivia lifted her bottle as if to make a toast. “Thank you again.”

Olivia exchanged goodbyes with Abby and left, closing Abby’s apartment door behind her. She started back down the stairs to retrieve the rest of her groceries. Even after only a few minutes’ encounter with Abby, she found herself in a lighter mood. Abby’s generous and happy attitude reminded Olivia about why she did her job. To protect people like Abby, genuinely good people left in the world, from those who weren’t.

A few days later, Olivia and Brock parked the U-Haul he had secured for the day in front of a newly rented storage unit. Abby followed behind in her little car. While loading the furniture from the apartment to the U-Haul had been quite the task, Abby had been a delight to work with, never complaining and always making jokes whenever there was a moment to do so. Some people make arduous tasks almost fun because of their personalities. Abby was one of those people.

Brock pulled in front of the storage unit, using his mirrors to align the U-Haul with the door. “We don’t want to overshoot it too much.” He shifted the truck into park.

Olivia got out of her side. “The hard part is over. Getting this stuff down the stairs was the nightmare, but that’s over with.”

“Easy for you to say.” Brock shot her a teasing grin. “I’ll be glad when the heavy lifting is over.”

“Don’t be such a whiner.” Olivia cracked a smile as she walked alongside the trailer. She unlatched the door and lifted it to reveal all the furniture packed inside. Abby parked her car in one of the available spaces on the other side and hurried toward them to offer her assistance. “I’m so glad you two can use this furniture.” She ran her hand along one of the armrests of the leather couch. “Like I said, I really wanted it to go to someone who could use it.”

“And we appreciate you giving it to us. This was so kind of you, Abby.” Olivia pulled the ramp down out of the truck while Brock worked on unlocking the storage shed. Once he had it open, he made his way over to them.

“Well, are we ready to do this?” He assessed the inside, probably deciding what to take first.

“Always ready to lend a helping hand.” Abby slipped on a pair of moving gloves, complementing the old jeans she wore. She looked the part of a professional mover, although getting the easy chair wedged in her doorway when they had not bothered to wait for Brock’s help had taken away that notion entirely. It was something that she was still grinning about.

“Yeah, and this time, you can wait for me!” Brock shot a teasing glance at Olivia. “Instead of trying to get the chair through the doorway like a king was sitting in it, rather than turning it sideways.”

“There wasn’t a good grip on the other side!” Olivia protested. “There’s wood underneath, but the rest of the chair is leather. Leather is slippery.”

“Yeah,” Abby showed off her biceps—or lack thereof. “We didn’t need to wait for you. Girl power, right Olivia?”

“That’s exactly right.”

Brock raised an eyebrow. “Girl power? Well, if you’re saying you don’t need me,” He grinned and stepped back to lean against the wall of the storage shed, then folded his arms over his chest. “Then, by all means, I’d love to watch you two do better.”

“Well, if that’s your attitude,” Olivia shrugged, jumping up into the trailer. “We’re more than happy to show off. Abby, grab the underside of this chair.”

“I’m on it.” Abby must have had some practice moving larger loads. She used her knees to bend down and grasp the underside of the easy chair before lifting it up into her arms. Olivia balanced her side, gripping the wooden legs of the leather easy chair and already feeling the pull and strain in her arms. “Okay, let me step down.”

“I can’t see.” Abby giggled. “Maybe you should go first?”

“Well, I can’t see over the back of the chair, either. You’ll have to guide me.”

“Don’t step off the ramp!”

Olivia took a ginger step forward. She felt the load shift a tiny bit as Abby took a step down on the ramp. As she did, the chair wobbled. Abby burst out laughing. “I might’ve left my girl power at home today, Olivia! I’m losing my grip, hold on.”

She lowered the chair before Olivia was ready, causing it to nearly tip to the side. It now sat off-kilter on the ramp, ready to slide off and hit the ground at any moment. Olivia started laughing. “Come on, we can’t let Brock show us up like this! You don’t have a back-up?”

“I think I set it down to grab my keys and forgot it!” Abby leaned against the trailer, laughing.

From his position against the wall, Brock tsked once as his tongue licked the inside of his cheek. He raised his eyebrows in expectancy but couldn’t hide the amused grin on his face. “Any time you ladies finish there with your whole ‘girl power’ fan club and want some real help, just let me know.”

Olivia hated admitting defeat, even in the face of nothing but jest, but she couldn’t help herself. She looked over at him. “Well, it’s not that we need your help.”

“We just like it,” Abby finished for her with an adorable shrug of her shoulders.

“Mm-hmm.” Brock pushed himself off the wall, striding toward the chair. “May I?” He gestured with both arms outstretched toward it.

Abby stepped to the side. “If you think you can handle it.”

Olivia cackled. “I don’t know, Brock, can you do it?”

“I wouldn’t gang up against me since I’m the one offering you help.” Brock cracked another grin and grabbed the chair. “Ready, Olivia?”

The chair was up in the air and into the storage unit in a few awkward steps. “Well, that was the hard part. At least we can see over the couch,” Olivia said as she exited the storage unit, going back for another load.

“Oh, can I take a nap on it while you move it?” Abby grinned, in the trailer, ready to do her part in the assistance of moving.

“Only if I get to take a nap in the truck once we’re done.” Olivia laughed again.

Between making jokes about moving each piece of furniture, the trailer emptied and the storage unit received each item.

“Well, that’s the last of it.” Brock pulled the door to the storage unit down. “Thank you again, Abby.”

“You’ve been a delight.” Olivia nodded to the girl. “And so generous.”

“Hey, it’s my pleasure.” Abby pouted slightly, as her eyes slanted in some sort of sorrow. “I wish we could have gotten to know each other before now. We could’ve been great friends, this whole time.”

Olivia agreed. In the few times she’d spoken with Abby over the phone to arrange a time to move her furniture out, she’d found herself growing attached to her next door neighbor. Abby had always been a quiet and respectful neighbor, too, so to see her go was like losing a friend, even though Olivia had only known her for a short time. And such a sweet girl, going to a big country like France? Was she ready for an overseas move? Olivia had stayed overseas for work plenty of times. It was a daunting thing, even for someone like her who was trained for things like that. Was someone as innocent and kind as Abby ready for it? Surely her fiancé would take care of her, over there. If he was the great guy she said he was, then he would look out for her and make sure that nothing would happen to her.

Still. Olivia had to know.

“So, tell me.” She leaned against the wall of the storage shed as Brock fiddled with the lock. “It’s getting closer to the big moving day. Are you excited?”

No hint of fear existed in Abby’s eyes, only a radiant glow that danced in her expression. “I’m so excited!”

“Tell me about your fiancé.” Olivia prodded. “You’ve met mine, do I get to meet yours?”

“I doubt it.” Abby giggled. “Claude’s a very private person. I doubt you’ll ever see him. He doesn’t really talk to many people; he likes to keep things simple. He has such a big business that he doesn’t like all the attention.”

Olivia realized that it was the first time she’d heard Abby use her fiancé’s name. “What was his name again?”

Abby wore a dreamy expression like Olivia had just asked her about a fairy tale ending. “His name’s Claude McMillian.” She brought her left hand up again to show off the ring that sparkled in the evening’s fading light. Olivia had caught sight of her ring before, but she hadn’t been able to study it until now. It was definitely no cubic zirconia and was far too flashy for Olivia’s taste. She preferred the simple ring that Brock had graced her finger with, a diamond that was more pretty than showy. Abby’s hand had probably gained two pounds with the diamond that stood up about half an inch off the band that was wound with tiny diamonds, making the shape of flowers, snaking up to the stone. Olivia felt her eyes pop at the sight of it. “Wow. He really went all out, didn’t he?”

“Oh, he did. It was such a dream.” Abby cradled her left hand in her right, stroking her finger around the engagement ring with her free thumb. “He really listens to me and what I want. I told him I wanted something floral, but I wasn’t sure what kind of design, and he found this. Not to mention, the diamond is gorgeous!” A sunbeam took the place of her smile. “I couldn’t have asked for a better guy.”

“I’m so glad you’ve found someone you’re so happy with.” Olivia loved watching a young woman find love. She and Brock had felt the slow burn of their relationship and that had been good for them, but there was nothing wrong with the way Abby’s eyes lit up with excitement as if she couldn’t wait for her life to begin.

“What kind of work does he do?” Brock asked. Ever the man in the equation, Olivia thought, asking about occupations rather than wedding decorations.

Abby directed her attention to Brock. “He owns businesses overseas and here in America, but his main business is in France. Electronics, or something. That’s why we’re moving there, so he can be closer to his business. That, and he says I’ll love it there. It’s a beautiful country.”

Olivia couldn’t help but feel this was all a little too good to be true, but she didn’t want to rain on Abby’s parade. “He better treat you right. It’s such a big step.”

“Oh, he will. He always does.” Abby laughed a bit. “I have no doubt I’ll be just fine. Claude has everything figured out. I’ve never met a man who had such a good head on his shoulders before.” She laughed and held out a hand to Brock. “No offense. I haven’t really gotten to know you that well, so I can still say that.”

“None taken,” Brock chuckled.

Abby sighed, relinquishing her joy in the face of duty. She checked her watch. “Well, I suppose I better let you go. I still have some things that I need to box up before I move out. And cleaning to do.” She rolled her eyes, playfully. “You know what I hate about moving is the little stuff. The items that don’t fit into any category, but clutter every surface and make a huge mess. The cleaning, the everything that you can’t do because something else is in the way.”

Olivia laughed. “Knowing you, you’ll get it done long before it’s time to move.”

“I hope you’re right.” Abby shared her laughter.

Olivia felt like she was saying goodbye to a good friend, even though she’d only known Abby for a couple of weeks. “Keep in touch with us after you move, will you?” She reached forward, giving Abby a hug.

“Oh, you know I will! I won’t have anyone to talk to there at first, so I’ll be sure to call you once in a while! If I don’t accidentally wind up calling you at midnight or something. You know, with the time difference and everything.” She pulled away and gave Brock a conservative hug.

“You know, Abby,” Brock said as he pulled away from her side hug, “we’re grateful for the furniture and everything you’ve done for us. Olivia and I were wondering, would you like to come to dinner with us before you leave the country?”

Abby’s eyes lit up again as if he’d just asked her to take a trip around the world. “Oh, I’d love to! It’ll be like a little going away party!”

“Exactly!” Olivia shared a glance with Brock. They’d talked about it on the way over here, but with the excitement of getting everything unloaded, Olivia had forgotten to ask.

“Great. Do you have anything going on Saturday?” Brock asked.

Abby tilted her head in thought. “Saturday. Mm. Nope, I’m free!”

“Why don’t you head over to our place for dinner Saturday, around six?” Brock asks.

“I know the traffic will be terrible around that time.” Olivia teased her slightly.

Abby playfully rolled her eyes. “I know, it takes forever to get to your house from mine!” She laughed a bit. “I’ll be there.”

“Do you like Mexican food?” Olivia asked. “Brock can make a killer enchilada and there’s a Dorito casserole I’ve been wanting to try.”

“I love Mexican food. I don’t suppose I’ll be getting a lot of it in France, so I should probably eat as much of it as I can before I leave. I love that! Do you need me to bring anything?”

“Chips and dip?” Brock suggested with a shrug. “But you don’t have to unless you want to.”

“I do want to. Thank you so much! I’m glad I’ll get to see you both again before I leave!”

“I’m glad, too,” Olivia assured her. “See you Saturday!”

“See you then!” Abby waved, then retreated across the parking lot to her car.

“She’s a sweet woman.” Brock climbed into the front seat of the truck.

“She is.” Olivia closed her own door behind her and reached for her seat belt. “Part of me worries for her. If she’s ready for France.”

Brock sighed, leaning against his seat, and glanced over at her. “That’s your job talking, Olivia. Moving all the way across the ocean is a huge step, but it seems like she’s ready for whatever will come. I mean, it’s France, not some war-torn country.”

Olivia focused on his reassurance. “You’re right. I just... I’ve learned to look at the world through the lenses of our job, you know?”

“Oh, I know.” Brock started the truck and put it into reverse. “And it’s our job to worry and think about these things. But don’t worry. Abby seems to be pretty capable. She’ll be just fine.”

Olivia helped Brock by checking the side mirror. “No, I think she’ll excel. She’ll be one of these people with a dual citizenship who flies to and from each country like a pro by the time she’s our age.”

“Like us, you mean.” Brock chuckled. “Although I will say, I’ll be glad for the day when we can finally slow down.”

“I’m right there with you.” Olivia helped Brock by sending another quick glance into her mirror. “You’re clear.”

The house smelled like taco sauce and warm tortillas. Olivia and Brock fought for space on the cluttered counter space they both utilized.

“Do you mind?” Olivia asked as she gave Brock a small shove with her body. “You’re in my way.”

“Well, you were in my way first.” He grinned as he nudged her back, reaching for a can opener.

“When you’re done with that, I need it.”

“You can’t wait until I finish the main course to make your side dish?”

Olivia gave him a teasing glare. “You better watch it, or you won’t be getting any of it. I’ll make sure to send it all home with Abby.”

Brock chuckled, popping the lid off a can of refried beans before handing the can opener back to her. “Aw, don’t do that now.”

“Why not?” Olivia took the can opener from him and started to work on opening a can of sauce for her casserole. “You haven’t given me a reason not to yet!”

“I would think that making the main course would be reason enough!” he chuckled.

Olivia couldn’t help herself but smile, loving the playful banter between her and Brock. With plenty of smaller cases to keep them busy since getting back from Cape Fremont, they had begun to settle back into life as they knew it. She loved the idea that they were headed for a future together.

“First priority for a new house: a bigger kitchen,” she mentioned. “One where we can both work without getting in each other’s way.”

“That’ll be great.” Brock let a grin spread across his face. “I look forward to cooking our first meal together in our new home.”

“Me, too.” Olivia settled into a daydream state. What would it be like living in a house together rather than an old apartment above a diner? Their first holidays in the new home, hanging out in the living room before going upstairs to bed, sitting around a dining room table littered with papers while they tried to piece together the case they were working? Olivia could hardly wait.

Olivia timed her casserole just perfectly for the dinner hour so, as six o’clock rolled around, she and Brock sat down at the table. Olivia checked her watch with a smile as she reached forward, adjusting the casserole dish on the table. “She should be here any minute.”

“Good.” Brock sat back with a smirk. “I’m starving.”

“What, you mean all those tiny bites you snuck during the cooking process didn’t give you a nice appetizer filling?” Olivia shot him a teasing smile.

Brock looked innocent. “What little bites?”

“You think I didn’t notice, don’t you?” Olivia laughed. “I’m a trained observer, Brock. Of course I noticed.”

“Well, I’ll just have to try harder to hide it next time.” He smirked before leaning back fully in his chair.

Olivia checked her watch again. 6:03. “That’s funny,” she mentioned. “Abby doesn’t strike me as a running late kind of girl.”

“It’s only three minutes past.” Brock narrowed a teasing stare at her. “Just because you live by the fifteen-minutes-early-or-you’re-late rule doesn’t mean the rest of the world does.”

“Oh, stop it. At least I can say I’m hardly ever late.”

“Yeah, but what about those of us who like to be?” Brock gave her an irresistible grin.

Olivia didn’t mind waiting for five minutes. Or even ten. But at 6:15, she poked her head out of the door, looking up and down the hall. “Where is she?”

“Maybe she’s putting the finishing touches on the chips and dip.” Brock looked down at the table. “Do you want me to put your casserole in on warm?”

“I think we should.” Olivia fished her cell phone out of her pocket as she came back over to the table. “I’m going to call her.”

Brock picked her casserole up and put it back in the oven. Olivia dialed Abby’s number and held the phone to her ear. But instead of hearing a series of purring rings, a screeching met her ears.

“We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and dial again.”

“What?” Olivia hung up, checking the contact. She’d put Abby’s name in her phone as one of her contacts and she hadn’t changed it since, so what was up with that?

“What is it?” Brock called from the kitchen.

“Phone isn’t working. Let me try again.” Olivia dialed the number one more time and held the phone to her ear, only to be greeted with the same message.

Come on, it’s just that her phone isn’t working. Maybe she didn’t pay her bill, seeing no reason to if she’s moving to France. But still...what if something happened to her? “I’m going to go next door and check on her.” Olivia didn’t wait for a response. She scurried out of the apartment door, knocking on Abby’s. Her knock sounded like it echoed in an empty apartment. Strange. She hadn’t moved out yet, had she? “Abby?” She called gently and landed another series of knocks on the door.

No answer. No movement inside. It was like a ghost town had taken over Abby’s once-happy apartment.

“That’s odd.” Olivia turned back to her apartment just as Brock emerged. “Anything?”

Olivia shook her head. “I think I need to check on her. Maybe the manager knows something.”

“Okay.” Concern leaked into Brock’s eyes.

Olivia headed to the office where the manager usually kept vigil over the happenings in the apartment. She pushed into his office where he sat, reading something on his computer. “Excuse me?”

He pushed back from the desk and looked up at her. “Yes?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me if the girl in apartment 212 is okay?” Olivia leaned closer to talk to him over the counter. “We were supposed to get together for dinner tonight, but when I went over there, there was no answer.”

“Oh,” The manager shook his head. “She’s already moved out.”

Olivia fought to keep a thoughtful frown in check. “She did?”

“Yes. She moved a couple days ago and her fiancé came and returned her keys.”

So Abby, who was so excited about seeing them for dinner and having them as friends had left without saying goodbye? Olivia pondered that for a moment, the notion striking a strange chord inside of her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Sorry about that!” The manager called after her as she pushed away from the counter.

“No, it’s all right! Things happen,” Olivia reassured him as she left the building. But was it really all right? It was more than a little strange how she had disappeared, just like that.

She must’ve still had confusion in her expression when she walked back into the apartment where Brock stood by the stove, waiting for her. “What did you find out?” His face fell. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Olivia shook her head, brushing it off like there wasn’t anything wrong. “The manager said Abby moved out already and her fiancé returned her keys. She just,” she raised a hand, only to let it fall back to her side again, “left without saying goodbye, I guess. I can’t believe she didn’t contact us, though. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange?”

“Hmm.” Brock jammed his hands into his pockets and looked around the kitchen before he answered. “Well, maybe she forgot about dinner with us. You know how it is when you’re moving. The little stuff falls through the cracks.”

He wasn’t wrong. And it wasn’t like she and Abby went way back to high school or anything. The more Olivia thought about it, the more she nodded in agreement. “Oh, you’re probably right.” After all, she didn’t know Abby that well. The girl had given her some furniture and they spent some time on the phone but beyond that, they weren’t what Olivia would consider friends. They hadn’t known each other long enough. Abby had seemed like a well-put-together type of girl, but maybe she had truly forgotten about the dinner plans. She was probably already enjoying a glass of fine pinot noir with an extravagant plate of foie gras, in contrast to their humble taco night.

“I’m sad that we lost touch with her,” Olivia mentioned, looking back at the door one more time. “She was a sweet girl. I would’ve loved to hear how her excursions in France turned out. Or seen pictures of her wedding.”

“Me, too,” Brock conceded, even though he probably wasn’t as interested in the friendship as Olivia was.

Olivia decided to move on with a shrug. “Oh, well. It was nice to know her while she was here.”

“It sure was. And, hey,” Brock shot her a smile as he turned the oven off, “that means it’s date night for the two of us. Extra food, too.”

Olivia liked the sound of that. She let a smile touch her lips as she sprang forward. Come to think of it, the thought of spending a night with Brock was more appealing than sharing it with anyone else. “Now that’s something I can get behind.”

In the three weeks that passed after the missed Saturday dinner and Abby’s moving out, Olivia had all but forgotten about the get together that hadn’t happened. The apartment beside them rented out within a week to a single mom with two kids and a less pleasant nature than the former tenant. She hardly said anything to Olivia and Brock as they passed each other in the hall and seemed more interested in yelling at her ex the entire time she was home than making friends with the neighbors. Or minding the noise ordinance for that matter. That was fine, Olivia thought. It only served as a reminder of why she and Brock were so excited to get out of there and move on with their lives.

One morning, over the yelling of a one-sided conversation next door between the single mom and her ex, Olivia’s phone rang, adding to the din in the apartment.

“This is going to be great to live next to,” Brock mumbled, running his fingers through his hair.

“Tenets like this never stay in one spot for long.” Olivia looked at her phone. “It’s Calvin.” She answered and put the phone on speaker. “Agent Knight.”

Hugh Calvin’s bright, chipper voice greeted her and Brock. “If it isn’t my number one crack team!”

“You flatter us, sir,” Brock said.

Calvin scoffed. “Nonsense, Brock. I mean every word. Good work on the online scam case. I’ve got another one for you, and this one sort of ties in with what you’ve been working on.”

“Go ahead,” Olivia said.

“We had a situation with a local business owner. From what we could tell, he’s new to the game and hasn’t had a lot of experience with online scams and chat rooms and anything like that.”

“Uh-oh.” Olivia knew where this was going.

“Yeah. He got tied up on Facebook Messenger with this deal that sounded too good to be true. The guy was trying to get him to invest in some stocks that he was told were new to the market, but taking the world by storm. The guy was a bit short on his overhead for the month so he went ahead and invested and, it turns out, he lost a lot of money. As soon as he figured out he’d been duped, he called the police, who kicked it up to us. I’d like you to do some investigating. The business owner is local and we seem to have a Ponzi scheme going on.”

“We’re on it.” Olivia took down a few more notes and hung up.

“Oh, boy. I love cases like this.” Brock muttered, sarcastically. “Can’t we do a car chase or something?”

Olivia laughed a bit. “Hey, at least we can save local businesses from falling for stuff like this.”

“I just don’t get it.” Brock shook his head. “The internet has been around for years and new scams along with it, and people still fall for them.”

“They become more convincing by the day.” Olivia looked back over her notes. “It was on Facebook Messenger. Here’s the guy’s direct number.”

Brock took Olivia’s notes in his hands, glancing over them. “I’ll get in touch with him right away.”

“Since it was on Facebook,” Olivia opened her cell phone and found her Facebook app. “I can pose as a potential investor. I’ll create a fake profile right now.”

“Oh, and you leave me the boring work of doing all the tracking and hacking from my end.” Brock teased. “What if I like messing with scammers?”

“Brock.” Olivia put her phone down, shooting Brock a playful glare. “We’re not supposed to mess with them. We’re supposed to pretend to be interested in what they’re providing. That’s why I’m posing as the investor, not you!”

Brock joined her in laughter, waving off her compliment. “Okay, okay, you’re right. I’ll do the tracking.”

Olivia let a slow grin spread across her face. She opened her Facebook app and set to work on creating a fake profile. When she finished, she made a post about making a new account because she couldn’t remember her old password and added a few memes to her page to make it look like a legitimate account. After setting her friends list to private, she set her phone on the table. “Okay. Here we go. Fake profile, created.”

“I’ll call our local mark and get some information.”

“Don’t call him a mark!”

“Victim, concerned citizen, whatever.” Brock finished up his paperwork and picked up his phone.

“Well, while you do that, I’m going to go down and grab the mail.” Olivia planted a quick kiss on his lips as she got up to leave. “Oh, and, uh,” she nodded toward the phone in his hands. “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks.” Brock playfully rolled his eyes. “Take your time, take your time. This isn’t going to be a five-minute conversation,” he drawled lowly.

“You’ll be okay.” Olivia turned and headed out the door.

When she got to the office where the apartment manager sat, she heard an unfamiliar voice drifting in from the window behind where he usually sat. “I’m telling you, this is important.”

Olivia tried to ignore it as she headed out for the mailbox, but the name she overheard stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Do you know an Abby Fisher?”

Olivia stopped, her hand on the mail room door, all her attention brought to the conversation. She could see just fine into the office where a blonde woman stood at the counter as if she were ready to give a defense of some kind.

“I do know an Abby Fisher,” the manager replied, tone steadfast. “She used to be a tenant. She moved out a few weeks ago. I can’t give you any other information other than that.”

“You don’t understand.” The blonde woman leaned forward even more. Olivia turned her back to the door, watching just in case the woman wanted to pose some trouble for the manager. But instead of anger lacing her tone, all Olivia heard was desperation choked by denied tears. “This apartment is the last known place that anyone has seen my sister and we’ve been trying to find her.”

Olivia felt her blood pressure spike. This woman was Abby’s sister? And she was saying Abby was missing? That this was the last place she had been seen? Olivia took a step back, concealing herself behind the wall to better listen to the conversation without being an obvious eavesdropper.

“All I can tell you is that she moved out a couple of weeks ago. Her fiancé returned her keys. I haven’t seen her since. I just assumed that she had moved to wherever she was going. She didn’t tell me where. All she said was that she was moving.”

She could hear the woman sigh, defeat overtaking the tears that she had been trying to keep back. “Okay,” she said, at length. “Thanks for your time.”

She was leaving. But Olivia couldn’t let her go. She turned the corner just in time to intercept the blonde coming out of the office toward the exterior landing. She stepped aside, letting the blonde go through the door first. Distress marked each of her features as she nodded her thanks to Olivia for holding the door and stepped out. Olivia hurried to follow her, letting the door close slowly behind her. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

The blonde turned around. Though her face indicated she was at least five or ten years older than Abby, her eyes bore the same darker shade of blue as her sister’s. In those same eyes, Olivia could read the pain of someone who was looking for someone else in vain, as if she’d spent many hours trying to track down her missing sister. Olivia knew the exact feeling. She softened her gaze, remembering that she wasn’t technically on the clock for these types of questions. “I apologize, but I couldn’t help but overhear you talking to my manager. You were asking about Abby?”

The woman nodded, hope rekindling in her eyes. “Yes. Abby Fisher. She’s my sister.”

“I’m Olivia Knight, I was her next-door neighbor.” Olivia extended her hand.

The blonde grasped it, her handshake light with cold hands. “Juliette Heath.”

Olivia released her hand. “My fiancé and I were supposed to have dinner with her one weekend, but she never showed. We had just assumed she moved out and forgot about us in her moving frenzy. But you’re saying she’s disappeared?”

Juliette sniffed and looked to the side. “She has. We haven’t heard from her or her fiancé since. You’d think she’d call if she had moved and got settled in France, but she never did. Her phone is off, she didn’t answer my calls, and she never said goodbye.”

Olivia felt the same concern she’d experienced that night start to bloom inside her again. This wasn’t just a woman who had forgotten to have dinner with two acquaintances halfway through a move. She wouldn’t forget to call her own sister. “I’m so sorry,” Olivia said.

“It’s okay.” Juliette worked to fight back tears, opening her eyes wide, but Olivia could see them glistening.

“Juliette,” Olivia tried to be reassuring despite the concern she had for the woman, “I’m an agent with the FBI. If you give me your contact information, I can look into this and see if I can help track down your sister.”

“You’re with the FBI?” Hope seemed to come and go from Juliette the longer she spoke to Olivia. “Here I thought that I’d hit another dead end.”

Olivia shook her head. “Not yet. I can’t make any promises, but I can at least check things out and see if I can help you track down your sister or at least some kind of approximate location.”

“That would be great.” Juliette finally let her tears fall, streaming down her face in two glistening trails.

She and Olivia exchanged contact information and as Juliette turned to go, Olivia watched her. It was clear they were sisters from the way that Juliette walked and spoke. She had the same inflection, the same walk, the same eyes. They reminded her so much of Abby’s, only not so much dancing and full of life. “Thank you again,” Juliette said as she headed back to her car.

Olivia wished she could promise her that she would find Abby, but her concern deepened with every moment. She knew all too well what it was like to lose a sister.

She went to the mailbox to retrieve the mail, nothing but a bunch of bills and ads, and headed back to the apartment.

Brock was just finishing up his phone call as she entered, closing the door behind her with her backside as she shuffled through the mail. She hardly read the return addresses or the names on the envelopes as her mind was consumed with thoughts of Abby. What had happened to Abby, so full of life, so happy? Had something gone wrong? Why hadn’t her fiancé reported her missing? Or had he?

“What was in the mail?”

She barely heard Brock’s question and it took her a moment to register that he had spoken to her at all. She slowly raised her head to see his expectant gaze lingering on her. “I’m sorry?”

“Don’t tell me that there’s bad news in there.” Brock nodded to the mail. “You look like you received more than a jury summons.”

“Oh.” Olivia dropped the mail down on the table, letting the disregarded envelopes fan out for him to read if he wanted. “No, it’s not that, it’s…” She decided this conversation would be better to have a seat and talk with him, so she dropped herself into a chair across from the mail. “Do you remember Abby Fisher?”

A frown pinched the corners of his mouth. “Abby, Abby…” His eyes scanned the table as if the answers were hidden in the mail Olivia had laid there.

“The woman who moved to France and gave us all that furniture.”

“Oh, yeah! Chips and dip.” Brock shook his head. “We run into so many names in this job, it’s hard to keep them all straight.” His recognition started to match her concern. “Why?”

“You won’t believe this,” Olivia started. “But I just ran into her sister of all people downstairs. She was asking the manager for information because she said her sister went missing.”

“I was wondering what took so long to get the mail.” Brock’s eyes widened as he leaned forward. “You saw her sister?”

Olivia took some time, coloring in all the details of her conversation with Juliette, not that there was much to cover. Abby had disappeared without saying so much as a goodbye to her sister. That was about it. “I mean, it’s possible that she wasn’t close with Juliette and would rather leave the country without letting her sister know, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

Brock studied her for a long time, his lips pressed against his fist. Finally, he raised his mouth to ask her just over the tops of his knuckles. “Do you think that something happened to her?”

It was a question she didn’t want to answer, but circumstances had forced her to. “I do.”

Silence hovered for a painfully long moment between the two of them as her admission brought the truth to light. Abby didn’t seem like the kind of person to skip the country without letting her family know. Unless Juliette was a heck of an actress, she looked genuinely concerned. Scared, even. If it wasn’t for the forgotten dinner with her and Brock, then Olivia might not have read too much into it. “At first I thought that she just moved to France and changed her number. But now, I’m not so sure.”

“I know we only knew her for a short while. A week or two at most,” Brock mused. “But I also know you have good instincts with people. And so do I. This isn’t like her.”

“No, it’s not. And the fact that Juliette can’t find her?” Olivia shook her head. She pictured Abby’s smiling face, the spring in her step, the generosity that overflowed from the depths of her giving heart. She seemed somewhat innocent, and that’s what Olivia had been concerned about, taking that innocence to another country. Had something happened before she even left the shores of America? Was France not something to worry about at all because she wasn’t even safe in her own home country? She couldn’t let it rest. Not Olivia. Now that she was handed this news, she couldn’t just let it sit. She’d never feel satisfied, never be able to live with herself if she just wondered what happened to her and never actually looked into it. “I think I’ll do just a little bit of investigating into this.” Determination spiked in her tone. “If something happened to her, we’d want to find out, right?”

Brock studied her for a few moments. “What does that look like? Are you going to be spending a lot of time on it?”

“I mean, it’s not a real case. Not yet.” Olivia shrugged. “But you know I can’t let it go. So I guess it looks like me doing some looking into Abby’s background, along with her fiancé.”

A smile twinged Brock’s mouth before disappearing again. “No. I know you can’t let it go. Well,” he leaned forward as he made his decision, “Let’s not get too wrapped up in it. It might just be another missing persons case and she’ll turn up. But I’m with you on this.”

Despite her growing concern, Olivia felt herself smile. “Thank you, Brock.” She stood from the table and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling her face against his for a moment. “You’ve always stood by me, even when I’m going out on a crazy impulse.”

“Your impulses are usually correct. How can I not?” He drew her to him and kissed her, easing away her tension within a few seconds. When he pulled back, Olivia found her seat again.

“So, where are you going to start?”

“Well, I think the most logical place to start is her fiancé.” Olivia reached for a bottle of water and even as she did, it made her think of Abby, offering her a bottle of water for helping her bring in the boxes. “After all, if he was this great guy that she said he was, then he’d be going out of his mind if she’s missing. And if not, maybe we should look into that.”

“That’s a great start.” Brock agreed.

But there wasn’t much she could do with that, now. Olivia sipped her water and tilted the bottle toward Brock. “So where are we with the business owner?”

Brock blew out a sigh between his lips. “Where should I start?”

For the life of her, Olivia couldn’t remember what Abby had said her fiancé’s name was. Searching the archives of her memory, all she could bring up was “Claude.” But as for last names, she was coming up dry.

She and Brock had spent the rest of the afternoon on the Facebook fake profile and by the end of the day, she had gotten a friend request from the same name that the business owner had given to them. They were making progress with the case, so she felt free to dedicate some time and attention to Abby.

As the next morning brewed, she decided to follow the best trail that she had so far. Abby’s sister. Juliette didn’t live too far from Belle Grove, only a forty-minute drive at most. “Hey, Brock?” Olivia leaned around the wall to where he was working in the office area. “What do you have going on today?”

“Just some more paperwork.” Brock’s boredom leaked into his voice.

She had some of that to get caught up with herself, but that wasn’t her main concern for the moment. When tempted by a chance to get out and do some field work – official or not – she would take it. “Do you wanna take a break this afternoon and go somewhere with me? I want to give Juliette a call and see if she’s up for a little conversation about Abby.”

“Sounds better than this!” Brock’s enthusiasm was enough to get a laugh out of her. “Let me know what time.”

Olivia punched in Juliette’s number and held the phone to her ear. She counted three rings before Juliette’s hesitant voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Juliette Heath?”

“That’s me.”

“This is Agent Olivia Knight, we spoke about Abby yesterday?”

She could almost feel the relief in Juliette’s tone. “Yes, how can I help you?”

“My partner and I were wondering if you might be free sometime this afternoon,” Olivia started. “We were going over the details of your sister’s case and were wondering if we could ask you a few questions regarding her?”

“I’m a stay-at-home mom, so I’m free most of the time. Please feel free to stop by any time this afternoon.” Juliette said.

Olivia gave her an approximate time and hung up the phone. “I’m going to go grab a shower,” she called to Brock, who was hard at work shuffling papers around. “Are you able to leave in about an hour?”

“Probably sooner than that. I’m almost done.”

“Great.”

Olivia hurried through her shower, and after she had thrown her hair into a ponytail and adorned a sensible, professional outfit, she skipped down the stairs where Brock was waiting for her at the kitchen table. “Ready?” he asked.

She gave a series of nods. “Ready.”

The drive didn’t seem as long as the forty minutes it took. As they pulled up to Juliette’s home, Olivia couldn’t help but make a few observations. “I didn’t take Juliette for a country girl.”

The house was tucked back into a grove of trees at the end of a driveway that snaked back behind them. Once they passed the grove of trees the property opened into a good bit of land that looked like it could do very well as a hobby farm. A small flower garden bloomed near the front and a veggie garden peeked around from the back of the house. The house was classic white with high gables.

“Looks like a dream house to me. Ever consider living on some bigger property?” Brock asked as Olivia killed the engine.

“I do like it quiet. But the whole farming thing doesn’t appeal to me.” Olivia laughed a bit. She and Brock got out of the car and made their way to the front porch. She could hear the sound of children laughing over a television show inside the house as she rang the doorbell. A few minutes later, a conservative-looking man appeared at the door. “Hello?”

Olivia greeted him. “I’m Agent Olivia Knight; this is Agent Tanner. We’re here to speak with Juliette?”

His face brightened with hope as he cracked the door open further. “I’m Alan, Juliette’s husband. Come on in. We’ve been expecting you.”

The door opened into a woodsy style living room with a braided rug taking up most of the space between the leather couches. Two children sat on the rug, their eyes glued to whatever educational video they were watching until Olivia and Brock entered the room. The boy and girl turned to face them with innocent eyes of around ten and seven.

“Honey, they’re here,” Juliette’s husband called from the living room.

Juliette poked her head into the room. “Thank you for coming.” She nodded to Olivia and Brock before throwing a glance at Alan. “Honey, do you mind taking the kids outside while I have this meeting?”

“Sure thing.” Alan looked toward the children, a smile growing on his face. “Hey. Are you guys ready to try out that model airplane we made?”

A chorus of excited ‘yeahs’ burst from the kids as they scrambled to their feet. Hurried footsteps followed Alan outside, after a brief stop somewhere near the back door. Olivia took this time to cast a glance around the living area, observing what she could of this family. The home was nowhere near a showroom, but it did speak of happiness within its walls. Wedding pictures and professional Christmas photos scattering the mantelpiece showed off what appeared to be a happy couple. Juliette looked younger in her wedding picture, no doubt ten or fifteen years ago. A few kids’ toys and books littered the living area. A kitchen set, probably for the girl of about seven, took up the corner behind the couch, and plastic play food was scattered all over the floor.

Juliette huffed and shuffled the toys to the corner with her feet. “Sorry for the mess. I told them to clean up after themselves this morning…”

Olivia shook her head. “No need to apologize.” She wasn’t here to scrutinize how well Juliette kept her house.

“Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything?” Juliette gestured to the couch with its back to the window.

Olivia and Brock settled down next to each other across from Juliette. “No, thank you,” Brock answered for both of them.

Juliette sank into the couch across from them, seeming to settle in comfortably despite the burden that still lingered in her eyes. “So Agent Knight, you said you wanted to ask me a few questions about my sister?”

“Call me Olivia, please,” Olivia cleared up before she nodded. “And, yes. Before we begin, I want you to know that this is not as yet an official FBI case. We’re here not as agents, but as people who knew Abby, even if only briefly.”

Juliette’s eyes flickered up and the hope in them dimmed a little, but Olivia gave her a warm look.

“I understand this is a difficult time for you, but I assure you, we’re going to use every resource we can to find her. Whatever you have to share will help us in tracking down where your sister might be.”

“Anything that helps.” Juliette placed her palms together, tapping her fingertips one by one. “What would you like to know?”

Olivia pulled out a notebook from her pocket, flipping to an empty page. Relying on her shorthand to make sense later, she kept her voice gentle, knowing that this was probably a sensitive topic for the woman. “What can you tell me about Abby? When did she move out, what was her life like? Anything helps.”

Juliette drew in a long breath as her eyes reflected the grief she felt over Abby’s loss. Or rather Abby’s absence. They weren’t sure if she was lost yet, or not. “My sister is a sweet girl,” she began, her tone indicating that there was far more to tell. “She was always the sweet one. I was the fireball; she was the peacemaker in the family. I was the pessimist, she was the optimist, you name it. She’s also as loyal as they come. You could throw her into a volcano and if she survived, she’d still crawl across cut glass for you.”

Peacemaker, loyal, sweet. All things that Olivia could easily picture about Abby. Maybe something would come into play later, but Olivia couldn’t track anyone down by their personality alone, except in extreme cases.

“Did she ever go to college?” Olivia asked. “Where did she go to school?”

“We grew up in Bridgewater,” Juliette replied. “After high school, she was attending a community college until she dropped out for a job shortly after she turned twenty.”

Olivia jotted this down as well. “Thank you.”

“Can you tell us a bit about your family?” Brock asked.

Another sorrow-filled sigh. “Well, my dad, he’s no longer in the picture. When Abby was seven and I was fourteen, we found out that our dad had been cheating on Mom since before I was born.”

Olivia closed her eyes, sighing through her nose. “How horrible.”

“It was. It was with the same woman, the whole time. It ripped apart our family and Mom was so depressed that she had to work two jobs just to keep us alive while he lived like a king. I think that’s where Abby’s loyalty really came from. She saw what disloyalty did to a relationship and never wanted to go there.”

“It makes sense,” Brock empathized. “Things like that can either change a person for the better or worse.”

“For Abby, even though it was hard, it changed her for the better, I think,” Juliette said. “She was the best kind of friend you could ever ask for, and the best family member. She moved out when she was eighteen, very eager to start her life.”

Olivia’s wandering eyes caught a picture of Abby on an end table near the kitchen. It was her and Juliette, both dressed up in full makeup and what looked like prom dresses. Maybe some sort of local dance, given the age difference between them. Abby’s eyes shone so brightly in the picture, just as they had when they met her. “What did she want to do with her life?”

“She has so many interests,” Juliette replied. “She loves history, art… She was going to be an artist but you know how hard that is to get into. So she worked as a freelance graphic designer until she could get her name out there. Photo editing, book cover design, you name it, she can do it. She’s really good with capturing images and bringing them to life.”

Olivia had been inside her apartment and had noticed a few pictures hanging on the wall, but no real art. Had she given up on her dream? Or perhaps it had all changed when she met Claude? Maybe she thought Claude could get her into the French art world? Which led to her next series of questions.

“Juliette,” Olivia leaned forward a bit, wanting to show through her body language that she was listening well. “What can you tell us about Claude?”

Juliette dropped her gaze to the braided rug, her shoulders sagging a bit. “Claude.” Defeat rang in her tone. She swept her hair behind her ear and replied in a monotone laced with bitterness. “Abby came to me one day, saying that she met this great guy at an art gallery. There was some kind of gallery event in Richmond and that’s where they met. He asked her out for a drink that night and the rest is history. I never met him, and that has always bothered me. Claude never wanted or tried to meet her family. He always came to see Abby; she never went to see him and he never came to any holiday dinners or anything. She explains it by saying that he’s a very private person.”

Yes, yes, she’d said the same thing to Olivia and Brock when they’d asked her if they would ever get to meet Claude. He was even in the same building, often, and the one to return her keys, but they’d still never seen him. Abby had talked about his being a private person like it was a good thing, but was it really? Being private could conceal a lot of things that shouldn’t be concealed. Olivia nodded, agreeing with Juliette, but letting her go on.

“She was in love with him within six months. Said he was her soulmate and that he’d told her the very same. She has a thousand things that he bought her; he does so many things for her that were sweet.”

A soulmate within six months. It wasn’t impossible; sometimes when you know, you know. But it did seem a little bit like a rush. Setting that aside, Olivia latched on to the other things that Juliette had mentioned. A million things he’d bought her. My fiancé settles for nothing but the best, she’d said. Was it possible that his love language was gift-giving? Or was it another cover? Olivia worked that angle, trying to probe into Juliette’s thinking a little bit. “Do you think that’s a bad thing?”

Any glint of jealousy was absent from Juliette’s expression. What she did have was more like determination. She followed Olivia’s example, leaning forward and cratering her elbows into her knees. “My husband took me to Chipotle for our first date. We were married after three years of dating. The only extravagant thing he ever bought me was my ring.”

She extended her hand, showcasing a ring that didn’t glitter or compare to Abby’s. A typical diamond cut into a circle attached to a simple silver band. Another silver ring welded to it, having lost its sparkle long ago. Not even close to Abby’s engagement ring and never something Claude would even consider for his bride-to-be. Juliette didn’t seem to be jealous, but was she lying to herself? Maybe she was painting Claude out to be the bad guy because she was jealous that her sister had found a Prince Charming while she had Farmer John? Or maybe she was telling the truth? Olivia jotted down a J for “jealous,” a question mark, and circled it as a note to run by Brock, later. Knowing that they’d still pick it apart, she dared to tread on dangerous ground. “Juliette, I have to ask you. Were you jealous of your sister? Maybe wishing that your life was more like hers?”

Juliette’s gaze drifted out of the front bay windows which opened to the scene outside. Children’s laughter could be heard mingling with a grown man’s voice as he played with them outside, probably with that model airplane he had mentioned earlier. Juliette shook her head. “Alan is my life partner. I wouldn’t trade him for any other man. He is raw, real, down to earth. He’s not a fantasy character.” Determination tore her gaze from the window and back to Olivia and Brock. “Claude was a fantasy character. Too good to be true. Because that’s what Claude is. Why didn’t he ever want to meet the family? Why did he keep her isolated in Belle Grove all this time rather than asking her to move in with him in Richmond, where he lives? And then when he does ask her to move in with him, it’s in France?”

It wasn’t jealousy. Juliette had fallen prey to thinking the same thing Olivia was thinking. It all made sense. Never wanting to see or meet her family. Always coming to her. Asking her to move to a different country. Extravagant, a fantasy character. In love within six months. Brock asked the next question, making it evident that he was thinking the same thing Olivia and Juliette were.

“Do you think he might be a narcissist?”

Juliette’s gaze didn’t waver, save only for a hint of sadness creeping in. “I can’t say for sure. I’ve never met the guy. But on paper, it sure sounds like it.” She settled back into her couch. Leaning around the back of it, her fingers searched for the picture of her and Abby. She held it in front of her, looking down at it with affection, as if she wanted to jump back in time through the picture frame. “Abby’s the perfect target for a narcissist, you know. She’s giving, kind, caring, and wants to be valued in a relationship. And as I said—fiercely loyal.”

Juliette wasn’t wrong, and the thought that this sweet, naïve girl might’ve fallen prey to a narcissist made Olivia sick. She readied her pen, poised to capture his name into her memory forever this time. “Can you remind me of his last name?”

“McMillian.”

McMillian. Right. The name rang familiar, even though it lacked the affection in Juliette’s voice that it had held with Abby’s. Olivia scribbled the name down, focusing on it for a bit. Claude McMillian, a possible narcissist, but it would take a while to find out for sure. As her mind traced over the evidence of what they had so far, she realized that up until now, she’d been narrow-minded about Claude. She couldn’t work her case like that, and since Juliette was being more than generous with the information, Olivia would be a glutton for it and gather all she could. “I just have one more question.” She looked up from her notes. “Can you think of anyone else that might want to hurt your sister? We want to keep an open mind and examine all possible angles of this case.”

Juliette pressed her back against the couch and set the picture on the end table. Her eyes darted here and there as if examining all possibilities

“Dad’s out of the picture. Mom loves her…” A light came on and she looked up again. “Remember how I said that Abby was the loyal one, that she never wanted to be someone’s sidepiece?”

Olivia nodded.

“Yes,” Brock said, beside her.

“She dated this guy in high school. Brody Ray. She broke up with him after finding out that he was dating another girl on the side. She didn’t want any part in that disloyalty. He’s been kind of creepy ever since. Sometimes he calls me or texts me, checking on her; sometimes he stalks her social media accounts under different names, only for her to find out it was him. I guess I was so wrapped up in her fiancé that I had forgotten all about Brody. He hasn’t messaged me in a while.”

Olivia confirmed his name again and wrote it down. While Claude was highly suspicious in her mind, this Brody character wasn’t someone to be ignored either. If he was stalking Abby, that opened up an entirely new world to this missing persons case. “Thank you for that. Is Abby very active on social media?”

“She posts now and again. She’s not on it twenty-four/seven like kids these days are, but she would upload a picture every other week or so, or share a meme or painting. Mostly when she’s feeling happy.”

Which, for Abby, was quite often. “Do you happen to have access to any of Abby’s social media accounts?”

“Yeah, she goes by her real name, Abby Fisher. She never uses any weird or crazy usernames. I think her Instagram is abbyfisher15, all one word. She uses the same password for everything.”

Another angle for her to work. Olivia was getting more than enough to work with and she could hardly wait to get started. “We’re going to want to take a look at her Instagram.”

“Knock yourselves out,” Juliette answers. “She always used the same password. Are you ready?”

Olivia readied her pen. “Shoot.”

“Monet22Best, capital M, capital B. She loved Monet out of all the artists and she always claimed that twenty-two was her lucky number.”

Olivia tried not to think how her luck may have run out once she moved on to age twenty-three. She looked over her notes, unsure of anything else to ask. She glanced up at Brock to see if he felt the same way she did and he confirmed with a nod. “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Heath.” Brock looked over at Juliette again. “You’ve been more than helpful.”

“Well, I’m happy to help. If you think of anything else you need, contact me.” Juliette stood to her feet the same time they did and let her desperation show through her eyes. She’d done all she could, but she probably didn’t feel like it. “Please. Let me know if you have any updates.”

“I will do what I can,” Olivia promised her. “But we are just beginning to look into Abby’s hereabouts.”

“I understand.” Juliette gave a series of nods and for the first time since meeting with them, a small smile worked its way onto her lips. “Thank you.”

Olivia listened to the humming of the car engine as they rode back to Belle Grove for all of about five minutes before her mind started spinning with the case again.

“Do you think that she’s telling the truth?” It wasn’t that she doubted Juliette’s account. Juliette seemed to be a very down to earth woman who didn’t strike her as the kind to make up things about Abby’s fiancé. Looking back on everything that Abby had told her about Claude and hearing about the extravagant life he had lavished on her, she also began to wonder about him, if he was really all that Abby had chalked him up to be. But she wanted more than anything to hear Brock’s thoughts, to have him confirm everything she was feeling and thinking.

He nodded, raising his eyebrows as he kept his eyes on the road. “I do,” he answered, without hesitation. His conviction assured her that she wasn’t going bonkers. “I can see that she meant what she said about her husband. I picked up on some things around the house that indicate she wasn’t lying when she said they were happy. It wasn’t just the wedding pictures that were everywhere or the family photos. It was the way she spoke to him.”

“Right,” Olivia agreed. “It wasn’t the sticky-sweet, lovey-dovey niceness that some couples seem to have. But it wasn’t clipped, either.”

“Exactly.” Brock switched on his turn signal. A quick glance in the mirror told him it was all right to change lanes. “Of course, anyone can look the part, but she seemed pretty genuine. The guy lives on a farm, a rancher, and the kids are happy, so I can be about ninety percent sure that Juliette is happy with him as her life partner.”

“Uh-huh.” Olivia shot him a teasing glance. “And the other ten percent?”

“Well, that’s just knowing people,” Brock chuckled. “People lie, people act. We can’t rule that out, although I get the feeling that Juliette is about as real as you can get.”

“I know she said she wasn’t,” Olivia traced the circled “J” in her notes, “but do you think she’s jealous of her sister at all?” She gestured with her hand as if pointing out some grandiose idea. “After all, if Claude is everything that they say, buying her extravagant gifts and being very wealthy, it might give Juliette cause to be jealous.”

“Juliette doesn’t strike me as that kind of person.” Brock passed the slow-moving semi and got back over into the right lane. “Again, anything is possible. It’s very possible that she was putting on a great show, but look at what you know about Juliette. She was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. Both times when we saw her, she had no makeup and just had her hair tied back. Not exactly the signs of someone obsessed with image. Her decor shows that she seems to take pride in her home, but also lets the kids have their toys out in the living room. Seems like a pretty normal, level-headed mom. I don’t think that she’d want the extravagant lifestyle that Abby did.”

“If Abby wanted it at all,” Olivia reminded him. “She could have just been at an art gallery, met this guy, and fell into the lifestyle. She may not have pursued it.”

“Exactly. We only knew her for about a week. And there’s only so much you can learn from a family account.”

Wasn’t that the truth? If anyone knew about family secrets, it was Olivia. She moistened her lower lip, keeping that last bit to herself. Now was not the time to dig up the skeletons of her past.

“So, we’ve got a lot to work with. A last name, another possible suspect.” Brock broke into her thoughts, centering her back onto the case. “What’s our next move, baby?”

She loved how he was letting her lead with this. Her instinct was screaming that something was wrong, so she decided to follow it and he tagged along for the ride because it’s just who he was. But where was her instinct taking her? There were so many leads; which one did she want to follow first?

“Let’s split this,” she suggested. “You find out everything you can about Claude McMillian, his business, what have you. I’ll investigate this Brody character. But first, while we’re on the way back?”

Brock shot a glance at her before returning his eye to the road.

“I want to go by our storage unit. I’d like to take a look at the stuff she gave us, and see if we can find anything.”

“You got it.”

They spent the rest of the drive skimming through the channels on the radio. Some of the songs brought back memories, other songs made them laugh. “What kind of music are they promoting nowadays?” Olivia asked once as she changed the channel.

By this time, Brock had pulled into the parking area for the storage unit. “I don’t think we want to know.” He parked and killed the engine. “Ready?”

“Ready.” She got out of the car and stretched her legs. Brock pulled the keys out of his pocket, not bothering to hide a smile as he laughed under his breath. “I never thought we’d be investigating our own stuff.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Olivia grinned. “Especially if there’s evidence in there.”

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Brock raised the door of the unit and ducked inside. “Claude and Abby’s fingerprints are going to be all over this stuff. And ours.”

“I’m not looking for fingerprints,” Olivia confirmed. “Just anything that might pertain to the case.”

Brock began by sliding his hands in the crack of the couch, feeling under the couch cushions for anything. “Well, this looks like a good place to start. I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost something in the couch.”

“I know!” Olivia went for the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Empty. “Like that time you lost my favorite pen?”

“I’ll never understand why you have a favorite pen!” Brock chuckled as he pulled the couch cushion out to look underneath.

“Because it’s easy to write with! It makes it flow better,” Olivia answered. Just out of curiosity, she slid her fingers along the inside of the drawer front. Her fingernail bunched up against a piece of hard paper of some sort, the texture feeling a bit like a photo.

“Hello,” she hummed. She took hold of whatever it was and slid it up the drawer front just as Brock said, behind her, “Hey, I found a dime!”

“Well, look what I found.” Olivia held the item in her hands. It was a photo of Abby and a rather handsome man. Abby had her cheek pressed up against his, smiling — no, beaming at the camera. The man had his arm tucked around her and stared into the camera with a look that spoke of a someone who knew exactly what he was doing in life. And just look at him! He would be the perfect model for any of those cheesy romance films or podcasts. Finely chiseled jawline, icy blue eyes that looked out over the top of a well-trimmed beard, and an artfully tousled fluff of brown hair atop his head. At first, Olivia wondered if it was photoshopped, because of how fake he looked. But those models had to come from somewhere, didn’t they?

Maybe this guy had been that model. Brock peered over her shoulder as she flipped the photo over, examining the back where fine penmanship scrawled out a message, probably meant for Abby’s eyes alone.

Ma Chérie,

My life was empty and meaningless until I met you, and I can’t wait to start a life with you. A new adventure awaits.

Je t’aime,

Claude.

“So here’s our mystery man,” Brock said as Olivia turned the picture over again to examine it. He raised an eyebrow, glancing at Olivia. “Too good to be true?”

“Exactly what I’m thinking,” Olivia agreed. “I’m going to take this back with us.” She handed the picture to Brock since he was looking into Claude’s side of the story. Brock took another moment to examine it, looking at the back and re-reading the message. “Well, now we have a photo of the guy. Let’s see what we can dig up about him.”

“And, we have a recent picture of Abby,” Olivia pointed out. She paused for a moment, her thoughts trailing along another way to help find out where Abby could be. “Juliette filed a missing persons report here locally in Virginia. But we can send this out to all the agents abroad and see if anyone has seen her.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

Brock and Olivia spent a few more minutes going through the drawers and checking the cracks of the couches and all the furniture. In the end, Olivia decided that the picture was what she had come here for. She wondered if Abby had realized it was missing. It was against the drawer front, easily pushed forward when the drawer was closed and easily missed. But it was the only thing of use that they found amid the things Abby had so generously given them.

“Let’s get back home,” Brock said as he closed the storage unit door behind him. “We have a lot to go over.”

Yes, they did. And Olivia could hardly wait to get started.

Olivia spent some time sending Abby’s picture to the Bureau and getting it out there for anyone to identify. Knowing that these things rarely turned up answers immediately, though it would be nice if they had, she put it out of her mind for the time being and followed another lead she’d been given. She seated herself in her office area, Brock having taken over the kitchen table for his own work, and set her fingers against the keyboard.

Juliette had mentioned that Abby went to Bridgewater High, so she navigated there. It was easy enough to find a list of students from each year and sure enough, there was Brody Ray’s name mentioned. Strange, though. He was in the same grade as Abby, but according to the records, he never graduated. Dropout?

She moved his name into the FBI search database and in seconds, she had all the information she needed on the kid that dated Abby Fisher in high school. Scrolling through, she highlighted the most important things about him.

First, he now lived in a town in Texas. Olivia scribbled down the name. Sparrow Grove, Texas. For such a pretty name, the town itself looked rather unassuming as Olivia pulled it up in a separate tab. It looked like one of those towns that only existed for people passing through to stop on their way to somewhere better. It offered sleeping accommodations through a hotel that looked like it was built in the seventies, and a place to tank up and eat from a diner that went back even further. Olivia found it curious that he lived in such an unassuming town. Who moved to Sparrow Grove without having grown up there? What kind of person said to themselves, “After I graduate, I’m moving to Sparrow Grove, Texas?” Olivia switched back to her original screen and kept reading about Brody. At twenty-four, he was few months older than Abby. Hmm. That’s interesting. Oh, would you look at that? Kid has a record.

According to the FBI database, Brody was arrested shortly after turning eighteen for a litany of charges, including underage drinking, assault and battery. So that’s why he had never graduated. Six months and a fine.

“So he’s out, now,” she mused out loud. Sitting back in her chair, she wondered if she had answered many of her own questions. Maybe that’s why he had moved to Sparrow Grove. A small, insignificant town where nobody knew him and where he could start over again. But other than this, there was no record of him moving. Employment records stated that he worked at the small motel there in Sparrow Grove. So he lived a pretty boring life. Did it give him enough time to stalk Abby from hundreds of miles away? Probably not, so he probably resorted to stalking her social media.

Olivia would take a look at that in a minute. For right now, her thoughts became distracted as she drifted over to the kitchen table where she could hear Brock clacking away on his laptop. She pushed away from the desk and padded into the living room where he already had a stack of notes on a legal pad.

“Brody’s an interesting case,” she said as she approached the table. “Lives in a town in Texas so small that you’d drive right past it if you blinked. Works at a hotel, and he was arrested before his graduation for assault and battery. Fined and imprisoned, but that’s all I dug up on him for now.”

“A regular troublemaker.”

“What do you have?” Olivia settled down beside him, eager for the day that they had an office space big enough for both of them to do their homework in rather than here at this uncomfortable kitchen table.

Brock tapped the screen with his finger. “Claude McMillian. A more popular name than you think, but I used his picture to narrow down some results.” He glanced down at his notes every so often but turned to face her as he filled her in. “Looks like our guy owns a company in France that sells all kinds of recording equipment such as cameras. The regular kind like Canon, Nikon, and also surveillance cameras. There’s also a section of his business where he sells listening devices and hidden cameras.”

“That?” Olivia raised an eyebrow. “That is what made him such a wealthy playboy?”

“Maybe there’s more of a market for it there.” Brock shook his head. “I’m still looking into it.”

“So, surveillance and listening devices. Doesn’t France have very strict laws regarding surveillance, recording conversations, all that?”

“Yes,” Brock adjusted his position, his tone indicating that there were a few caveats. “In France, having a camera to record your private property is legal, however, it can’t include anything that’s not your property, like the neighbor’s yard, the street, the public highway. It must only record your property and must be positioned properly to avoid recording anything that isn’t yours.”

“What’s the point?” Olivia mused. “So someone can stand on the street, commit illegal activities and never get caught if they don’t enter your yard.”

“Exactly. And as for recording conversations without one’s consent, yes, that’s illegal, too. Privacy laws are very tight in France. However, there are exceptions for law enforcement. In a more recent bill, it allows police to wiretap, or remotely access cameras including those on a person’s phone. They can also remotely use the phone’s microphone, but only in extreme circumstances. For investigations of terrorism, things like that.”

“Look at you, doing research into international law. You’re more than a pretty face after all.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Brock winked. “Anyway, according to the nitty-gritty research that I’ve done, Claude only sells the listening devices to law enforcement. Anything that’s borderline on the privacy laws such as a surveillance camera, he has to have some sort of written form acknowledging that they will only use it legally. I guess he uses it to keep his nose clean. When I looked up his name, there were no flags and no prior record of anything, not even a parking ticket.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t partake in some sort of illegal activity that we haven’t found yet. Such as murder.” Olivia pulled her phone out. “What’s the name of the business?”

Brock glanced at his notes. “Do not make fun of my accent.”

“Well, you speak a little Dutch, so I was expecting you to be very fluent with your French accent. How disappointing.” Olivia smirked at him and he returned it, before reading.

“À Travers la Lentille. It’s French for ‘Through the Lens.’”

“Creative.” Olivia grinned. “And your accent is terrible.”

“Gee, thanks,” Brock chuckled.

“Hmm. I have an idea.” Olivia typed a number into her phone after doing a quick check of the time. “It’s about six o’clock in France now. Let me get on the phone with our contact over there, Marion Yates. See if she can dig up any information on this company.” She held the phone to her ear, hoping she hadn’t missed Marion for the day. She rarely had to call the France extension office, but when she did, Marion was her go-to contact. She and Olivia were a lot alike in that they hunted down and destroyed any case they could get their talons in with diligence and sometimes exclusivity. The only difference, other than location, was that Olivia was happily engaged to the man of her dreams and Marion was married to her work.

She answered after the first few rings. “Agent Yates.”

“Marion, this is Olivia Knight.”

Recognition dawned in the woman’s voice. “Hey, Olivia! I saw your number come up but, you know. Gotta be professional as I’m still technically on the clock.”

“Oh, good, so I caught you before you left!” Olivia said.

“You did. I’m working long hours tonight, pulling a double. You know how that goes.”

“Gotta love the job sometimes.” Olivia and Marion shared a bit of small talk before Olivia dove into the reason for her call. “I’m working a missing persons case here in the States and we’ve got a suspect who owns a business in France.” She filled Marion in on all the details they had so far. “It’s a long shot, but since Claude’s a suspect at this point, can I get you to look into À Travers la Lentille when you can? See if you can dig up anything dirty on them? It sounds like they’re toeing the line between legal and illegal here.”

“You got it. I’ll find out the shoe size of every employee who works there.” Marion’s voice became a bit muffled as she was probably taking notes down to the last period and comma. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to pull off and do that, but I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

“Thank you, Marion. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

“Always. Take care, Olivia.”

“You, too.”

Olivia ended the call and turned to Brock with a resigned sigh. “Busy day so far.”

“Mm-hmm.” Brock nodded, smoothing his hands through his hair. After a few moments’ pause, he turned and looked up at Olivia. “Well, there isn’t much more we can do on this one.”

Olivia nodded, absentmindedly. She knew she needed to be working on their actual assignment, but her brain was working overtime on Abby’s special case. What had happened to her? The longer she was away from her, chasing their tails on possible suspects and checking into businesses overseas, the longer their chance of finding Abby evaporated to nothing.

“Should we get back to the work to track down the head of this Ponzi scheme we’re supposed to be working so Calvin doesn’t get upset about it?”

Oh, Brock had asked her something, hadn’t he? Olivia breathed a laugh, reeling her thoughts in like an oversized fish. They fought her just as much, but she finally switched over to the case she was supposed to be working. “Of course. Where are we at with that?”

Brock pushed the legal pad containing his notes on Abby’s disappearance case up on the table and reached for another one. “I got those results from when you were posing as the investor.”

Ah, yes, that had been fun. Olivia had enjoyed being the bait and luring the scammer in with her possible interest. “I get paid on Monday,” she had said. “Can we get together then?” With the message still open and not blocked, Brock had worked his magic behind the scenes.

“Turns out, the IP address is based out of Richmond. You’re not going to believe how simple it is.” A playful grin teased his face. “Hey, how about some coffee?”

The café in Richmond smelled like any old coffee shop. Brewing beans, steamed milk, and flavors to make each custom-ordered drink unique. Olivia timed herself to arrive an hour after Brock, so that it didn’t look like they were together. Brock had arrived an hour earlier, taking over the space in the back corner, where to any outsiders he looked just like a businessman working overtime on his laptop. Eyes on the screen, but keeping in touch with Olivia through the Bluetooth device hiding out in his ear. Olivia’s hair covered hers and she made sure to come in exactly fifty-one minutes after he had so that nothing looked as precise as if they had timed it. After ordering a latte for herself, she chose the other corner, facing Brock. For a few minutes, she opened her laptop and moved her mouse around, typing random characters into an open Word document to give the impression that she was also working on something. At around 12:30, she navigated to the chat where the promised payment was to take place and clicked it open. She scrolled through the last few messages she’d exchanged with this guy. Brock had uncovered his name as Tommy Barnes, and she was just Beverly Cann, a potential investor. She read her first message, sent that morning before she’d left.

Hi! I get paid at noon today. My lunch is at 12:30. Can we get in touch then?

She read the next message down. Yes. Kindly provide me with the information so that we can move forward with this.

Olivia hated that the word “kindly” had been twisted out of place by online scammers. It seemed like anyone who used the word was trying to trap someone into an online scam of some kind.

She read her next response, scrutinizing herself to make sure that she didn’t sound too put off.

I’ll give it to you tomorrow at 12:30, my lunch. Right now, I have to drive.

And of course, Tommy’s most eloquent response:

K.

Truly, a businessman in the making.

“One o’clock.” Brock murmured into his earpiece as he scanned his computer, eyes intent on his work. Olivia cast a tiny look toward her one o’clock position as a man who looked to be mid-thirties breezed through the door.

Olivia changed tabs, opening up the secure messaging platform she shared with Brock to type out the answer she didn’t want to be overheard.

This might be him. He’s early. Talk here.

After about thirty seconds, she received a response from Brock. Got it.

Olivia settled back, occasionally stealing glances at the guy who had walked in. If this was Tommy, he probably thought he was smart. Dressing all nice and inconspicuous with a black hoodie with some sort of tree logo that zig-zagged across the zipper portion. Backwards baseball cap the same color, but with the name of a different company on it. His quiet voice ordered a cappuccino, plain, just as he was trying to look. Not to mention how he had chosen a public place, such as this café, with free Wi-Fi; he probably figured there was no way to track him. Olivia went back to typing on her laptop, looking up every so often and noting that no one in the café seemed to be aware of anything going on. There weren’t that many people there, though. A young couple who looked like it was their third date sat in the corner booth, laughing about something. An older woman in yoga pants sat near the window, scrolling on her phone and listening to whatever it was showing her through her earbuds. The two tables in the middle of the café had been pushed together to accommodate a group of about ten or fifteen people with books open on the table in front of them, but they were mostly studying and working in silence.

The guy grabbed his cappuccino after a solid five minutes of waiting and slid into the booth. His back to the counter, he faced the lobby and opened his laptop. Only a few seconds after the lid flipped open, the chat between Olivia and Tommy activated to green.

He’s early, Olivia tapped on her encrypted chat. Black hoodie, black ball cap, thinking it’s our guy. I’m going to focus on the chat with him.

Another positive response from Brock assured her that he was just as aware of everything as she was. He was in the system, watching their every move and it was a go.

Olivia focused all her attention on her chat with Tommy as the bubble appeared at the bottom, indicating that Tommy was typing.

Here we go, Olivia thought. She kept her eyes glued to her laptop, clicking on something every so often to give anyone the impression she was intent on whatever she was working on. At exactly 12:28, Tommy’s first text popped up on her screen.

Hey, his message read.

He just couldn’t be patient, could he? Olivia gave it three minutes and four more attempts by Tommy to reach her before she set her status to active and read the messages he’d sent her.

Are you at lunch?

Did u get paid yet?

I’m ready when you are.

Kindly provide me the information, thank you.

Even if Olivia was gullible enough to fall for a scam, the way this guy was talking to her would put her off immediately. Persistence was one thing, but annoying, disrespectful spam was another. At 12:32, she finally responded.

Hey! Sorry, just got to lunch. Yes, I finally got paid.

She gritted her teeth against the apology she felt obligated to give him, since she was trying to keep herself in his good graces. She should not have to apologize for not responding the second he did. And two minutes late! Unthinkable! Trusting that Brock was doing his part, Olivia continued to volley the conversation back and forth, doing her best to delay it as long as she could to give Brock time to track the scammer.

Ok. Kindly follow this link and enter your information into the site.

Seconds later, a link popped up. Olivia gave it a beat before responding.

Hold on, internet’s slow.

A few seconds later, his response popped up.

Okay, how about now?

Wow, he wasn’t even giving her a break, was he? Olivia tightened her jaw before typing.

Okay, I think it’s working. Entering information, now.

Olivia’s screen flickered as her sandbox environment kicked in, keeping the fraudulent page separate from her real files and data. She took her own sweet time filling out the instructions provided, knowing that the fake card number she’d chosen wouldn’t go through. She knew that Brock, watching from his corner, was focused on monitoring the scammer’s IP. After putting through the transaction, she switched back to her chat screen. The only thing that mattered now was keeping Tommy engaged long enough for Brock to get the evidence. Okay. I think it went through! What next?

With perfect timing, the café door opened. Olivia glanced up as another agent strode in, casually reading the menu. This was it.

She remained seated as Brock got to his feet and started approaching the man. Olivia afforded a look around the café while keeping Brock in her peripheral as he walked up to the man in the black hoodie, badge in hand.

“Tommy Barnes?”

Startled, Tommy looked up at Brock who flashed his ID. “FBI. You’re under arrest for wire fraud and securities fraud.”

Tommy’s panicked-driven gaze swept around the café before looking back up at Brock. Olivia could almost see the gleam of sweat beading up on his brow. “What do you mean, man? I’m just sitting here, drinking some coffee.” He held up his cappuccino as evidence with one hand and with the other, slammed his laptop lid shut. The chat between Olivia and Tommy switched to “idle” status, then offline completely. Well, at least it wouldn’t erase the evidence. They’d be able to track it down forensically once this arrest was made.

“Drinking coffee and,” Brock pointed to his closed laptop, “getting people to enter their information so you can take advantage of them. That’s a big no-no, Tommy. If that is your real name.”

“You can’t prove anything!” Tommy lumbered to his feet, off-balance by the small space between him and the table. Olivia took this as her cue to slide out from her place at the table as the agent casually reading the menu pivoted around.

Gasps circled around the café as they became the center of attention. Patrons craned to look in their direction. “Oh!” one older woman cried.

“What’s going on?” came from the young couple’s table.

“All right!” One of the young college kids dug for his cell phone. Olivia inwardly sighed. People would film just about everything these days.

“Turn around.” The back-up agent came around the booth, pair of handcuffs in his hands. “Put your hands on your head.”

“This is a mistake!” Of course, Tommy didn’t turn around. No, he’d rather make a scene. “This is harassment!”

Olivia showed her true identity as she closed off the last space where he could make a run for it. “Tommy Barnes. Beverly Cann.”

She saw the horror on his face as he realized he was trapped.

“We have all the evidence we need.” Olivia put her badge away.

Tommy began sputtering, caught off guard. “Wha—what?” He tried to shove past her, but Olivia stepped into his path, holding her ground as he awkwardly stumbled forward. Two pairs of hands were instantly on him, dragging him back from Olivia and the twisting of handcuffs snapped over one wrist, then another. One of the baristas laid a hand against her mouth while her coworker looked on smiling. “This is the best first day on the job I’ve ever had!”

Olivia stepped aside to let Brock and their back-up agent lead Tommy away from the table. “I’ve got the evidence,” she told Brock as she reached to gather Tommy’s laptop and his bag.

Cornering Tommy with the evidence had led to the culprit not bothering to resist arrest. As he was hauled off, Olivia found that the excitement of it all gave her the adrenaline crash she needed after spending an hour or two in a coffee shop. Now that they had brought an end to yet another cyber-criminal, she turned to Brock with satisfaction. “Well, that went well.”

Brock responded with a professional straight face that mirrored Olivia’s. They both knew that the cell phone cameras of everyone in the coffee shop and gathering around the sidewalk were aimed at the scene of the arrest.

“I’ll say. I’m just glad he didn’t try to run.” Brock gathered the box of evidence they had collected into his hands, giving it a gentle toss as he did to adjust his grip on it. It only contained the suspect’s laptop and phone and a few personal items he had, but all of it mattered somehow in the long run. “Well, now that that’s taken care of, what do you say we head down to the field office and drop this off? We’re going to need a lot of paperwork time tonight.”

“That’s fine with me.” Olivia dangled the keys from her pinkie. “I’ll drive.”

Olivia drove toward the Richmond field office, fighting the late day traffic that clogged the streets. When she pulled into the parking lot, she pushed the thought of the unwanted mountain of paperwork she and Brock had to fill out from her mind. They walked into the air-conditioned building that hummed with busy agents and hundreds of cases floating around on the floor. Brock carried the evidence into the storage facility and, after marking everything appropriately, slid the box onto the shelf. “We’ll be needing this in court.”

Olivia signed her name off on the evidence log and turned to Brock. “Great job, as always.”

“You, too.” Brock replied.

As they re-entered the main office, one of the agents stopped them at the door. “Agent Tanner, Agent Knight!”

Olivia did a half-turn, recognizing the agent as Jennifer Landy, one of the more serious colleagues she had worked with. She was a woman who took every aspect of her job seriously and would not have had the time for the friendly banter that Olivia and Brock often shared. Jennifer strode up to them, a faxed paper gripped in her hands.

“Agent Knight, I have a message for you.” Olivia took the proffered paper as Jennifer went on to explain. “It’s from SAC Calvin. He knew you were going to be here dropping off evidence, so he forwarded this information to you. That picture that you sent out to the Bureau about two days back?”

“Abby’s picture?” Olivia had only glanced at the note from Calvin before she let her gaze dart up to meet Jennifer’s.

“We got a hit already. Coroner’s office in a small town located in Texas said that the picture looks like a Jane Doe they had found. He said they found her around the time Abby went missing.”

Olivia shared a glance with Brock with the heaviness that confirmed what they both felt. The coroner’s office? Not the kind of hit that Olivia was hoping for. But one she should’ve expected. Still, the woman was still a Jane Doe at this point, and that didn’t mean it was Abby. It could be someone who looked like her. That was all. Olivia tried to tell herself this, but she knew better. “Thanks.” She had to force gratitude from her thick throat.

Jennifer nodded, not missing a beat. “No one has been able to ID her, so we’ve notified the family. Her sister is on the way down there. The name of the town is Sparrow Grove.”

Sparrow Grove? Olivia’s heart sank. “That’s the town where Brody lives.”

“Calvin’s putting you two on the case.” Jennifer nodded to the message. “He’ll be in touch with more details shortly.”

“We’re on it,” Olivia said. She thanked Jennifer and she and Brock turned to leave. As she strolled back out into the late summer sun baking the cement beneath her feet, she examined the message from Calvin. Jennifer hadn’t left anything out. “What happened to her, Brock? How is she happy and alive one minute and found dead the next?”

“It may not be her.” Brock confirmed her thoughts from earlier. “We just have to make our way down there and find out.”

Olivia knew better than to hope. Hope wasn’t something that kept her alive in situations her job often required of her. Too many times it was nothing short of false hope and she didn’t want to give in to that. She was almost ninety percent sure that Abby was dead. A homicide, from the looks of it. She couldn’t help but raise her suspicions about the town’s name. “Well, at least we know a thing or two before we head down there. We know about her ex-boyfriend who enjoyed stalking her and that he lives in the same town.”

“The town’s small enough that they might know something about Abby,” Brock said. “I think we’ll be staying a while.”

Olivia and Brock flew out early the next morning. The flight from Richmond to Dallas proved to be as monotonous as anticipated. After a quick check-in at the Dallas field office, including checking out an SUV from the vehicle pool, they dropped off their luggage at the hotel and started the three-hour drive to Sparrow Grove. They made their way through the endless highways and suburban sprawl of North Texas on their way out of the metroplex. They passed several road signs with cursive writing underneath them, asking drivers to “drive friendly – the Texas way.” Olivia kept her thoughts about friendly driving to herself as she pushed through to their destination. The closer she got to Sparrow Grove, the more the area started to look like the classic Texas that came to everyone’s mind. Miles and miles of ranch land dotted with occasional bushes and a tree or two, if they were lucky. The summer sun had baked the last of the green from the grass for the season and the heat permeated the windows of the car. Olivia could feel it radiating off the glass whenever she wanted to lay her arm against it.

Brock took over driving for the final leg of the journey to a place just as pleasant as the empty Texas ranch land: the morgue, twenty minutes outside of Sparrow Grove. They didn’t have to drive through it to get to the morgue, but Olivia was eager to see the town for herself. If the Jane Doe turned out not to be Abby, then maybe she could stop by Sparrow Grove on the way home. Sure, it was a little out of the way, but that was fine. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

The morgue had the usual cold, lifeless gray to it, even in the waiting area. Sitting on one of the benches lining the walls was Juliette. Her familiar face was lined with sorrow and the look in her eyes confirmed what Olivia only needed to legally confirm, now.

Juliette sniffled as she looked up at them. “Oh.” She rose to her feet, running her finger underneath her nose and sniffed again, evidence that her tears had been going on for a while before she finally calmed them.

“Juliette,” Olivia greeted as she came to a stop in front of the grieving woman. Compassion for the grieving sister softened her, and her gaze remained gentle, but her heart cried out for the woman.

“It’s her. It’s Abby.” Juliette’s voice sounded hollow, like she was trying to keep from bursting into another flood of tears.

Olivia closed her eyes. Even though she had only known Abby for a few days, the sadness over the death of a woman so sweet dealt a heavy blow. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Brock echoed her sentiment and Juliette looked up at them through red-rimmed eyes. “You find out who did this to my sister.” Despite her sorrows, she stood strong, finding some type of strength through her as she met both Brock and Olivia’s gazes. “They say she was killed.” The last word was mostly sob and her hand flew to her mouth in a desperate attempt to regain control of her emotions.

“We will do what we can,” Olivia promised in a low voice. “Now that we know where she was, we will have a better chance of finding out who did this.” So she said. She had no idea if this was some random killing or if it was planned. All she knew was that Abby had been killed and she was in some morgue somewhere that wasn’t even her home state.

“Thank you.” Juliette looked back over her shoulder as if saying one final goodbye to her sister. “I… I can’t stay. My kids, they need me.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right, Mrs. Heath?” Olivia asked. “We can get you a room here for the night and fly you back first thing.”

She shook her head tearfully. “No, I need to go home. It gives me something to think about other than the fact that I failed my sister.”

“You didn’t fail your sister.” Olivia told her, gently. “You had no control over the situation.”

Juliette looked like she wanted to believe her, but her heart refused to let go of the fact that she had let Abby come up missing. “Thank you.”

Then Olivia did something she wasn’t expecting, even for herself. She took Juliette’s hand in hers and guided her away to the corner. “Juliette, listen to me. I promise I’ll do everything in my power to get justice for Abby. I know what it’s like to lose a sister.”

The two of them locked meaningful gazes, and Olivia had to fight her own tears from rising. “Please understand that there’s nothing you could have done. You absolutely cannot blame yourself. She wouldn’t want that. I… wish I could say something more to you to make it better, to make it easy. It’s not going to be easy. But you go home to your family and hold them tight.”

The tears were falling freshly from Juliette once again, and Olivia pulled her into a tight hug.

“Thank you, Olivia,” she whispered.

They sat there in the corner holding each other for a few minutes until Juliette finally recovered and allowed Olivia to have a local enforcement agent drive her back to the airport.

After Juliette had left the building, Brock gazed down into Olivia’s eyes. “You okay?”

Olivia wiped away her tears and nodded. Where Juliette had nothing but sorrow, determination spiked to overcrowd Olivia’s sadness for the situation. Abby needed justice — she was too sweet of a woman to just be snuffed out with no consequences for her killer. “Yes.”

They moved further up the hall and after identifying themselves with the front desk, they met a man in his forties wearing a white lab coat. His eyes told the story of a career in the morgue, seeing more dead than living and holding out little hope for humanity. “Dr. Carlson, how do you do?”

Olivia introduced herself and Brock. “May we see the body now?”

“Right this way.”

Dr. Carlson took them through a corridor of rooms and doors until he went through one that led into a gray room, cold as the bodies that were examined here. Respect for the dead led Olivia to slow her pace and take her time. Brock followed her example.

Dr. Carlson walked up to one of the doors and pulled it open. He slid the body out on a tray and flipped the sheet back, revealing Abby Fisher. Olivia leaned in for a better look. Abby’s eyes were closed, her face pale and her hair arranged around her face. She only looked like she was sleeping and Olivia noted that there were no gunshot wounds or anything marking her appearance.

“She was found in the woods, by a creek.” Dr. Carlson left the tray open and went to the wall where his clipboard hung. He flipped through until he found the report on her death. “An anonymous 911 call came in. Police are still investigating, but you can reach out to them for their report. She had been dead at least forty-eight hours before they found her. Cause of death is a broken neck.”

Accident? Olivia looked closer, noticing the same thing that Dr. Carlson went on to explain.

“Ante-mortem bruising on her neck indicates that her neck was twisted and snapped. The victim had no defensive wounds.”

So she didn’t fight back? What had happened to her? Olivia nodded as she listened.

“SEA kit came back and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.”

Well, that was only one good thing about the situation. The rest of it? Olivia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman on the table. This was the same woman who had a spring in her step, bubbly personality and a heart that overflowed with generosity. Just a few weeks ago, her voice was alive with words, her eyes blinking, her heart pumping blood through her veins. And now, all of that had gone still. Minus the markings on her neck, she looked to be in perfect condition.

“Here’s a few pictures I took of her body before I washed it off.” Dr. Carlson flipped some stills around. Brock took them and flipped through as Olivia watched. Abby wore a nice blue-and-white checkered blouse. Fitting for her Texas location, Olivia noted. Her hair was done up in her usual ponytail, albeit a little bunched up and tangled, but her face was coated in makeup. “She looked like she was going somewhere.”

“She did have on makeup when she got in here, yes.”

It wasn’t just the makeup. “Let me see that.” Olivia reached for the top photo and Brock relinquished it into her hands. Olivia turned it this way and that, studying how perfect Abby looked except for one tiny detail. A smudge of lipstick spread across the corner of her mouth. “Her lipstick was smeared?”

“That’s how they found her.” Dr. Carlson confirmed. “I’ll give you the contact information of the officer in charge of the scene, but this is all I’ve got for you.”

“That’s plenty, thank you,” Olivia nodded to Dr. Carlson.

“We’ll be in touch with you if there’s anything else we need.” Brock confirmed.

Olivia knew this was probably one of her only chances to see Abby, so she took her time studying her body. The pictures could come with her and Brock anywhere, but her body wouldn’t be here forever. But without the makeup, there wasn’t much else to discern, except the bruising on her neck. Eight distinct fingerprints dotted the area under her chin and Olivia could only imagine what had happened to her in the seconds before she died. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said at length.

As she and Brock left the room, the sound of the tray rolling back into the storage compartment marked Abby’s temporary resting place.

Olivia’s thoughts were quiet in the morgue. Outside, nestled into the passenger seat of her car, they became loud again. “What was Abby doing down here?”

Brock pulled the car out of the parking lot, switching on his signal for a left-hand turn. “There are so many different answers that are possible.” He sighed, watching for a break in traffic. “Maybe she was headed to the airport? Something to do with her flight out to France?”

“I suppose it’s possible, but you’d think she’d fly out of D.C.? Why go back over a thousand miles in the opposite direction? And doesn’t the fact that she died in Sparrow Grove, of all places, sound a little suspicious to you? It’s no coincidence that Brody lives here.”

“Right.” Brock finally went for that left-hand turn and started down the highway again.

It wasn’t just Brody. Both men in Abby’s life were under the microscope right now. And while she ended up in the town where Brody lived, there were other things to focus on that were a little more than strange. “She moved out, and her fiancé returned her keys.” Olivia turned to look at Brock and watch his facial expressions as he drove. “You’d think that if something had happened to her that her fiancé would have mentioned it to the local law enforcement. And where is he now? Why haven’t we seen or heard from him since then?”

“Maybe.” Brock stole a glance at her before returning it to the road. Brock pulled into the hotel and they headed straight up for their room, where they fished out their laptops and got to work untangling the mess of what had happened. Brock set up on the bed while Olivia preferred to work at the small desk in the room.

Olivia assumed Marion Yates was exploring every angle in France, but she still typed Claude’s name into her database. She needed to see who he was here in America. Was he with Abby the day she died?

A hit from the airport prompted her to share the information with Brock. “He’s out of the country at the moment. Went back to France and he’s still there, according to flight records. He has been for a while.”

“How very interesting.” Brock looked up at her over the top of his monitor. “When was his trip?”

Olivia double checked the date. “Even more interesting. Four days after Abby’s date of death.” She pressed her back into the chair and looked over the details she’d uncovered so far. “So he returns her keys, then skips the country?”

“Maybe indicating a little guilt?” Brock looked back at his screen, moving the mouse over to click on something. “Or maybe he was too heartbroken to stay?”

“I don’t know.” Olivia grabbed a pen and leaned forward, playing with the pen in between her fingers. “His lack of action after her death is bothering me. It just seems odd that Juliette was the one to report her missing and that her own fiancé didn’t bother.”

“There is also the possibility that this Brody character somehow got involved,” Brock brought up. “Maybe Claude doesn’t even know that she’s dead. The medical examiner said that she had been dead at least forty-eight hours, so what if there’s a possibility that she drove down to see Brody before she left?”

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “You think she’d drive nearly eighteen hours to see her ex instead of flying out to her new dream life with her fiancé?”

“I’m just examining all angles of the story,” Brock replied. “One way or another, she never showed up at the airport, but did show up here. It doesn’t explain the keys yet, but we haven’t filled any of the holes in the story either.”

There were too many what-ifs and not enough answers. Olivia could sit here and speculate this thing to death, but it wouldn’t get her any closer to finding out what happened to Abby. She leaned forward again, clicking through more information about Claude. And just as Brock had mentioned earlier, not even a parking ticket on his record. A successful business in France, although one thing that she noted was that it didn’t appear that he had a business in America as Abby had originally said. Maybe he had a side business going or something.

Another record popped up, this one catching her eye. She took a moment to read over the information twice before confirming that it was true. She opened another window, pulling up the records she needed to cross-examine every detail before she called out to Brock. “Hey, Brock, I got something.”

“What’s that?”

“First of all, he does not live in Richmond, like he told Abby he did. Claude McMillian lives right here in Texas, about an hour southeast of here. And look at this.”

Brock moved his chair over to be shoulder-to-shoulder with her. “What is it?”

Olivia pointed at the screen, but turned to face Brock as she read the obvious. “A marriage license. Claude is married. To someone named Constance Hart.”

A box of pizza lay open on the table top. Half of the pieces were eaten, the other half were out in the open, getting cold and ready to be boxed up for later.

In the hotel where Olivia and Brock made their temporary abode, Olivia had turned the barren living area into a haven of leads and clues. Names, pictures, and pieces of paper with town names scribbled on them littered the wall like a tree as she carefully put them up with tape that wouldn’t peel the paint off.

“Okay.” She stood in front of her garbled masterpiece. “Are you ready?”

“Fire away.” Brock leaned back on the small sofa, watching her and studying the pieces himself.

“Okay. Here’s what we know.” She put her hand over an image of Claude’s face she’d downloaded to a larger scale picture. “So we know that Claude is married. He is also not in the country at the moment. Maybe it’s safe to say that Abby found out about his wife. So she comes down to Texas to confront him? To break up with him? And maybe that’s why she was found in Sparrow Grove. I doubt that it’s a possibility that she went back to her ex for comfort, since she and he broke up for the same reasons, but we can’t forget about this guy.” She pointed to a piece of paper with Brody’s name, tacked up under Claude’s. “One guy she’s engaged to is married. The other guy she dated in high school, has already been in trouble with the law for assault and battery, and has been known to stalk Abby’s social media. Maybe he even stalks her in person; we have no proof that he has or hasn’t. Both guys happen to live in Texas. One guy’s out of the country, the other one is here. So…” She linked her fingers behind her back, looking up at her tree of evidence and scanning each bit. It all should make sense, but it didn’t. Where were the ends to this tangled ball of yarn? “How does this all piece together?”

Brock set his drink down, choosing to pick up a notebook of nicely condensed notes he had taken. “Let’s go back to the beginning.”

“Okay.” Olivia plopped down on the footstool next to her tree of evidence.

“The crime scene. Here’s the police report, and what we know.” Brock turned the page, reading over the police report and condensing it down for the sake of examination. “Abby was found with a broken neck. The only evidence recovered from the scene were her clothes.” Brock had done his research that day, picking apart the police report on Abby’s death, and it showed. While Olivia was tracking down Brody and Claude, Brock had been dissecting the report and she felt as though she was hearing it all for the first time.

“That’s it. She was found with no wallet or cell phone, so there was no way to ID her. So that leads to…” he swept a hand toward her. “Maybe a possible robbery.”

“But there were no defensive wounds,” Olivia pointed out. “If it were a robbery, you’d think that she’d at least fight back.”

“There is that. And there were no signs of sexual assault, so we can rule that out.”

“Thank goodness for that at least,” Olivia said. So there were no hairs, fibers, anything recovered at her scene that could be of use. “So she could’ve been somewhere in the town, a guy could’ve come up behind her and broken her neck, took her stuff, and dumped her body?” Olivia mused.

Brock made a skeptical noise. “Ehh… Maybe. We won’t know that until we find the vehicle she was dumped from and this far removed from it, who knows what that looks like.”

“We’re not going to get anywhere this way.” Olivia sipped in a breath through her teeth and looked up at the missing points in her maze of clues. There were too many questions. Things that she couldn’t answer unless she saw them for herself. Police reports were words on paper. Evidence was out there, in the real world. “Let’s go to the scene of the crime first thing in the morning.”

“We can do that.” Brock put down his notes. “Even though I know you realize that it’s been a few weeks. Any evidence has probably either been compromised or destroyed and we wouldn’t be able to use it.”

“I know.” Olivia reached out and touched one of the curled corners of paper, smoothing it back down on the wall with her fingertips. “But I want to see what Abby saw the day that she died. Let’s spend some time in Sparrow Grove tomorrow.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Brock adjusted his position on the sofa and leaned back, getting as comfortable as he could. “We don’t need to just see the crime scene. If we’re up there, might as well examine every angle we can. Talk to some of the locals. See if anyone recognized her, knew what she was doing in town.”

“Looking forward to it.” Only then did Olivia realize how tired she was. Her eyes felt heavy and watery, evidence that these had been some long days. “I think I’m going to turn in early.”

Brock smiled. “So you can sleep on a case.”

Olivia returned the smile, but it was half-hearted. “Here’s hoping.”

Olivia and Brock chose to start slowly with a big breakfast the next morning before starting out toward Sparrow Grove around mid-morning. The crime scene wasn’t going anywhere and neither of them were ready to get back behind the windshield. Even though that hour and ten-minute drive was nothing compared to the time it took to get down here.

Around ten that morning, shortly after they’d set off, Olivia’s cell phone buzzed. “Oh, it’s Marion.” She reached to turn the radio down, before she answered. “Agent Knight.”

“Evening, Olivia. Well, actually, morning for you.”

Olivia laughed a bit. “You on your way out?”

“Here in just a minute. I wanted to call you with some updates I found.”

Olivia welcomed any updates, especially with the scattered leads they had on both suspects. “Go ahead, I’m listening.” She put the phone on speaker so she wouldn’t have to fill Brock in on everything.

“Okay. I did some digging into your suspect’s business, but there is no evidence indicating anything dirty going on. He only sells the hidden cameras and the recording devices to law enforcement. In fact, he has a contract with them to supply the goods to them.”

“So he not only sells to just law enforcement, but he made a business contract with them,” Olivia confirmed.

“Correct. Everything else, from cameras, laptops, used phones, he sells to civilians. The only time he ever sells a surveillance camera is to a business and of course gives them the run-down of ‘don’t point this in other people’s backyards,’ ‘make sure it covers your property only,’ you name it. As far as I can tell, McMillian is clean as a whistle. It brings in a lot of money, but there isn’t anything really dirty about it. And he’s working directly with French law enforcement. Rather risky, if he was doing something dirty, if you ask me.”

Olivia agreed. “Is it possible for you to, I don’t know… keep an eye on him? I know you can’t directly involve him in anything, but he’s overseas right now and a suspect in a murder case down in Texas. The guy’s married, but had a fiancée on the side, and his fiancée is the one who was killed.”

“Yikes. Sounds like you’ve got yourselves a juicy case, there. I’ll do what I can, but there’s only so much I can legally do.”

“That, and I know you’ve got your hands full. Still juggling two and three cases?”

“That’s how it always is, isn’t it?” Marion laughed a bit. “Well, hey, if you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

“Thank you.”

Brock called a greeting to her before Olivia hung up. “So, the business is fine. What if this is a guy two-timing his wife and he skipped the country to lay low for a while? Maybe he has nothing to do with this, after all.”

“Juliette did say that Abby was a loyal person.” Brock pointed out, hushing for just a moment to listen to the GPS. When he got the instructions from the navigation, he spoke again. “She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would knowingly be a part of a relationship where the guy is cheating on his wife. She wouldn’t want to be the sidepiece. So, what if they broke up and he left the country because he was too heartbroken and doesn’t even know she’s dead?”

“We won’t rule it out.” Olivia clawed her fingers through her hair, scooping it over her shoulders. “I hope that we can just find something to point us in the right direction in Sparrow Grove.”

They drove for another fifteen minutes before a dilapidated sign welcomed them to Sparrow Grove, Texas, with an arrow pointing to an offramp that led to, well, nowhere really. Cape Fremont was bigger than this. There was a gas station and diner on the side of the offramp and a hotel nestled beside it in a planted grove of trees. Sparrow Grove boasted more trees than some of the other places they had been. Olivia noted that if they followed the road north a bit past the two businesses which seemed to be the economy of the town, they’d find themselves in a small neighborhood of houses, probably built decades ago and not exactly in tip-top shape.

“Who do you think lives in those houses on purpose?” she asked Brock. A laugh slipped from her lips as she attempted to answer her own question. “The people who work at the hotel and gas station diner?”

“Probably.” Brock joined her in her laughter. He slowed the car and tilted his head in thought.

“So let me ask you something.”

“Hmm?”“You’re on a road trip. You’ve been driving forever. You come into this small town. What are you doing to do?”

Olivia eyed the gas station combined with the diner. “Well, a place to get both gas and food is certainly appealing.”

“My thoughts exactly. What do you say we stop and talk to some of the locals? A town this small may not remember two specific tourists, or it might. They’d certainly know if it wasn’t one of their town members. If we can’t find anything at the crime scene, we can at least narrow down a few of the last places Abby was and who she was with.”

Olivia smiled as she studied him against the backdrop of the window. “I like that idea.”

Brock pulled into one of the gas pumps first. A nice wave of Texas heat slapped Olivia in the face as she got out of her car. “So I take it that eleven is when the temperatures really spike down here. When we got in the car, it wasn’t quite this warm.”

“It’s been preheating while we were driving.” Brock’s comeback made her laugh. He pumped some gas, then moved the car to one of the parking spaces surrounding the diner. He and Olivia walked through the door and into the café occupying the space next to the travel shop. It had a fifties diner feel to it, with the slanted windows that arced over the front of the building, red stools lining the bar, and rows of the same color booths that lined the window. Ever the observer, she looked around the room, noting an elderly couple in one corner. She paused to take note of them for a moment as they sat, enjoying their almost-lunchtime meal. The love that radiated from both of their eyes for each other made her smile.

Another woman sat at the other end of the diner, picking at a salad and... filming herself? With platinum blonde hair that looked like it had never seen a hair curler in its life, full lips, and perfectly arranged face, Olivia could only assume that she was some kind of social media influencer or model. Who else dressed like that in a town like Sparrow Grove? It had to be a social media influencer. Or a girl trying to break out of her small town.

The only other person in the restaurant was a waitress who looked like she’d been here her whole life.

“Just have a seat anywhere.” The waitress gestured to the seating area.

“Actually, if you don’t mind, could we have just a moment of your time?” Brock added some politeness and charm into his question.

She seemed caught off guard by the question but turned to hear what he had to say. “Sure.”

Brock and Olivia walked up to the counter and the waitress turned to face them, giving them her full attention. “We’re with the FBI,” Brock explained. He pulled the picture of Abby out of his pocket and showed it to her. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen this woman before?”

The waitress studied the picture as if it carried some sort of familiarity. Over time, her head began to nod little by little. “Yeah, yeah, I did,” she reached down and pointed to the picture. “She came in here. About a month ago, I want to say.”

Olivia did the math. A month was about four weeks, right around the time of death. But it was also a month’s worth of new faces to erase the waitress’s remembrance of her clearly. “Are you sure it’s her? A month is a long time.”

“Yeah. I remember her for several reasons. She came in right at closing time — fifteen till — and Jimmy made me stay late.” Annoyance darkened the woman’s expression. “The guy she was with insisted on staying, but she was very apologetic. About a week later, the cops came in, asking about her, showing her picture around. Then after they showed up, I got sick and missed two weeks of work. Been working part-time since then so I haven’t seen that many people come through here. I haven’t ever been part of a police investigation before so it was pretty exciting. “

About a week later. Olivia made a mental note of that. The police could’ve been here anywhere from four to six days after the incident and it would have chalked up to a week in the waitress’s mind. But the account the waitress had given gave her hope that they’d come to the right place. “She was with a man?”

The waitress nodded. “Yep. They were like a couple or something.”

It was Olivia’s turn to pull out a photograph, this one a better picture of Claude that she’d downloaded from the database. “Was she with this man?”

Another quick glance and the waitress nodded. “Yes. She was. Hard to forget a face like that, no matter how inconvenient they make your day.”

It was one good thing about having a suspect who looked like a model for romance films.

The waitress leaned around them and pointed to the booth behind the blonde model. “They sat right over there at that table. I may be confusing her with someone else, but if I remember right, she wasn’t very happy when they left. She seemed pretty upset.”

What was she so upset about? “Did you happen to overhear anything as to why she may have been upset?”

The waitress shook her head. “No, sorry.”

Olivia looked back at the waitress and nodded. “Thank you.”

“Before you leave, I think you should know that you’re not the first person to ask about her.”

“You said the local police have been in here asking,” Brock confirmed.

“Well, yes, them too, but there’s been someone else.” The waitress shrugged as if trying to remember the details exactly. “A younger guy, sort of shaggy, messy black hair asking about her. He comes in here all the time, but I don’t know his name. He always pays in cash. He showed me a picture he had from Instagram.”

Instagram. Unkempt black hair. That sounded a lot like Brody Ray. And considering that he lived here in this town, no wonder he was in here all the time. What was he doing, asking about Abby at the diner that wasn’t even close to her home town? “How long ago was this?”

“Right around the time she came in here. Maybe a day or two afterward. He came in here before the police ever did. I told them about him, but they didn’t seem real interested.”

Olivia was. But she kept that information to herself. “Thank you for your help.”

As Olivia and Brock left the diner, Olivia scanned the surroundings, thinking back on the details the waitress had given them. She allowed herself to try to get into Abby’s mind a bit as she and Brock crossed the distance to their car. “The diner closes at 11 pm.”

Brock glanced behind him at the hours sign in the window and nodded. “Right. So they came in about 10:45.”

“So that leaves them two options.” Olivia stopped, turning to face him in the road. “Either they were driving straight through, or maybe,” she nodded her head to the hotel. “Maybe they checked in? I don’t know about you, but I hate driving straight through.”

“Do you want to stop there before we head to the crime scene?” he asked.

“We might as well. We’re here and it’s in the same parking lot.”

“Let’s do it.”

They walked to the hotel in less than five minutes. “This is even better,” Brock said as he opened the front door. “Because they keep records of names. So we’d know if Claude or Abby checked in at any point.”

“Better than a waitress who happened to remember them both after a month. A testimony that we’d have to take with a grain of salt as it were.” Olivia strode up to the front counter where a middle-aged man sat. He hung up the phone call he was taking and greeted them. “Afternoon. Can I help you fine folks?”

Olivia explained who they were and snapped Claude’s picture out onto the counter again while Brock reached for Abby’s. “We were wondering if you’ve seen these people recently?”

The man slid the picture closer and studied it without the recognition the waitress had. “Can’t say that I have.” He slid the picture back to her. “But I’m not the only one who works here. There’s another guy who mans the counter when I’m not here.”

“That’s fine,” Brock nodded to him. “Can you check and see if an Abby Fisher or Claude McMillian checked in any time in the last few weeks?”

“You bet.” The attendant turned to his computer, fingers clacking on the keyboard. While he worked, he made polite conversation. “They’ve got you running all over the place, don’t they?”

Olivia’s lips lifted in a smile of acknowledgment. She loved it when people were friendly and good at customer service. So much better than the clipped answers they received most of the time. “You can say that again.”

“Can’t say as I envy you, coming all the way out here to a small town like Sparrow Grove.” He started scrolling through a list of names. “Okay, Fisher, McMillian, Fisher, McMillian... no, I’m sorry. There’s been no guests here by those last names for the last two months.”

Well, he certainly went above and beyond. So Abby and Claude had been to the diner, according to the waitress, but not the hotel. Interesting, and probably meaning that they had opted to drive straight through to wherever they were going. But if she was confronting him and breaking off their relationship, why would she go with him?

Olivia thanked the man and they left. Once they were back in their car, Olivia pulled out her phone and called up the stopwatch. “So the local diner and gas station has some record of them. But not the hotel. So that means that Claude and Abby drove straight through.”

“And somehow, Abby wound up where she was.” Brock said.

Olivia started her stopwatch. “I’m going to time the commute it takes from the diner to the crime scene. Try to drive normally, will you?”

Brock chuckled a bit. “What’s normal?” He pulled out of the driveway and made it down the road. Olivia kept her eyes on the screen and the window, noting a few landmarks along the way, and how sparse they were. There were more trees in this part of Texas which led to some nicely arranged forests, not as thick as back home in Belle Grove, but close enough. Cottonwoods, mostly, with some other smaller trees filling in the blanks that the giant trunks left between them.

Brock turned off the road and drove back into what looked like a pull-off spot. It seemed strange to have one stuck randomly in the middle of nowhere, but it probably served its purpose for a driver to pull over if they had car trouble. “This must be where they pulled over,” he said as he killed the engine.

Olivia stopped her watch. “Twenty-three minutes.” She pressed her head against her seat, her eyes roaming her headliner for answers. “What could’ve possibly happened in twenty-three minutes?”

“Claude probably tanked up, so they had no reason to stop, not that there’s any gas stations around here. They would have made Sparrow Grove their pit stop, so they probably weren’t making another one twenty minutes later.” Brock looked around. “Not to mention, it’s in the middle of nowhere. You have to know where this is.”

Olivia and Brock exited the vehicle and Olivia let her attention roam her surroundings. She caught the sound of a creek nearby, but Brock was right. This was well and truly in the middle of nowhere. The small spot they’d parked in sat at the bottom of a hill of sorts. Climbing the hill that was dotted with trees and bushes, they searched the ground for any reason why the two travelers must have stopped.

They got to the top of the hill and glanced down. The hill sloped toward a creek that ran through the area, lined with some brush and bushes that probably looked like dark polka-dots at night. Brock pulled the crime scene photos from his file and showed them to Olivia.

“If I were doing a body dump…” He pointed. “I’d take the path of least resistance, which looks like it’s that bush right there. I wouldn’t want to carry her very far. I’d want to leave as soon as possible without getting caught. Over the hill, I can’t see the car, and if anyone were to drive by and see the abandoned car, they might get nosy.”

“Let’s start there, then,” Olivia agreed. She balanced her weight as she made her way down the hill toward the creek and the bush that Brock pointed to. Once they reached it, they compared the crime scene photo to the brush.

“This is it. This is where she was.” Olivia crouched down on the side that faced the creek. According to the photos, Abby’s body lay between the bush and the creek, concealing it from view for just anyone who might happen to pass by. Now, nearly a month later, there was no evidence that there had ever been a body here at all. No blood, no fibers or hairs stuck in the bush.

Brock got down on his palms and knees, bending himself to look all the way under the bush, but confirming there was nothing there, he straightened back up again.

“There really isn’t anything special out here,” Olivia admitted. “No footprints, no tire tracks, nothing to indicate that there was a death. Not that there would be after so long.” She let a long sigh deflate her body before she worked her way to her feet. “What was Abby doing out here?”

“I don’t think she was,” Brock said. “I think it was a body dump.”

“Which leads me back to my original question.” Olivia found Brock’s gaze in the afternoon sunlight. “What happened in the twenty-three minutes between the diner and this remote place?”

Brock seemed to be thinking hard. But he came up with the same answer she did: silence. But in the silence and the babbling of the creek, another sound caught her attention.

Snap.

A twig breaking under a carelessly placed foot. Olivia and Brock exchanged a look that communicated the same question between them.

Did you hear that?

It could be anything. A deer, a rabbit, or something else. Olivia turned in the direction of the sound and she felt her heartbeat lurch. There, standing behind one of the thick trunks of the cottonwood trees stood a woman, watching them. Olivia would venture a guess that she was a good quarter mile away, far enough to make her features a blur. And just standing there, watching.

“Who’s this, now?” Brock asked Olivia softly, then raised his voice to call out to the woman. But no sooner had he called out, the woman turned and bolted away from them.

“FBI, stop right there!” Olivia shot to her feet, sprinting after the woman.

She’d hoped that it was nothing but a misunderstanding, a rubbernecker, but the woman kept running even though Olivia was almost positive she’d heard her. Olivia felt the dry grass crunch beneath her feet as she sprang off the balls of her feet to dodge trunks of trees as she ran. “Freeze!”

The woman had the speed of an athlete, a well-toned body with a long blonde ponytail that reached to her waist. She weaved through the woods with agility, zigzagging between trees, just ahead of them. She disappeared for half a second at a time before popping out from behind another tree.

“FBI, stop!” Brock called out with a more commanding voice that echoed through the area, leaving no doubt who they were and that they wanted her to stop.

Well, that wasn’t happening. The woman kept going, maybe casting a look behind her every so often, but each time she only sprinted forward faster. She disappeared behind a grove of young maples and by the time Olivia finally caught up to that grove, she was gone.

Following a trail of short-cut grass through the woods, Olivia searched in vain behind every bush, behind the trunks of colossal cottonwood trees, but the runner had disappeared. She scanned the ground for any footprints that might lead her to who the woman might have been, but the woman had been smart enough to keep to patches of grass, leaving a trace of a size eight shoe behind only in small patches of dirt that couldn’t be avoided now and again. When the footprints practically evaporated into the woods, Olivia sighed and slowed her pace. She broke into the clearing where her car was parked, angry that there was no sign of the woman.

Brock jogged up beside her and doubled over to catch his breath.

“I lost her,” Olivia gritted through her teeth. She looked around the area once more, half-expecting to see the ghostlike woman standing between two oak trunks and watching them again, but this time, there was no one. “Who was that?”

“And why was she so interested in our case?” Brock followed her with his own line of questions. “She was clearly watching us, then ran when we confronted her.”

“Do you think if she was just a rubbernecker that she would’ve run?” Olivia asked.

Brock shrugged. “It’s possible. After all, no one wants to actually be called out on spying on accident or crime investigation scenes. I can’t say for sure though.”

“Well, whatever the case…” Olivia looked back over the trail they had been running. “Maybe our jogger left something behind. Something useful, maybe?”

She started back through the woods, scanning the ground with her eyes. Scrutinizing every blade of grass and every pebble along the way, she picked apart the event. “That jogger—or whoever she was—was blonde, right?”

“Yes, that’s all I could see of her. That and her back.” Brock sounded just as frustrated over losing her as Olivia did. “And it goes without saying, she was very fit, too, to be able to outrun us.”

“Juliette is blonde,” Olivia pointed out.

“Yes, but she wasn’t quite that skinny.” Brock observed. “She had the build of a woman with two kids, and this woman had the build of a teenager who’s never spent a day outside of the gym.”

Olivia compared the two women in her memory and nodded. “You’re right. And Juliette’s hair is shorter than that long ponytail she wore.”

“Exactly.” Brock stooped to pick up a piece of litter, only to decide that it wasn’t part of this investigation.

“So she wasn’t Juliette.” Olivia scanned the ground. “Who was she, then?”

“I don’t know.” Brock shook his head.

For a while, the only sound between them was the chirping of sparrows in the trees overhead. Probably the very ones Sparrow Grove was named after, seeing as how they were in a grove, twenty minutes outside of town. Once they got back to the crime scene, Brock turned to Olivia, his expression conveying intense thought. “You know, killers sometimes return to the scene of the crime.”

“You think that she might be our killer?” Olivia tried to fit that into the theories they’d been playing with. It fit like an out of place puzzle piece.

“I’m not saying yes or no. I’m just throwing that out there as a possibility,” Brock replied. He took a few moments to process his own thoughts before digging into the nitty-gritty of the crime scene. “We can’t rule anything out at this point. So, I wonder if our little jogger left anything behind.”

“Let’s find out. I’ll start on this side.” Olivia nodded backward. She began to scour her side of the creek as Brock did the same on the other side. Finding a patch of dirt with the jogger’s shoe print embedded, Olivia pulled out her cell phone and snapped a picture of it, taking note of the size and the pattern left behind in the dust. She kept her cell phone out and scanned the ground for further evidence. She glanced over her shoulder at Brock on occasion, watching him search the shallows of the creek for anything that might have fallen in before grooming the inside of the grid search he was using.

Olivia expanded her search. Sure, she knew that anything this far removed from the date of Abby’s homicide was null and void. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t uncover something they could potentially use, especially with the possibility that their jogger dropped something along the path.

And that’s when she found it. A gleam of something reflecting white, or perhaps silver, sent a ray of light up from the grass about eight or so yards from the crime scene. It was too shiny to be litter, Olivia thought as she drew closer. But it was almost like it was beckoning for her to come see. She crouched down, gently moving the grass aside with her fingers, and caught her breath. There, laying in a tuft of overgrown grass was a ring. And not just any ring. Olivia would recognize that unique design anywhere.

“Hey, Brock, I’ve got something!” she called before reaching into her pocket. She’d come prepared that day with a few things stuffed into her pockets: a pair of gloves and some small evidence collectors, and of course her trusty pair of tweezers. Another snap of her cell phone camera forever captured the position of Abby’s engagement ring in the tuft of grass before she took it in the pair of tweezers and lifted it up to examine it. The ring looked like it had weathered a few weeks outside with dirt caked into the tiny crevices made by the leaves and floral design of the ring. She heard Brock’s footstep on the grass behind her as she held up the ring to examine it further. A new sense of hope surged in her as she spotted a fingerprint smudged near the top of the ring. Yes! Finally, they had something!

“Well, would you look at that? Is that Abby’s engagement ring?” Brock asked over her shoulder.

“Sure is.” Olivia slipped it into her evidence envelope and sealed it. “Oh, and guess what? We’ve got a nice, juicy fingerprint on the band.” She tucked the fold of the envelope over, sealing the ring inside as evidence. “I’m going to take this back to the lab in the field office, see if I can trace that fingerprint to anyone important. It could belong to that jogger. You never know.” She shrugged, standing to her feet. “So it isn’t like we can’t use it.”

“You’re exactly right.” Brock stared at her. “The investigators must’ve missed this because it wasn’t here.”

“Maybe the killer took it as a souvenir,” Olivia said thoughtfully. “Or maybe like you said, it was a robbery and he just happened to drop this piece?”

“Whatever the case, there’s a fresh fingerprint.” Brock noted. “I didn’t find anything else. Did you?”

“Just pictures of the runner’s shoe prints.” Olivia held up her phone. “Other than that, I think we’re good with all the statements and evidence collection we need. Let’s go back to Dallas and try to piece this thing together.”

Brock groaned. “Can’t we at least get a meal before we start on that drive again?”

A few hours—and one double bacon cheeseburger—later, they were back at the field office in Dallas. The second they strode through security, Olivia went to work immediately on processing the evidence she had. Despite the fatigue that threatened to overshadow her from the drive, she passed on any coffee or caffeine, needing her hands to be as steady as they could for this job. She went straight to the lab, the envelope containing the ring pinched securely between her fingertips. She traded her regular latex gloves for a pair of nitrile ones. The fingerprint was smudged just under the floral-shaped prongs which held the glittering diamond in place, but still managed to be on the flatter surface of the ring. Olivia grabbed some tape, placing it gently over the fingerprint before lifting it from the ring.

Almost there, she told herself, entirely focused on her work. Olivia hadn’t lifted a fingerprint in a while, and the process always seemed to get to her. The precision calmed her but she mingled it with the anxiety of possibly messing up the process. Once the fingerprint was safely settled onto the card, she scanned it into the computer and breathed a sigh of relief. Safe and sound. She sat at her monitor, clicking through all the necessary steps until she opened IAFIS, her trusty friend in most of her investigations, and entered the fingerprint. It had turned out to be a partial, but that was all she needed. Once she began the search, the data took over the computer screen at dizzying speeds as it searched the database for a possible match.

The process would take a while, she knew. She watched the data filter through her screen for a while before Brock came into her work area. “Well, we know that our jogger is a size eight and wears a tennis shoe that can be found at any local Wal-Mart or Target.”

“I was hoping it was something a little more unique than that.” Olivia swiveled in her chair to face him. “But it’s never that easy, is it?”

“Nope. Let’s hope you get more from that fingerprint than we got off of the shoe print.” Brock nodded to her computer. “Results will take a while.”

“I look forward to the day when results are instantaneous,” Olivia said wistfully as she watched the images on her screen. “But I guess technology hasn’t fully caught up yet.”

Her thoughts were as busy as the data crawling around on her screen. It wasn’t going to do her any good sitting there watching it, so she turned to face Brock again. “I still can’t get that woman we saw out of my head. Does she play a part in this investigation or was she just some passerby who just ran?”

“She sure was a good runner. I’m still out of breath.” Sighing, Brock rubbed his neck. “And interested in us, but not talking to us.”

Olivia reflected on what Brock had said about the killer returning to the scene of the crime. After finding Abby’s engagement ring lying not too far from the crime scene, it made Olivia wonder if it was more personal than just a simple robbery. If it was personal, who would fall into that category?

At the word personal, another idea sparked in her mind. She gave it a momentary pause to think about it before she dared to give it voice. “Do you think that it was Constance?”

“Constance?” Brock tried to follow her trail of thinking, observed by the way his eyes moved from side to side as he thought. “Claude’s wife.”

“Yes.” Suddenly intent on spilling her theory, she leaned forward in her chair. “What if we’re looking in the wrong direction, Brock? We’re looking at Brody and Claude as the possible murder suspects, but what if it’s not them at all? What if Connie found out that her husband was cheating on her…”

“…And took matters into her own hands,” Brock finished. “It’s a possibility.”

“I couldn’t really find anything that showed me what Constance looked like, only that Claude was married to her. She doesn’t seem to have much of an online presence, but I also didn’t look that hard. I was busy tracking Claude at the time.”

“Well, we’ve got some time while the fingerprint is processing.” Brock nodded to her screen again. “Do you want to go talk to her?”

Did she want to talk to her? Of course she did. “Let’s do it as soon as possible.”

Olivia took over the driving this time. Fighting the Dallas traffic was little more than annoying at this point as she just wanted to get outside of town again. From the looks of it, they were going to another property in the middle of nowhere, similar to Juliette’s quaint little house only fewer trees. With nothing but country music to be found on the radio, Olivia had opted for silence as she drove, trusting Brock to bring something up after she had fought her way out of the gnarly traffic. Her instinct was correct as it usually was, and as soon as they turned onto one of the first interstates, he started talking.

“Did you ever imagine your career as an FBI agent would involve so much driving?”

“That or the paperwork.” Olivia shook her head. “There were a lot of things I thought about my future when I was younger that are completely different now.” She sent an affectionate smile at him before returning her eyes to the road. “Not that I’m complaining. I’m happy with the way things have turned out.”

“Me, too.” Now that she was on a straight stretch, Brock slipped his hand into hers and linked their fingers together. He let a few moments of silence speak their piece before going on again. “With everything going on, we haven’t really had much time to talk about where we wanna move.”

“I know. It’s all been so crazy since Abby disappeared.” Olivia glanced at her navigation only briefly before shooting her gaze back up to the road. “Well, we’ve got time. It’s not like this is a hop, skip, and a jump away from where we live.”

Brock laughed a bit. “Tell me about it. I’m getting to know the inside of this car pretty well.”

The driving gave them a good time to talk, though. “I like Belle Grove,” Olivia set both of her hands at ten and two and stared out of the windshield with determination. “It’s quiet. Small town, not too far from headquarters, but away from the city.” Even as she said the words aloud, she didn’t want him to think that she was opposed to moving anywhere else. Belle Grove was nice to start over in, but once that beginning took place, it might not be a bad idea to keep moving forward. “Are you thinking of going back to D.C.?”

Brock tilted his head this way and that. “Hmm. I don’t mind the quiet, to be honest,” he finally said. “Belle Grove has kind of become home for us, hasn’t it? But with the amount of time we spend running around all over the country, all over the world… we hardly spend any time in town.”

Olivia chuckled. “That’s true.” She couldn’t even remember the last time they’d gone to any community events or taken part in any local festivities. They had just been so busy.

“It doesn’t really matter to me, Olivia. As long as we have each other, that’s home to me.”

Olivia’s heart rose at his words. “Even in Belle Grove?”

He smiled. “Maybe. Maybe we could get a house in Belle Grove and settle down, but there isn’t much to it. I know where I don’t want to move to, however.”

Olivia sensed the humor in his voice and it already had her grinning. “Where?”

“Wherever this is.” Brock gestured outside the window. “What town is this, anyway? Nowheresville?”

“Is it even a town?” Olivia laughed. “All I see is farmland. What, you don’t want to move to rural Texas?”

“Oh, sure.” Brock gestured out the windshield. “Look how beautiful it is here! See? Wheat grass. Flat land. Oh, and more wheat grass. Do you think if we go any farther, we can see some more wheat grass?”

Olivia laughed. “Oh, if you think this is bad, you should drive through Kansas sometime! After about the fourth hour, you are beginning to wonder if you’re struck in the Matrix or something.”

“No thank you. That’s why private planes were invented,” Brock chuckled.

“We could always move to Cape Fremont.” Olivia shrugged. “There wasn’t much wheat grass there.”

“Yeah, but we made a scene there with the whole arrest and everything. I don’t think that we could ever have a quiet life. Oh, and hurricanes.”

Olivia laughed at Brock’s casual mention of the tropical storms they often received there. “There is that.”

Brock let the laughter die down a bit and his voice took on a more wondering tone. “Cape Fremont. I wonder how our little teens are doing. Susanna and Ellie.”

Olivia wondered that often. “Susanna should be eighteen by now. Probably moved out and doing very well on her own, if she’s recovered from the trauma of getting kidnapped and almost shipped out of the country.” Olivia clutched the steering wheel, refusing to think of what might’ve been if she and Brock hadn’t found her. And what had happened to the others who hadn’t made it out. The Cape Fremont Teens, she’d come to call them. One of those cases that you just don’t let go of right away and lie awake at night, thinking and wondering if there was more you could’ve done.

“She was a good kid. Good head on her shoulders. She’ll do her best to overcome. She was already overcoming the obstacles in her life when we were down there,” Brock reminded her.

Olivia clung to that hope. “I sure hope so. And I hope she’s doing well and pursuing her dream with that autographed surfboard the students gave her.”

“And we helped with,” Brock said.

The reminder of Susanna asking her two heroes, Olivia and Brock, to sign their name on her surfboard made Olivia smile with affectionate remembrance. “Oh, yeah.”

The GPS took them off the highway to a smaller road, probably referred to by locals as the “back way.” The mailboxes that lined the sides of the road competed for space with the few bushes and trees. Their numbers were somewhat difficult to see, so Olivia slowed her pace as much as she could without being dangerous, trying to match the numbers on the mailbox with her directions.

“You have arrived,” chirped the robotic voice.

“What, no mailbox? You shouldn’t have,” Olivia said, as if it were a gift. One she neither wanted nor needed. She turned on her turn signal and eased up the driveway that didn’t have anything to mark the address.

Brock glanced behind him. “You’d definitely have to GPS your way here if you didn’t know where it was. Or else you might think this was part of someone else’s property.”

“Now this is a ranch house.” Olivia pointed out the windshield. The house took up enough room on the property to not be missed even if the driveway was hard to find. One section in the middle towered above the rest of the house, encased in glass windows for walls to face the road. The rest of the home could probably house at least thirteen people comfortably, made up of brick and an expensive-looking roof.

Brock let out a whistle through his teeth. “I guess laptops and cameras really do good business in France, huh? Do you remember if Constance works, too?”

“I don’t remember,” Olivia killed the engine and sat back, letting her hand fall off the steering wheel. A BMW sat in the driveway, but she wasn’t even sure if that meant someone was home in this castle. For all she knew, they could have one car for each day of the week so they never got bored driving the same one. “You know, we haven’t talked about how to break the news to her that her husband was cheating on her.”

“We don’t.” Brock removed his seat belt. “Not right now. We’re just here, investigating a murder, that’s all. We just need to ask her a few questions about her husband to eliminate him as a suspect.”

“I love interviews like this,” Olivia muttered as she got out of her side. She walked with Brock to what they both assumed was the front door. A covered porch that lined the house sideways instead of wrapping around the front of the house led to the door. A grapevine wreath decorated the oval window. Olivia pushed the doorbell camera. Of course they had a camera. But rather than communicating through the device attached to the wall, the door cracked and a woman’s face appeared. The minute she came into view, Olivia realized that if this was Constance, then there was no way she was the jogger. Permed brown hair framed a face that had obviously had touch-ups here and there to maintain a youthful appearance. She looked the part of a perfect wealthy suburban Texas housewife, and her accent shone through before she even spoke. “Yes? Can I help you?”

Worried about scaring the woman with her identification, Olivia hurried to explain who she was and move on to the purpose of her visit. “Are you Constance McMillian?”

“Yes?” Just as Olivia feared, worry crept into her eyes.

Brock took over with a strong voice that rang with reassurance that nothing was wrong. As of yet, that is. “We’re working an ongoing investigation and we’re here to ask you a few questions about your husband.”

“My husband isn’t here.” Constance shook her head. “He’s out of the country right now. Is everything okay? He’s not in danger, is he?”

Olivia was relieved that she used the word danger instead of trouble. Something that they could evade easily.

“We don’t have reason to believe otherwise,” Brock stated. “We just need to ask you a few questions about his business and his whereabouts about a month ago.”

Constance paused for a few beats and Olivia wondered if she was going to open up to them or slam the door in their face. She wasn’t surprised, however, when Constance cracked the door. “You can come in if you’d like.”

“Thank you.” Olivia nodded to her and moved inside, Brock close at her heels. She was eager to put the woman’s mind at ease, yet her conscience reminded her that Claude was cheating on this woman. Olivia realized that she had wanted the woman to be different than this, without that lingering innocence that probably believed her husband loved her and cared about her.

The interior of the house was just as eye-opening as the exterior. If the outside was colossal, then the living room itself could fit Olivia and Brock’s apartment twice over. Unlike Juliette’s abode, this house was a showroom. It probably took a crew of thirty people to clean this place. Olivia felt like she was cluttering the couch when Constance invited her to sit. Would some lint fall off her and render the couch unclean? “Thank you for speaking with us, Mrs. McMillian.”

“Call me Connie, please.” Constance settled onto the footstool of the easy chair that could probably swallow her whole. Abby’s words echoed again in Olivia’s mind as she looked around. Claude insists on only the best. Indeed, to keep both of his women happy.

Worry creased Constance’s face and slanted her pale blue eyes with concern. Knowing that she wasn’t the jogger, Olivia felt a tug of guilt for ever invading her security, but they had to get to the bottom of what was going on. Olivia only hoped that Connie didn’t ask any direct questions that could lead to the dreaded answer—that yes, that husband of hers was not only cheating on her, but had a new marriage in the works on the side. What seared her the most were the wedding pictures of her and Claude arranged neatly on the mantle. He looked older in the pictures with Abby than he did in the grainy ones hovering above the stone fireplace. Connie looked so young in the picture; she had to be, what, twenty-something? Skinny as a rail, but looking radiant in her wedding gown. And that smile. That smile could take the place of the sun during an eclipse. Oh, if she only knew.

Along with the wedding pictures, Olivia noticed a few others dotted around the furniture and the desk that lined the wall leading to the hallway. Pictures of Claude with Connie somewhere, probably the Bahamas in one, Europe in another. Olivia recognized Italy in the background of a more recent photo and sighed inwardly.

“We’ll keep this visit brief.” Olivia was glad when Brock took the reins in the conversation. “Agent Knight and I are investigating a murder case.”

“A murder.” Connie’s eyes grew wide as if the notion were unthinkable.

“Yes. Do you know an Abby Fisher?”

Connie didn’t hesitate to shake her head. “No. I’ve never heard of an Abby Fisher in my life.”

Olivia watched carefully, seeing no hint of hurt in the woman’s gaze. No flashback of pain from the name. She had no idea. “Why?” she went on to ask.

Brock took out a picture of Abby, having found one that didn’t have Claude pressing a kiss to her cheek for his wife to see. “Do you recognize her, maybe? Have you seen her before?”

Connie’s eyes examined the picture but she returned to shaking her head. “No. I’ve never seen this girl before in my life. What’s this about?”

Brock withdrew the picture. “Mrs. McMillian,” he kept his answer formal. “We’re here investigating her death. We believe that your husband might have crossed paths with her a time or two.”

A time or two. Olivia loved the way he evaded that.

“And we are investigating anyone who could have possibly known Abby. We’re trying to narrow down who she might’ve spoken with and if they may have seen anything in the days leading up to her death. We’re here to try and eliminate Claude as a suspect.”

“My husband would never do anything like this.” Connie continued to shake her head, enthusiasm driving her now. “He’s…” She paused. Olivia could have cried at the look in her eyes, as if she were describing her Prince Charming, her beloved. The reason she breathed, woke up every day, or smiled. “He’s a wonderful man. He is very kind, very giving. He has a heart of gold and would never do anything to hurt anyone else intentionally.”

Intentionally. Olivia latched onto that word. “When you say ‘intentionally,’ do you think it’s possible that something could’ve happened without Claude meaning for it to? Sometimes, things happen without someone intending harm.”

Connie blinked, as if Olivia’s question caught her off guard. “Well, I mean, anything can happen. I never want to say ‘never’ because I feel like that would jinx it. Claude is such a wonderful man. But if he ever did do something intentionally, I know he’d do the right thing and do something about it. But he’s smart. I don’t think he’d ever be in a situation like that.”

“I understand. I’m sure this must be incredibly difficult for you.” Here they were, probing into Connie’s marriage and asking all kinds of personal questions. Something did strike Olivia as odd, though. It was interesting how Connie had quickly gone from saying ‘never say never’ to ‘he’s too smart for something like that to happen.’ Olivia nodded as she listened. “What do you know about Claude’s travels outside of the country? Has he mentioned anything unusual or any new business he’s getting involved in while he’s away?”

“When he’s here, he works his side business. He brings paintings from France and sells them at art shows occasionally.”

So he did have a business in America. Funny how that didn’t come up in her search. Maybe they were all under the table transactions. Knowing what she did about the art world and money laundering, Olivia made a note to check his tax records. “I see. So he frequents art galleries here in the States?”

“Sometimes he does.”

That confirmed what Juliette had told them about Abby meeting Claude at an art gallery.

“But that’s not his main business.” Connie circled back to their original question. “He works in France and gets his art from there. He own a business in France where he sells computers, electronics, cameras, all sorts of things.”

Olivia was still having trouble believing that a guy could sell cameras and laptops and live in a castle settled somewhere on what was probably a huge chunk of land, on top of all the extravagant gifts he gave Abby. “How long have you been married?”

“Eighteen years.”

“Eighteen years of marriage, that’s quite a milestone.” Olivia smiled, lightening her tone as a way to segue into a different train of thought and perhaps break the tension. “Over the years, have there been moments when things felt... off? Anything that raised questions, even if you couldn’t quite put your finger on it?”

The beam of Connie’s smile as she described her husband slowly faded into reality. She looked back on eighteen years of marriage summed up in a few seconds. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but nothing we couldn’t work through. He spends a lot of time in France. I hardly ever see him, especially of late, but he sends me things every month. Flowers, jewelry, just to remind me that he loves me and misses me. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I can’t imagine my life without him and I do look forward to when he comes home. He’s coming home next week, you know. So long as everything goes well.”

So he was returning home next week. That was good to know. Olivia also reflected on all the flowers and gifts he had lavished on Connie. Buying her silence, no doubt. Nothing but a charade. And that look in Connie’s eyes. She was head over heels for her husband, even after eighteen years. Was it because he love-bombed her?

Was it also possible that someone like Connie, who believed she was in love with her husband, might’ve hired someone to do the job? While Olivia wasn’t ruling anything out, the notion seemed unlikely. What if that other woman, the jogger, was someone else that Claude had on the side? Yet another mistress who didn’t like that Abby was a part of the picture, too? Or maybe she wasn’t related to the case at all, simply someone who was interested in what was going on and didn’t want to be scolded for rubbernecking. Maybe they were just chasing their tails on this one. Olivia would know more once that fingerprint ID came back. But while she was here, she might as well make use of her time.

After a short time of talking with Connie, it was clear that either she didn’t know a thing about her husband’s involvement with Abby, or she did know and would not be generous with any information. They were no closer to pinning Claude with anything than they were when they first drove out here. “Thank you for your time,” Brock said as he and Olivia both turned to leave the Texas castle behind. “You’ve been a big help.”

How politely he said that, even though nothing she said had helped. The only thing that it did help with was eliminating her as the woman running through the woods. Other than that, Olivia rested her hopes on that fingerprint.

She took one final look at the pictures scattered around the house. A new lead popped into her head, rooted in her interview with Juliette, and she could hardly wait to follow it. In fact, she wasn’t going to wait. As soon as they were out of here, she was going to start that investigation.

After stopping for gas, Olivia handed Brock the keys. “Do you mind driving back to the field office?”

Brock took the keys and made his way to the driver’s side door. “Sure.”

Olivia slid into the passenger seat. As Brock started the car, she pulled out her phone. “I’m going to do something that I should’ve done in the beginning.”

“What’s that?” Brock pulled out of the driveway.

“Check out Abby’s Instagram. You can tell a lot about a woman from her social media page.” “Oh, is that right?” Brock lowered an eyebrow in a tease. “Let me see yours.”

Olivia snorted a laugh. “What, that one cat meme I shared like seven years ago?”

“Well, I guess that means you like cats,” Brock shrugged. “That tells me a lot.”

“Oh, shut up.” Olivia rolled her eyes in jest as she pulled her notes from her pocket. She flipped back to the password she’d scribbled down and typed in Abby’s username, then password. Monet22Best. Creative.

Abby’s profile filled her screen. It was a good thing she had two-step verification disabled. Probably got just as annoyed with it as everyone else did, trading security for convenience.

Olivia navigated Abby’s posts and scrolled through. With every picture, she could almost feel Abby’s joy radiating from her. One picture showed her drinking from a straw while wearing a sun hat. Another picture of her in that cute foot-pop pose dressed in a short pair of overalls and two braids down her shoulders. Another one, with her chin in her fingers as she struck a thoughtful pose.

Well, you could tell a lot about a person from their social media. Abby’s told Olivia what she already knew. She was happy. She had all the joy in the world to share with others and it was just cut short. Just like that. Did any of her followers wonder what had happened after she stopped posting as much? Or had they not even noticed as they went about their merry ways?

Olivia paused on one picture and clicked it open. As the post filled the screen, she studied it, scrutinizing every detail. The picture was either taken by someone else or Abby had it on a timer as she stood at a distance from the camera. Both of her arms were outstretched and she was looking toward the camera, her face a radiant glow. She stood in front of a little shop of some kind and Olivia tried to make out what that shop was. Some sort of old-fashioned historical-looking bookstore or coffee shop. The front was covered with windows and in the reflection, Olivia spotted a car. For curiosity’s sake, she tried to make it out. A Mercedes perhaps? Something fancy, a nice creamy white color from what she could tell. Maybe a Mercedes, given the hood ornament. Other than that, the reflection in the window was completely useless without any sort of analysis.

After scrolling through endless selfies that made Abby out to be the happy, thoughtful girl she was, Olivia sighed and went over to the trash folder.

“How’s it going?” Brock asked. Olivia had nearly forgotten she was in a car with him, going somewhere. She was so intent on viewing Abby’s social media page, she was almost there with her in every picture.

“Nothing of use yet. I’m looking at the trash folder now.” And would you look at that? The very first picture to come up was of both Abby and her man. Claude McMillian stared back at the camera with Abby. “Hmm. That’s funny.”

“What?”

“I’ll show you when we get to the field office, but there’s a picture of Abby with Claude. Looks like it’s out on a hiking trail somewhere.” She read off the caption to him, “Enjoying life with my man.”

“We knew they were in a relationship.” Brock glanced at her. “Why is that odd?” “Because it was in the deleted posts section.”

“Ah.” Brock nodded. “Huh. Maybe she moved it there after she found out he had a wife? Is he tagged in it?”

Olivia checked the status. “No, he’s not.”

“Interesting. I wonder if Connie McMillian has an Instagram, too?”

“I can check it out when I’m done looking at this.” Olivia wondered the same thing. “If she does, maybe Claude told Abby to take down the picture of the two of them for fear that Connie would find out?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Brock confirmed.

As he drove, Olivia used the time to scroll through more pictures. She couldn’t help but pause on a few of them. Their next door neighbor still had a youthful appearance when they knew her, but the further back Olivia looked at her album, the younger she appeared. Since she wasn’t someone who blew up her Instagram with constant photos, it didn’t take Olivia long to go back to when she assumed Abby was about twenty or twenty-one. In one of the photos, when she was looking particularly pretty, Olivia scanned the comments below the post. One of them, a poorly written compliment with little regard for grammar and spelling, made up for the lack of words with fire and heart emojis. The name across the top was B. Rae.

Olivia chuckled a bit. “So I think I found a comment by Brody, her stalker. Well, if it can be considered a comment.” She read it out loud, making sure to dictate every emoji he had crammed into the space. “This was said by someone who’s name was B. Rae, spelled with an e, not a y. Pro tip,” she couldn’t help herself but laugh a bit, “if you’re trying to disguise yourself?”

“Don’t use a different spelling of your exact name?” Brock finished for her. “Sounds like this Brody character isn’t quite playing with a full deck of cards.”

Olivia chuckled as she found her way into Abby’s “blocked” folder, where a list of users came up. Right near the bottom, probably meaning he was the first name blocked, was Brody’s real name. She tapped on his name and waited as his profile filled the screen. While Abby’s account spoke of joy, loving nature, and loving beauty, Brody’s indicated more the basement gamer type, with retro lights slashing the background of halfhearted profile pictures. The typical sneering, bored expression of a guy who was just getting through life.

“Huh. What do you know?” Olivia studied the recently uploaded picture. “Brody has messy black hair.”

“The same description that the waitress gave us.” Brock raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“So he went to the café shortly after Abby died and was asking a bunch of questions about her? He must’ve known she was there.”

They drove for a little while longer. Brock’s silence indicated that he pondered what Olivia had given him. “Just out of curiosity, what sort of stuff does Abby watch on Instagram? Check her ‘saved’ tab, will you?”

“Good idea.” Olivia navigated to the “saved” folder on Abby’s account and began to scroll the last few reels. The caption across the top of one of the videos caught her attention. “Hello.” She clicked on it and a video of a blonde woman sitting on a couch came up. The blonde looked familiar, and Olivia wondered if she’d seen her profile before. Given her 3.1 million views and thousands of followers, Olivia had probably stumbled across her a time or two simply because she was viral. The blonde faced the camera with perfect hair, makeup done to perfection, and a smug, satisfied expression. Her finger was pointing upwards to where the caption read in bold letters:

How to respond to a narcissist.

“Interesting.” Olivia watched as the video played. A thirty-second clip that was supposed to change lives with a catchy tune in the background as the blonde pointed to the areas on the screen where a new caption with her advice would pop up: “Don’t get upset, that’s what they want.” “Don’t argue with gaslighting, use thought-out phrases instead.”

All things she’d heard before, as Olivia had taken some time to study narcissism, for the simple fact that it could be essential in certain parts of her job. Almost everything the woman pointed to was true, but she had a cocky confidence that unnerved Olivia a bit. If she were in a relationship with a narcissist, she wouldn’t want smug and cocky, she’d want understanding and stern.

“She has a video saved about how to respond to a narcissist.” Olivia said to Brock and scrolled to the next one. Funny dogs and cats, one minute long. Of course Abby liked videos of dogs and cats. Music with flower scenes and positive quotes. And then after that, another video about narcissism with the same blonde woman. Olivia backed out from her mindless scroll and examined the list of saved videos. “She actually has a lot of those types of videos saved: ‘How to Know If You’re Dating a Narcissist’ and ‘How to Respond to a Narcissist.’ And a lot by this same girl.” Olivia clicked on a video of the confident blonde. “Cindy McGuire.” Out of curiosity, Olivia clicked on Cindy’s profile and watched her videos fill the screen. A few pinned videos on the top weren’t of her pointing to random advice on the screen, but speaking directly into the camera. “How I escaped my sociopathic, narcissistic boyfriend.” Olivia read one of the pinned messages aloud.

“Whoa.” Brock slowed his pace as the exit came up to take them back to the field office. “Who’s the narcissist here, this girl Cindy or the guy she supposedly escaped from?”

“She sounds very confident in herself. I’m not too sure I like her style.” Olivia listened to a few minutes of the video. It was clear as the woman spoke that she was the furthest thing from a therapist. And she even announced that, too.

“I’m not a therapist. I think that therapy is a waste of time and money because they’re only going to tell you what they’ve been trained to say. They’re like parrots. Cool, they can talk, but they never really say anything of meaning; it’s just repeating things. I think it’s better to hear it from someone who’s actually been through it, not someone who is as far removed from it as that college textbook she studied somewhere.”

“Oh, naturally. Who needs years of training when you’ve got lived experience and a ring light?” Brock quipped, shaking his head. “Just because she went through something doesn’t make her the expert. People who really need therapy might not go because of what she says.”

“That’s what I was thinking. How has she not been taken down yet?”

Olivia could hardly sit through the story of how Cindy “escaped from her boyfriend” and how she set him up for failure, used his own faults against him. “If it worked for her, then good for her. But she’s suggesting a very dangerous game when it comes to narcissism.” Olivia turned the phone off and let her thoughts wander. “Well, what happens when you cage a squirrel?”

“Exactly. If she’s advising people to set up their significant others, a lot could go wrong, especially if they are narcissists.”

Olivia looked down at the black screen of her phone. “It’s interesting that she had so many videos about that particular topic saved. I wonder if she was starting to see through Claude a bit?”

Brock took caution to merge onto the busy Dallas highway before he answered once he was safely in the middle lane. “It’s certainly something to consider.”

Olivia leaned her head against her seat, helping Brock with watching the traffic. This time of the day was starting to get congested and she focused on that instead of wondering exactly what Abby was up to. Was she saving the videos for herself or someone else? Perhaps Juliette mentioned thinking Claude might be a narcissist, and Abby wanted to prove her wrong—or maybe she’d discovered it on her own? Was it related to anything they were investigating? Maybe that’s why her picture with Claude was in the trash.

What happened to you, Abby? What did you discover the last week of your life?

Olivia was glad to be back at the office before the rush hour traffic settled in. Wondering if her fingerprint results were in, she went straight to her workstation. Plopping down into her seat, she typed in her code again and her screen came alive. The data wasn’t shuffling her screen anymore, but it had stopped on one particular image, a blinking green light with the words Match Found across the top of the page.

“Hey, Brock, I got a match,” she called to him, knowing he was getting some water right outside the door. She couldn’t wait for him to get in; she had to find out who the match belonged to. Her breath hitched as she read over the name and head shot of the person.

“And who’s our lucky winner?” Brock sat down beside her.

Olivia took her time, shock slowing her motion as she turned to face him in her chair. “It’s a positive match to Brody Ray.”

“Is that right?” Brock’s tone indicated that he was expecting nothing less. “What was he doing with Abby’s engagement ring?”

“And what was he doing asking a waitress about her?” Olivia looked back on the screen, re-reading the words. She set any thoughts she had about Claude aside for a moment as she mentally reviewed everything they knew so far. Abby was found dead in Sparrow Grove, the same town where her ex and stalker lived. And now, his fingerprint was on her engagement ring? Maybe he was jealous? His history of violence supported her working theory.

“Do you think we’ve been looking at the wrong love interest? We’ve been so wrapped up in Claude that we may have missed that maybe he’s innocent after all. In Abby’s death, at least.” She picked up another pen and tapped it on her work station as she pieced her thoughts together verbally. “Juliette said that Brody was stalking Abby after she broke up with him. What if he couldn’t stand the thought of her moving to France with her new fiancé that wasn’t him? What if…” She sat back in her seat, crossing her leg over the other. “What if Brody’s the reason she left so suddenly? Claude returned the keys because it was unsafe for her to return back to the apartment building, maybe because Brody had taken his stalking to the next level? And maybe in Claude’s absence, he got to her? Maybe Claude brought her to Texas, thinking it was safe for her, and set everything else in order back home in Belle Grove, only to return and find her dead.”

“And since he wouldn’t want his wife to know about his little charade,” Brock continued along her train of thought. “He skips the country rather than reporting her dead. Or…” Brock pointed at her. “Remember that the police report said that an anonymous 911 call came in, reporting her dead. What if he was that anonymous phone call?”

Olivia hadn’t forgotten the anonymous call; it made more sense now that Brock mentioned it. “Of course.” She chewed the cap on her pen for a moment. “Of course. If your theory is right, then he has nothing to do with this. He did the right thing by calling the police, then skipped the country to avoid being found out by Connie. So maybe other than the whole cheating on his wife bit, and living a double life, he’s not the murderous monster we thought he was.”

“There’s only one way to prove this theory.” Brock said. “Did you say that Brody works at the hotel in Sparrow Grove?”

“He sure does.” Olivia could hardly keep a smile from working its way onto her face. “You’re thinking it’s a good idea to go back there and talk to him?”

“We have enough on him to do just that.” Brock nodded to the ring. “His fingerprint was found on Abby’s engagement ring.”

It had to be Brody. It had to be. If it wasn’t, then he must’ve been behind it or at least known something about it. Olivia nodded, looking back at her screen. “Let’s bring him in. He has some explaining to do.”

Sparrow Grove was a welcome sight this time since Olivia was almost positive that it would lead to some answers. As she and Brock walked into the hotel, Olivia took a deep breath to calm herself. This was always the part in any case she worked that spiked her adrenaline. Each time she found a new lead to follow, one that might ultimately solve the case, she jumped on it.

While her adrenaline was spiking inside, she kept her outside calm, professional looking as she and Brock strode into the hotel. She recognized the same older gentleman they had spoken with before sitting at the desk. They had been hoping to catch Brody at work, but if he wasn’t here, then they’d have to go to his house. It was still the element of surprise, either way. Olivia was just hoping that she didn’t need to take that extra step and that they could just find him here.

“Mornin’! Back again?” the gentleman greeted them. Olivia wondered if he’d been a resident of Sparrow Grove his entire life and had that pleasantness that seemed innate to so many small-town people.

Olivia nodded. “We are. We’re hoping to speak to Brody Ray. Is he here?”

“He is.” The man leaned back, calling into where Olivia assumed they kept the linens. “Brody? There’s some folks here who want to see you.”

A few seconds later, a young man with the same wild nest of black hair he boasted in his pictures emerged from the linen closet. Given his slumped shoulder posture and irritated look, it was more than obvious he hated his job. This was going to be interesting.

Brock started toward him with authoritative strides. “Brody Ray? We’re with the FBI, we need to ask you a few questions.”

The irritated look fell from Brody’s face, replaced by sheer panic. His eyes widened, his eyebrows stretched to his hairline and he dropped the towels he had gathered in his arms. In an instant, he bolted behind the counter.

“Brody, what in the hell are you doing?” asked his boss, but Brody ignored him. The man tried to block the door to the back, but Brody rudely plunged past him, knocking the older man to a slumped position against the wall. Without giving a care to his older coworker, Brody disappeared down the hall.

Brock sprang into immediate action, sprinting toward the front door. “You go around back. I’ll radio for back-up and bring the car around.” He was out the door before he even finished his sentence, already fumbling for his radio.

Olivia rushed around the counter, keeping her eyes on Brody’s retreating figure. “FBI, freeze!” She barely had time to toss a glance to the man who was regaining his footing against the wall. “Are you hurt?” she asked quickly, already moving into the hall. She didn’t have time to stop and physically make sure, but she could at least ask while she took off after her suspect.

Nodding, the man pointed down the hall. “I’m all right. Employee parking is out that way.”

Great. So Brody had a head start to get there, get in his car, and take off. If he was smart, he wouldn’t go home and they’d waste all that time looking for him.

The hallway wasn’t very long and led to the fire exit. A shrill, ringing alarm sounded and Olivia knew instantly that he had gone out the fire escape. Great. The door underneath the fire exit sign was drifting closed by the time she reached it. She pushed her weight against the metal bar, swinging the door open. As she did, she could hear the gasps and exclamations from the guests whose rooms were within earshot, no doubt poking their heads out to investigate the meaning of the fire alarm.

Sorry, guys.

Olivia’s foot hit the pavement at the same time she heard a car engine start. “FBI, stop right there!”

With careless abandon, a greenish-tan Nissan Rogue screeched in reverse, leaving two trails of burning, stinking rubber to paint his tire tracks between the parking lines. The car jerked to a halt, jolting back over the rear axle before rocking forward again. The gears of the transmission screeched in protest to Brody not bothering to brake as he switched from reverse to drive. The Rogue shot off with a jolt. More squealing as the tires spun in place a few times, leaving another cloud of rubber to stink up the air. She couldn’t catch him on foot now, but she could take in every detail of the car. Brock should have radioed for back-up by now.

Olivia dug into her pocket for her radio and held it to her mouth. “Brock, he’s leaving. Nissan Rogue, headed for the highway.”

Brock’s voice answered after a few seconds. “I’m almost there.”

The car shot forward, heading for the exit with a green fence on either side. Olivia managed to read his license plate between the retreating taillights as he screeched into a left-hand turn, merging onto the road with one lane in either direction cutting through the town. Knowing it was useless, Olivia started chasing him, hoping to see all she could before he disappeared entirely. Angry honks blended with shrieking tires as the Rogue cut through two lanes of traffic. The car heading north jerked to the side, hitting the fence and bending it under the pressure. Two more honks sounded from the angry driver. The other one, the one Brody effectively cut off, spun into the ditch where he thankfully was able to get his car under control, but not before his tire ripped up the turf. The driver leaned out the window, shaking his fist at the retreating Rogue and shouting what was probably all manner of obscenities. Olivia didn’t blame him.

Brock’s car appeared, engine propelling him faster until he screeched to a stop. “Get in!” he yelled through the open window.

Olivia didn’t stop for a moment. She shotgunned into the front seat. “Go, go, go, he’s headed toward the highway.”

“He won’t get far.” Brock nodded to the radio in the car. “I’ve got a request in for back-up from local law enforcement. I just don’t have the license plate.”

“I’ve got it.” Olivia reached for the radio. Brock had the foresight to switch on the flickering emergency lights in the SUV, so the other cars on the road had already pulled to the side. The ones that hadn’t nearly gotten clipped from the retreating fugitive, that is. Olivia holstered her gun and held on to the roof as Brock’s rough-going U-turn hurled her closer to the window. Brock fought to gain traction control as the car fishtailed a bit underneath his tires before they finally grabbed the road and the car shot forward. By now, Brody’s Nissan Rogue had paused only to make a right-hand turn onto the highway.

Olivia held the radio to her mouth. “This is Agent Knight. Suspect is in a greenish tan Nissan Rogue heading south.” She repeated the license plate number twice, making sure to watch in case Brody tried to get on the highway. “Requesting immediate back-up and roadblocks ahead.”

“Well, that’s really smart. Run from the FBI,” Brock muttered. He tossed Olivia a glance that only took a second. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Olivia answered, still holding onto the roof. Just as Brody pulled onto the highway, Olivia saw a flash of blue pulling out from the gas station between the highway and the hotel. At first, she thought it was part of the traffic. But that flash of blue belonged to a Chevy Tahoe that turned right out in front of Brock and spun into his lane. Brock slammed his brakes, nearly colliding nose-to-bumper with the car who had cut them off.

“What is this person doing!” He laid on his horn. “Move, move!”

He looked to maneuver around the newcomer, but the oncoming traffic in the opposite lane made it impossible, even though they were doing their part and pulling to the side. Olivia’s heart rate quickened. Brody was getting away! His car was already moving down the ramp to the highway and this car wasn’t moving very fast. She held the radio up again. “I’ve got a reckless driver—blue Chevy Tahoe, cutting me off.” She rattled off the coordinates, making sure they were clear, despite her growing frustration. “Driver appears to be intentionally obstructing my pursuit.”

Brock pounded his hand on the steering wheel, a curse spitting through his lips. “Great.”

“We’ll catch up, we’ll find him.” Olivia’s eyes scanned the open road of the highway. “We just have to look for someone driving recklessly, that’s all.”

“Like this clown in front of me?” Brock glared at the driver who had their turn signal on for the same direction that Brock wanted to go. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

Another honk, a flip of the siren, but the driver didn’t move aside. As they made a right-hand turn to accelerate onto the highway, Olivia caught a glimpse of long hair and a dainty nose. So the driver was a woman. She radioed the information in, keeping her eyes on the open road in front of her.

“She is taking her time merging.” Brock glared at the driver. “Get her license plate.”

“Got it. I’m reporting it.” Olivia ignored the driver, letting Brock deal with her. Brock wasn’t kidding. The driver was taking her own sweet time with her turn signal on, hanging out in the merge lane. Just as Brock sawed the steering wheel, darting the car into his lane, the woman did the same, nearly causing another collision as she clogged up traffic behind Brock before finally discovering her accelerator. Once she found it, she not only kept up with the flow of traffic, but exceeded it.

“Speeding. Reckless driving. Because of this lunatic, we’ve lost our suspect! Call it in.”

“I did.” Olivia tried to be the calm one, noticing the red creeping into Brock’s cheeks. “Go around her; the other cars seem to know the basic rules of yielding to emergency lights.”

Brock switched on his turn signal. Even in his frustration, he remained a safe driver as he merged into the fast lane. He stomped on the accelerator, zipping past the blue Chevy and hung there in the fast lane as cars parted for him, not able to slow, but at least getting over in the right lane.

Olivia scanned the road as Brock pushed the speed limit faster and faster, trees, road signs and still cars blurring outside of the window. She lowered her hand to the handle on her door and watched, eager to spot the fleeing fugitive. After a few agonizing moments of thinking they’d lost him, she pointed. “There he is! See that tailgate up there?”

Sure enough, Brock wasn’t the only one hugging the left lane. Just ahead, a Nissan Rogue blurred through the traffic.

“Got him.” Brock pressed the speed even further.

While Brock caught up, Olivia opened her laptop. “I think I’m going to run the plates of the other driver.” She wasn’t able to type in the first letter, however, as Brock jumped back over into the right lane. Her head jerked up, seeing that Brody was now playing checkers with the rest of the traffic.

“He saw me. And he’s not slowing down,” Brock explained.

Brody forced his way over into the traffic of the right-hand lane, barely squeezing between two pickup trucks before snapping back over into the left lane again. The holdup between him and a slower-moving eighteen wheeler gave Brock the time he needed to maneuver around the angry and confused traffic that Brody’s tic-tac-toe driving skills had caused. Drivers who’d paused in the left lane as he cut them off, only to panic and try to move over into the right lane when they saw the emergency lights coming up behind them. Drivers in the right lane on the verge of having an aneurysm for how angry they were over being cut off.

Olivia had always heard rumors that in Texas, the speed limit was more like a sweet suggestion, that the real speed limit was twenty over unless there was law enforcement around. Certainly not legal, but the mentality was there. It was true, as she could see; much of the traffic had probably been going ninety-to-nothing ahead of them, only to slam on their brakes confused as Brody forced his way over, again, in front of a semi who honked so loud that every driver on the road braked. Brody rode the tail of one of the trucks in the slow lane as he tried to maneuver around the one in the left lane, who was trying to pass his fellow drivers at one mile over what they were going. The truck driver slowed, but so did the traffic in the right lane, and Brody forced his way back behind the passing semi again. The semi’s turn signal came on, but no one wanted to let another driver into the lane.

“He is going to cause a wreck!” Olivia shook her head.

Just as they were close enough to read the Rogue letters embossed on the back of Brody’s SUV, Brody jerked left once more, heading right into the median.

“Genius!” Brock barked. He threw a look into Olivia’s side mirror and chirped his siren, flashing his turn signal. By some miracle, the cars directly behind Brody slowed, flashing their headlights to let Brock in. Brock took advantage of the spot, zipping over into the empty space. The truck in the left lane slowed just enough for him to cautiously maneuver around him and slip back into the opposite lane.

Olivia shot a glance behind her as the sirens of the Texas Highway Patrol arrived to their rescue. “There’s our back-up. Finally.” Her eagerness faded when just ahead of them, she could see that same blue Chevy swerving back onto the highway by way of the median, tearing up clods of dirt under her tires and getting in right behind them.

“How did she get over there?” Olivia blinked.

“Who?”

“You’re not going to believe this.” Olivia turned to look at him. “That Chevy driver is behind us.”

“Are you kidding me?” Brock sighed and shook his head. “Did you manage to run the plates and see who she is?”

“I got to the L. That’s as far as I got. Brody’s my main concern at the moment.” Olivia lurched forward, her seatbelt slammed against her collarbone. “Look, there’s Brody.”

There was Brody all right. And right in front of them in the distance, blocking his way between the road and the ramp that led to the next city over was a barricade of flashing lights and police squad cars. He didn’t have anywhere else to go and would soon be forced to stop at the barricade. Olivia held her breath, preparing for anything.

Well, it looked like Brody was prepared for anything, too. Rather than stopping at the barricade, he swerved into the median again. He seemed to favor the median rather than the road at this point and despite the barricade, he managed to maneuver his way onto the town’s offramp.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Brock muttered.

“It would have been a lot easier on him if he would have just talked to us. Now he’s in trouble, whether he did something or not.”

A space in the barricade opened up and Brock cautiously maneuvered through it. This town boasted little more than a gas station, similar to Sparrow Grove, but the offramp didn’t go up like the other ones did. It went down, into a valley, where his taillights began to disappear again.

Olivia had never been so grateful for flat Texas prairies in her life. Because as soon as Brock had safely maneuvered over to the offramp, she could see clearly without any trees blocking her vision. She threw a look in the mirror to make sure the flashing lights of the state troopers were still behind them. The driver in the blue Chevy had disappeared, but she was the state patrol’s problem now, as Olivia scanned the area for Brody. “There he is. He went right.”

“Man, am I glad he’s off the highway.” Brock shot a glance in his rearview mirror. “And I think we lost that crazy Chevy driver.”

“Highway Patrol is out looking for her.” Olivia reminded him. “So she won’t be going far without them catching her.”

“Good.” Brock said. “Now all we have to focus on is this other guy who successfully ticked off half the state of Texas.”

He sped up to catch up with the Rogue again, which had veered left and turned up a side street. A town opened up, this one with planted trees and little buildings. The town gave her a very eighties feel, with a water tower as old as this chase was getting sticking up above the city hall. How many times a year did that thing shriek with a tornado siren, Olivia wondered?

Brody turned up another road and zipped down a crowded street replete with crosswalks, stoplights, and buildings crowded shoulder to shoulder.

“He is going to kill someone,” Olivia grumbled. “He needs to pull over.”

“How long is he going to keep this up?” Brock checked his odometer. “He’s been going for about twenty miles, most of them highway, but still.”

“He has to stop some time. If our back-up ever shows up.”

Brody led them on a harrowing chase through the main street of the town. Pedestrians jumped back up onto the curb when he blasted through one red light after another. At least the yelling, honking horns and Brock’s siren made everyone in town aware that something big was going on and they all stopped to observe until Olivia and Brock went by.

Olivia released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as Brody finally punched out of the other side of town. A few trees cluttered the side of the road, while large barren hills rose up on either side of them. Yucca plants and sage bushes dotted the hills, the brown grass blistering in the Texas heat. Trees multiplied in this part of town where the left side of the road was fenced off by barbed wire holding in some cows. The trees made it difficult to see the intersection with a hanging red light, blinking to warn traffic that there was a stop ahead. Not that Brody was going to heed that stop.

Suddenly, just as he was approaching the intersection, that stupid blue Chevy suddenly came out of nowhere. She screeched into the intersection, then stopped.

“Look out!” Olivia screamed and Brock slammed his brakes.

Brody did the same, his tires burning an “S” into the road as his rear end fishtailed out of control. Shuddering, screeching, he yanked the car to the other side. Brock and Olivia both watched in horror as the car nosedived into the ditch, then the wheels upturned into the air.

“No!” Olivia gasped, laying a hand to her mouth.

The Nissan Rogue landed against a tree on the other side of the fence. Glass shattered, lines running through both the front and back windshield. The doors and quarter panels withered into crunched, twisted steel and the tree bent a perfect V into the grille of the car. With a horrid scraping noise like nails on a chalkboard, the barbed wire that bordered the road gouged the side of the Rogue on either side, stopping its descent further into the ditch and probably keeping the car from rolling all the way over onto Brody’s side.

Then all was still. But only for a blink as the scene erupted with action.

The blue car pulled to the side of the road, whipping around like it had done its job and now it was done. Brock navigated his car to the shoulder and slingshot himself out of the front seat. Behind them, the state patrol units who had followed them were pouring out of their cars, some of them splitting off and rushing toward the Chevy driver.

Olivia followed Brock, clutching her radio. From the look of the car, they would need more than just Texas Highway Patrol in on this one. Her heart thudded in her temples as she took off running toward the Nissan Rogue, crunched and crumbled in the ditch.

“Oh, no, oh, no,” she murmured. It was lying on its side, but barely, as if it had found the balancing point and couldn’t decide whether to tip back over onto its wheels or flatten the driver’s side against the ground.

The door of the blue Chevy swung open and the female driver stepped out. Her cell phone was aimed at the wreckage until the orders from the patrol reached her. She dropped her cell phone as her hands shot into the air. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything!”

Yeah. Anything other than interfering with an FBI investigation and driving recklessly, possibly killing their suspect in the process.

“I got him to stop!” she screamed.

“Put your hands where I can see them!” one of the troopers called out. “Hands where I can see them!”

Leaving the arrest of the second reckless driver to the local law enforcement, Olivia sprinted around the nose of the car, taking care not to touch it, lest she push it over the tipping point. The fence and barbed wire twisted around it and she wondered if that was somehow holding it in place in some careful, hair-raising event of gravity and physics. One breath, one sneeze and that fence would give, flattening the driver’s side where Brody was and ending it all.

Brody hung by his locked seat belt, head to one side, eyes closed. Blood trickled in dark flows from his nose and mouth, painting his face in a pallet of burgundy. Little streaks of red dotted his face and arms, probably from the windshield, but most of the impact looked to be smeared in blood on the airbag that burst from his steering wheel.

Olivia hoped he was only unconscious. She snapped her radio to her mouth. “This is Agent Knight, we need EMS and fire department services here immediately.” She rattled off instructions, knowing they’d need the help of the fire department, possibly even the Jaws of Life, to cut Brody out now.

“You can’t do this to me!”

Despite the crime scene crawling with first responders – all here because of the woman who’d caused the accident – that same woman was thrashing her body about. Trying to break free from the handcuffs that pinned her wrists behind her back, she looked bewildered that anyone would dare put them on her. The officer held her fast, his jaw taut with a mixture of professionalism and disgust over what had happened. Olivia and Brock carried the same tension as they worked to gather what evidence they could from the crash and rope off the area for the safety of anyone else passing through. When the woman had wailed her protest over being arrested, Brock cast her a glance over his shoulder. Olivia could tell that he shared her same thought process.

If you hadn’t interfered, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

The woman looked so familiar and it wasn’t just from her following them around. Where had Olivia seen this woman before?

The fire department surrounded Brody’s destroyed vehicle, a sound like a jackhammer tapping harsh rhythms through the air as they worked to cut him out. Olivia cast a look back at them before looking back at the woman. Even after all of this, she still didn’t believe she’d done anything wrong and resisted arrest like this was their fault.

The arresting officer had the patience of a saint, as if the woman’s continued efforts to break free weren’t bothering him at all. In fact, he probably was used to it. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”

“I know my rights!”

That poor arresting officer had his hands full with that one. Olivia puffed out a sigh and directed her attention back to the car. “Were you able to find anything else?” she asked Brock.

She barely had time to go over what little evidence she’d collected before the woman’s voice rang out. “Hey! Hey, you!”

Frowning, Olivia turned only to see that the woman was talking directly to her.

“Help me out, here!”

How polite. Olivia stepped toward her, guarding her face against the irritation mounting inside of her. “Are you aware of your rights?”

“Yes, I know my rights, but this can’t happen!” The woman shrieked. “I’m a very influential person!”

Influential. The word jarred Olivia’s memory and rather than asking the officer who he had identified her as, she blurted the name out. “Cindy McGuire?”

“See, even you recognize me!” Cindy yanked her shoulder, trying to jerk it from the officer’s grasp.

“Ma’am,” he said with trained calm. “I need you to calm down.”

“Can you tell this guy to let me go?” Cindy nodded her head backward at the officer. “This isn’t good for my views!”

The woman had caused a near-fatal accident, not to mention nearly causing several more as she chased them on the highway, and she was worried about her views? “I’m afraid we can’t do that.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You were interfering with an FBI investigation!” Olivia didn’t have time for this. Did she really have to tell the woman what she had done wrong when there was a crunched-up car laying accordion-style in the ditch?

“I didn’t interfere, I helped!”

Olivia faced her, making sure her posture didn’t leave any room for doubt that she was the one in charge here. She couldn’t help but notice how the woman’s body was well toned, her hair in a long blonde ponytail. Was this the jogger that had led Olivia and Brock on a merry chase through the woods that day? “What were you doing, chasing the suspect and us around town?”

“I’ve been watching him!” Cindy wailed. So dramatic. Olivia had enough of her already.

“Why have you been watching him?” Brock asked from behind Olivia.

Cindy turned her head only slightly, her chin level to answer Brock’s question. “He’s the one that killed Abby!”

Olivia felt her blood pressure spike.

“You know this for sure?” Brock questioned.

“Of course! He – wait.” Cindy’s jaw slammed shut, her teeth clicking together and she glared back at Brock. “You’re going to pin this on me! I want a lawyer!” She sing-songed the last part and Olivia fought a sigh.

Olivia glanced at Brock, communicating a thousand questions through her eyes.

“You’ll get a lawyer,” Brock assured her.

The officer began to pull her away to the waiting squad car. “You’ve requested legal counsel; we’re done talking for now.”

None of this was supposed to happen. Brody running away wasn’t anything they weren’t expecting. But they normally caught up with the suspect, slapped a “resisting arrest” charge on them before hauling them down to the station or field office, and piling the questions on them there. That’s what they’d both hoped and needed to accomplish but because Cindy had the bright idea to offer them her version of help, that wasn’t going to happen.

The EMTs managed to load Brody onto a gurney during Olivia’s little conversation with Cindy. They were pushing it toward the waiting ambulance. Olivia had to know. She made her way toward the huddle of paramedics and looked down at her suspect. Blood still painted his face and nose and his eyes remained closed, but it looked like he was breathing. “Can you tell me anything about his condition?”

“We won’t know for sure until we get him checked out at the hospital, but it looks like he has several broken bones and a bump on the head. But he’s breathing on his own. We’ll let you know more when we’ve had a chance to examine him.” The paramedic’s strong voice reassured her.

“Thank you.” Olivia kept the relief in her tone and watched as he was hauled away. Olivia looked back at the wreckage, shaking her head. “I’ll never understand it, Brock. A person can get killed in a simple fender bender, but another can survive a near rollover accident.”

“We got lucky with this one.” Brock’s voice rang with the same weariness that Olivia felt. A chase consisting of several miles that ended catastrophically was enough to take a toll on anyone. “In the meantime, we can talk to Cindy.”

“I’m sure you’re looking forward to that.” Olivia tried to break the tension with a sprinkle of humor, but even she realized it fell short.

“Oh yes,” Brock muttered. “I love it when the suspect knows better than the ones who were trained for this job.”

“But hey… you got your car chase you wanted.”

That finally broke Brock’s mood and he gave her a weary grin. “Guess I ought to be more careful what I wish for.”

Cindy’s posture was impeccable as she sat, shoulder to shoulder with her attorney. She’d handpicked a woman about her same age, probably fresh out of law school but enough to know what she was doing, Olivia suspected. She wasn’t backing down, though, and she wasn’t going easy on her. Olivia didn’t care for Cindy’s snooty attitude, the way her nose tilted toward the ceiling as if Olivia and Brock were the peasants and she was riding out the clock until they realized she was the queen. Wrongfully accused, of course. Because she would never run someone off the road and interfere with an FBI investigation unless there was good reason.

Pushing these thoughts down her throat, Olivia waited for Brock to begin.

“Okay, let’s start from the top.” Brock prepped his notes, staring at her over the top of them. “You’re a social media influencer.”

“That’s right.” The proclamation lifted Cindy’s nose even more.

“You claimed that you know Brody killed Abby Fisher.”

“I don’t claim it! I know he did.”

“How do you know Abby Fisher? Let’s start there. We’ll get back to Brody.” Brock poised himself to take notes and Olivia positioned herself to listen, to pick up on Cindy’s nonverbal cues.

Cindy rolled her eyes and a sharp sigh preceded her answer. “Abby messaged me on Instagram. She was trying to get out of her abusive relationship, and messaged me for advice on how to do it.” “Her abusive relationship? With whom?” Olivia asked.

“She didn’t say. Didn’t give names. She just gave me the usual story that all victims of narcissistic abuse give me.”

“Such as?” Olivia encouraged her to go on.

“You know. ‘I’m probably being over-dramatic, he’s such a good guy, he would never do that,’ you know how it is.”

Olivia did know. Connie had given her the same list of things, as had Abby herself. He was a good guy, a great guy. He would never do anything horrendous. “So she came to you for help.”

“Yeah, she did. She was starting to suspect her man was a narcissist.”

Olivia exchanged a look with Brock, non-verbally letting him know that she was going to pop Cindy with the cornering question. “We went through Abby’s DMs on Instagram. And I saw a lot of your videos saved, but I didn’t see your name in her inbox.”

Another roll of Cindy’s eyes told her that the answer should have been obvious, whatever it was. “Of course not.”

A question Brock had asked earlier about who the narcissist was in the relationship came back to Olivia. She was starting to see why. If it wasn’t the utter inability to admit her wrongdoing, it was the condescension in her tone that was intended to make Olivia and Brock feel inferior.

“She wasn’t stupid enough to message me under her real Instagram! He could have hacked it! She made an entirely new account.”

“What name did she message you under?” Brock was ready to capture it, pen in hand.

Cindy sat back, crossing her arms. “It’s confidential.”

“But you aren’t a therapist, are you?” Brock wasn’t putting up with any of this. “So you don’t have any sort of legally binding confidentiality agreement.”

“You’re already in trouble for interfering in our investigation.” Olivia reminded her. Cindy looked over at her, bored. “Because of your actions, our suspect is now in the hospital and we can’t proceed to the next step because he is unconscious.” Olivia didn’t have to explain any of this to her, but if Cindy believed her and Brock to be stupid, Olivia could easily dish out the same medicine. “If you withhold information from us, that is obstruction, and you don’t want us to add that charge to your record.” She mentally added the words already growing record and studied Cindy.

The woman didn’t express any symptoms of fear or feeling threatened. Rather, a flicker of annoyance danced across her features. Before she could make any further incriminating remarks, her lawyer broke in. “Cindy, the charge of obstruction is serious. It can carry significant jail time if convicted. I strongly advise you to stop any further refusal to answer questions.”

With a sigh, Cindy acquiesced, but it seemed only because she didn’t want them to add more charges she felt she didn’t need. “Okay, okay, fine. She called herself ‘Stella Star.’’’ She smiled, as if satisfied with herself. “Creative, huh? It’s ‘star’ in two different languages.”

Brock scribbled the name down. Olivia could only imagine how annoyed he was at her meaningless red herrings. “Let’s get back to the messages. She was looking for your help to leave the relationship.”

“And I told her what I did and helped her. That’s all I know.”

“How did you advise her to help herself?” Olivia dreaded the answer.

Cindy leaned forward, pinning Olivia with an intense stare. “The key to escaping a narcissist is to catch them in the act.”

The act of what? Gaslighting? Olivia nodded as she listened.

“That way, they tangle themselves up in their own web of lies and have no choice but to recognize it and then they can’t make you out to be the bad guy for leaving. So you see, Abby was going to do just that. She was going to catch her man in the act of being a narcissist.”

“And how was she going to do that?” Olivia was slowly starting to envision just what might’ve happened to Abby. Cindy could probably take down her ex-boyfriend with a heart of steel. However, a sweet girl like Abby was no match for a narcissist and if she tried to prod them into being trapped? Olivia could not imagine the consequences.

“So,” Cindy shrugged, sat back. “When she wound up dead, I did some investigating of my own. I found out that she had dated this guy, Brody, in high school? And then I looked into Brody’s history, and well, clearly, that was the issue here. So I started following him around.”

Her lawyer tried to cut in. “Cindy…”

Cindy kept talking and Olivia didn’t try to intervene. “A month had gone by and no one was questioning Brody, putting him away, nothing! You guys clearly haven’t been following the right trails, so someone had to!”

Basically, doing our job for us. Thanks for that. Olivia thought, bitterly.

The attorney tried again. “Cindy. You are not required to answer any questions that may incriminate you. I advise you to refrain from speaking further until we discuss this in private.”

Olivia cleared her throat in place of what she wanted to say. “Why didn’t you come forward with this information?”

“Because I didn’t know she was dead until it was in the obituaries! She wasn’t identified until about a week or so ago. She’d stopped texting me, but I figured she was figuring stuff out. When I found out, I was horrified, so I did some digging. I saw you guys at her crime scene the other day. Did you find any evidence?”

So she was the jogger. Someone who believed herself to be Nancy Drew. “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with you. But you seem very sure that Brody committed the crime. What makes you so sure?”

“Well, it’s only obvious,” Cindy shrugged her palms upward. “She was found dead in the same town as a guy she once dated, and he stalks her! He’s made like, three different accounts to stalk Abby’s Insta. All you have to do is go through her pictures and read the comments and you’ll find out.”

Little did she know they already had. Olivia didn’t know who this so-called influencer was from subscribing to her—that would never happen—but she knew exactly who she was from stumbling across her name on Abby’s page.

“He stalked her and she told him no! That’s why I was watching him, to document what he did and prove my point. And then when I saw you guys chasing him from the hotel, I knew that you were going to arrest him for the murder and I wanted to catch it on film.”

All of this. The car accident, the close call that had nearly taken Brody out of the equation entirely, all to catch it on film. Brock hung his head low and squeezed the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Interfering with a federal investigation is a crime. We aren’t entirely sure that Brody is the one responsible for Abby’s death.”

“I’m advising my client to keep quiet on her involvement with Brody Ray.” Her lawyer side-eyed her. “Remember that you do have a right to remain silent, Cindy.”

Cindy looked like she was done talking. She slammed back against the seat, crossed her arms and looked back at Olivia and Brock with a smug expression as if she was the victor, here.

“That’s all right.” Olivia flipped her notes closed and scooted her chair back. She and Brock stood to their feet at the same time. “We’re done here for now.”

“What a mess.” Brock shook his head as he drove. “Who does she think she is? That she knows better than everyone about Brody?”

“A typical man-hater, from the looks of it.” Olivia recollected how at the scene of the accident, Cindy had sought her out, practically ignoring Brock and speaking with vitriol to her arresting officer but talking to Olivia like they were on the same page. It wasn’t hard to believe that perhaps she hadn’t been dating a narcissist after all, just a man who made her angry so she projected the idea that he was a narcissist onto him. Still, Olivia wasn’t going to discredit anything. Maybe she had been in a bad relationship and that’s what had awakened her alleged disdain for men. “Maybe whatever she went through caused her to make it her own personal mission that no one should ever have to go through it again.”

“Maybe.” Brock was visibly relaxed as he drove, their destination being the hospital to check on Brody, probably crashing from the adrenaline from the chase earlier. “So Abby was messaging Cindy about this guy she thought was a narcissist. Do you think she was talking about Claude?”

“That’s the first thing that makes sense to me. But if you suspect your boyfriend is a narcissist, why still go forward with the plan to move to France? And if it was Claude, how did Brody’s fingerprint get on the ring?”

“Good question. It’s clear that Brody’s involved somehow. You don’t think he was romantically involved with her lately, do you?”

“I don’t know anymore.” Olivia stared ahead at the bumper-to-bumper traffic Dallas was famous for. “Abby didn’t seem like the type of girl to go running back to Brody. He was stalking her, though, on social media and maybe in person. The fact of the matter is, for whatever reason, she wound up in Sparrow Grove. Maybe she was down here trying to follow Cindy’s advice.”

“The Trap-The-Narcissist advice?” Wariness stained Brock’s tone. “The extremely not safe thing to do if you’re in that type of situation?”

“Maybe.” Olivia tasted her theory, letting it sit for a moment. “The waitress said she was with Claude at the diner in Sparrow Grove. What if she and Claude took a trip down there to trap Brody together, instead of Abby by herself? Maybe she recognized the danger in that and brought Claude along with her.”

“So maybe something went wrong, and Claude was involved, but he didn’t actually hurt her,” Brock mused. “And that’s why he returned her keys and she didn’t. Maybe something happened to her and he was too brokenhearted or maybe he felt guilty. It’s slowly starting to make sense. At least, more sense than it has up to this point.”

Brock turned on his turn signal, taking the offramp that would lead them to the hospital. The drive from Sparrow Grove and the town where Brody had crashed seemed to have taken forever. The last thing Olivia wanted to do was make one more stop. She was too exhausted. But they needed this lead, and they needed to check on Brody. Being on the way, the hospital wasn’t too far from the field office.

Brock pulled into the crowded parking garage. This late in the day, everyone was probably getting off work and going to check on their loved ones who had been admitted for one reason or another. Brody had been rushed by ambulance hours ago. Olivia wondered if he’d been stabilized yet. She and Brock made their way through the maze of corridors and walkways and elevators and finally found a reception counter where a young man sat. He looked up at them as they approached. “Can I help you?”

Olivia and Brock presented their badges. “We’re looking for Brody Ray, the patient that was brought in today from the incident on the highway.”

The receptionist picked up the phone on his desk. “I’ll check with Dr. Sinclair if he’s ready. Just a minute.” He pressed the phone to his ear. “Yes, Dr. Sinclair, we have two FBI agents here who need to speak with a patient regarding a criminal investigation.” He paused. “Brody Ray.” Another pause. “Yes, I understand… Thank you.” He hung the phone back up in the receiver. “Dr. Sinclair will be right down to speak with you. You’re welcome to have a seat in the waiting room if you like.”

“Thank you.” Olivia turned, eager to get off her feet for a few moments, somewhere that wasn’t in a moving car. She settled beside Brock. “Long day.”

“Mm. Yes.” Brock sounded like he couldn’t agree more. They were only waiting for about fifteen minutes before a doctor emerged, in a white coat and with a bright-eyed expression as if his shift had only begun. Olivia didn’t envy him. She was ready for her shift to be over so she could rest her weary mind. He spotted her and Brock, and Olivia rose to her feet and greeted the doctor, alongside Brock. “How is he?”

“Brody is stable. He sustained several injuries in the accident, surprisingly minor given the severity of it. He has a bump on the head and a mild concussion and he’s got some broken bones. He won’t be going anywhere for a while. He’s awake, if you need to see him.”

“Thank you, yes.” Olivia and Brock followed the doctor down the busy hallway crawling with nurses and other doctors being paged over the intercom. Dr. Sinclair led them to a particular room and knocked before cracking the door open. “Mr. Ray, you’ve got some people who want to talk to you, okay?”

Olivia shadowed the doctor into the room. Brody lay with his leg in an elevated sling and a mildly annoyed look on his face. The meds they had him on aided in the relaxed expression that fought for space with the annoyance. Olivia could hear him huff a sigh from her position near the door. “Fine.”

“I’ll be just outside if you need me.” Dr. Sinclair offered before leaving, breezing the door closed behind him. Once Brock and Olivia were alone with Brody, Olivia gently turned toward the hospital bed. Suspect or not, Brody was still a trauma patient and she reminded herself not to make any sudden moves, trusting Brock to do the same. The beeping of Brody’s monitors informed her that his heart rate was as normal as could be given the circumstances, so she took that as a sign that he wasn’t getting defensive. Not yet. “Brody, I’m Agent Knight, this is Agent Tanner. We’re with the FBI.”

“You’ve been following me, haven’t you?” The first words he’d ever dared to speak to them were in the form of a belligerent question.

“Is that a problem?” Brock asked in a level tone.

“Wouldn’t you be a little unnerved if agents of the government were tracking you and following you around?”

Only if I’d committed some crime, Olivia thought. “Maybe a little.”

Brody looked out the window by his bed, not that he could see anything but a rocky rooftop flattening the area under his window.

“Why have you been following me?” he demanded weakly.

“We’re not the ones who have been following you,” Olivia said. “That’s… I mean, we came to the hotel trying to talk to you about this, but we haven’t been the ones tracking you. That’s someone else we already have in custody.”

“Who?”

Olivia shook her head firmly. “Sorry, I can’t tell you. But it’s not relevant to why we’re here.”

“If you don’t have anything to hide, we’d like to ask you a few questions.” Brock stood his ground. “Have you requested any legal counsel to be with you?”

“I don’t need legal counsel.” Brody said, resigned. “I didn’t do anything.”

With that in mind, Olivia and Brock crossed the distance all the way to the bed. Brody wasn’t making eye contact, choosing to look wistfully out the window. For a guy who’d just been in a near rollover accident, he seemed perfectly content to talk to the FBI, probably considering it a way to get them off his back. Did he even know why they were here?

Olivia decided to get everyone on the same page before proceeding with the investigation. “Do you know Abby Fisher?”

She watched for telltale signs of being uncomfortable, but there were none. Brody ripped his head back around to face her, wincing against whatever pain that must’ve caused. “Of course I knew her.” Desperation leaked into his eyes. “We dated in high school and she was my everything. But, like any relationship, some stuff happened. She was the one that got away.”

Some stuff happened. Some stuff like cheating and assault and battery. That sure had a way of putting a strain on relationships, Olivia silently agreed. She picked up on how remorseful he sounded. “What can you tell us about your relationship with Abby?”

“It was magic.” Brody didn’t have to think. He chose, now, to look at the blank TV screen, muttering what he considered the best days of his life in some sort of monotone. “She was smart. Funny, kind. Beautiful.” He listed the same adjectives that every teenage boy in high school used to convince a girl he loved her. “We hung out all summer and then after we went back to school, well, she broke up with me. Broke my heart. I haven’t been the same since. There’s just been this missing piece in my life, you know?”

“How long were you together?” Brock asked.

“About a year. It was during our junior year.”

If that timeline was right, then it was right before Brody’s stint in prison. “What happened after that?” Olivia wanted to color in as many details as she could.

Hesitation clouded Brody’s face and he still refused to look at them. Silence became his only answer.

“Did you see or interact with Abby at all after your break-up?” Brock tried again, redirecting the question to something else. They knew about the assault charge. Details had been vague, but they knew enough to know that it wasn’t related to Abby Fisher on the surface at least.

“No. I didn’t see her at all until I got out of prison. I got mixed up in something during my junior year. I was so depressed over losing Abby, I had this massive hole in my life and it made me really frustrated. So I snuck into a bar, beat up some guys, and got popped with charges. Missed graduation and everything.” Anger tightened his face. “As if it wasn’t bad enough, she wouldn’t even talk to me with my record. Told me to get lost. I couldn’t stay there, in the same town where the love of my life was, so I moved.”

Olivia wanted to ask if Abby was the love of his life then why did he cheat on her? But this wasn’t about his relationship with Abby. This was about something else. “At any time since then, did you try to reach out to her on social media?”

“Heck yeah, I did.” Brody glared back at them. “But she blocked me. I tried different accounts but she wanted nothing to do with me.”

“When was the last time you actually saw her?” Olivia inquired.

Brody’s hesitation became evident on his face. His body tensed. The beeping of his heart monitor ticked faster by a few beats. Interesting. “She was at the diner in Sparrow Grove.”

“When was this?” Brock asked.

“A month ago.” Brody’s anger disappeared again. “I thought she had maybe come down to find me. To reestablish a connection with me and that she regretted everything that happened. I got off work at the hotel late one night and went to the diner to get some grub. While I was sitting there eating, she came in. She sat in the booth in the far corner from me with some guy who faced the door and me. At first, I thought he was some relative, I was hoping. The guy was old enough to be her dad or something! But then I realized that she hadn’t turned around to see me and that they were being all romantic. Holding hands, being affectionate. He was talking to her pretty seriously. It didn’t take long to figure out that they were together.” Anger darkened his tone to something akin to a growl. “She turned around to call something out to the waitress and when she did, she must’ve saw me. She got really fidgety. And that man kept looking over at me, looking all angry. They ate quickly and then she and her man left in some fancy car.”

“Did you recognize the guy she was with?” Olivia knew it was a shot in the dark.

Brody surprised her. “Yeah, I did. I recognized him from a picture I saw of them on Instagram.”

The one that Abby had taken down? Olivia wondered if she’d taken down that picture because seeing her romantically involved with someone other than him would send Brody into a rage.

“Then what happened?” Brock urged him to go on.

“I knew that guy was up to no good!” Brody’s voice rose. Olivia wasn’t sure if he was defending himself or his position that the guy she was with was bad for Abby. “I knew it! I created an account and started following Abby without interacting with her so she wouldn’t block me. I used a girl’s name.”

How convenient that he admitted to basically stalking her online.

“She stopped posting as much. Then when I saw her and a picture of that guy. I took a screenshot of it. Glad I did, because it disappeared that same day.”

“Did you comment on it or interact with it at all?” Olivia wondered.

“No. Remember, I said I was incognito.” Brody rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed that he had to remind Olivia of the details, even though she was using it to pinpoint what happened. “When I saw them in the diner, he had this upper hand sort of thing.”

“Explain upper hand.” Brock was as curious as Olivia as to what that meant.

“He ordered for her. I always like to let a girl speak for herself. Abby was happy and sparky with him, but a couple of times when she’d say something, he’d say something back and her posture would slump a little. No one. No one should ever make my Abby look like that. So when they left, I followed her. Lost track of her but I was able to pinpoint her location. Then I saw that car leaving, but Abby wasn’t in the car and it was in the middle of nowhere. So I spent about two days looking for her and I found her. Saw her lying there, by the creek, dead.”

Brody’s story had been going well until he provided them with a speedbump. “You found her dead?”

“Yeah. I knew that guy she was with was up to no good.”

Olivia shared a glance with Brock before looking back at Brody. “Mr. Ray.” Dousing his tone with respect, Brock tried to make sense of the eyewitness account that could’ve been entirely made up or meant that they needed to keep looking. “We found your fingerprints on Abby’s engagement ring. Can you explain that?”

Brody just nodded. He didn’t move to defend himself. His heart rate didn’t kick up. He responded in a monotone, more sad than Olivia had heard from many a suspect. “Because I took it off of her finger after I found her dead.”

So he had messed with the evidence. It still didn’t make sense. “Why?” Olivia asked.

Brody withdrew a long breath before he explained. “I just kept thinking. If she’d stayed with me, none of this would’ve happened. I cared about her. I searched the woods near where I saw the car leaving until I found her. It was devastating to see her dead.”

“So, you took her engagement ring?” Brock confirmed.

“Yeah.” Brody nodded, again. “Took her ring. She didn’t deserve a guy like that. She deserved to be with me. I would’ve taken care of her.”

Maybe he’d taken it as some type of trophy. Or his way of taking Abby’s engagement from her. Maybe even projecting it onto himself?

“Then I called 911. Didn’t tell ‘em who I was, just that there was a dead beauty near the creek and told them where to find her, then hung up.”

So... he knew about the anonymous phone call? Olivia knew they could do a voice comparison with the recorded call and Brody’s, but it caught her off guard to think that he was the anonymous phone caller. Had he been lying and killed Abby? Or was he possibly telling the truth? He didn’t show any indications of lying and Olivia was sure he wasn’t quite mentally there, given the medication they’d given him for the pain.

Her silence now led Brody to look back at them, disgust lining every one of his features. “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re insinuating. I’d never do that. I loved Abby. I will always love her. And I’m not lying, either. My reason to live is dead. So put me away again, I don’t care, but I didn’t kill her.”

The despair in his eyes tempted Olivia to believe him based on his testimony alone. The fact that he knew about the anonymous phone call and claimed to be the one to make it lent more credibility to the story.

Brody laid his head back onto the pillow, closing his eyes. “I think I’m done talking. I’m tired. If you’ll excuse me, I was just in a rollover and would like to get some rest.”

“That’s okay,” Olivia acquiesced. “We appreciate your willingness to talk with us.”

Brody didn’t acknowledge her further and she wondered if his meds might’ve knocked him out. She followed Brock from the room and started back down the hallway. “Do you really think he’s the one who called in the anonymous tip?”

Brock shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know what to think.”

Neither did Olivia. She and Brock left the hospital and found their car in the parking lot. As they were driving back, Olivia let the weariness she felt from the exhausting day seep into her bones.

“Today was out of control.” She lifted her eyes to the roof of the car and closed them. She trusted Brock to get them back to the field office in one piece. “Nothing went the way it was supposed to.”

“We’re going to work through it,” Brock assured her. “Brody seemed very obsessed with Abby, despite her clearly wanting no involvement with him whatsoever. We can get a warrant to search his house to see if we can follow up on anything he may have there. He didn’t have time to go home and hide anything, so there might be some evidence ripe for the picking there.”

Olivia felt herself nod. “True. I’ll get on the phone with a judge first thing tomorrow morning and we can follow that lead. And what about Cindy?”

“Cindy’s in a world of hurt for messing with the investigation, anyway,” Brock reminded her. “We can always come back to her. However, I don’t see a motive for her being involved with Abby except with her supposed counseling. We can confirm that if we can find the account Abby supposedly messaged her with.”

“Star in two languages, was it?”

“Yeah, Stella Star or something.” Brock ran a hand through his hair, feeling just as exhausted as she did. “If we can get those messages, we may be closer to piecing together what happened between Abby and her so-called narcissist man. There might be some clues as to whom she was referring.”

Olivia wanted to follow where he was leading with that thought, but her cell phone interrupted her. She pulled it from her pocket. “Oh, hey, it’s Marion,” she answered, putting it on speaker and hoped it didn’t pick up the road noise outside. “Agent Knight.”

“Olivia, it’s Marion. I just thought I’d let you know, Claude McMillian? He left the country and he’s back in the States.”

“Oh, is he?” Olivia swiped her toolbar down on her phone screen, reading the date. Yes, Connie had said Claude would be back in the states sometime this week, hadn’t she? So there was something else for them to follow.

“Yes, but that’s not all. We’ve possibly caught him in some suspicious behavior. We aren’t completely certain yet, but we are looking into it.”

Olivia tilted her head as if it could help her listen better. “What kind of suspicious behavior?”

“After hours one night, he met with someone outside of his place of business in the back. There were two vans and he was loading some supplies from one van to another. While there’s nothing inherently suspicious about that, the crates were too long to be considered anything electronic or related to his inventory, so we’re trying to get in and do some investigating. Normally we wouldn’t have looked twice at it, but something else happened that made us look. A few days after this exchange, one of the crime syndicates we’ve been tailing received a new shipment of weapons. We have an agent undercover with them who confirmed this. It just so happened that they received the weapons shipment shortly after we noticed Claude exchanging the crates. It may be a coincidence, but we’re looking into it.”

“Thanks, Marion.” Olivia was already chewing on the new information that sparked a red flag for her. “We’ll look into it on our end as well. Be safe out there.”

“We will. If I hear of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

Olivia thanked her and hung up, letting the silence fill the car as both she and Brock worked the information mentally. “Do you think it’s coincidence?” She had to know after a while. She needed to know Brock’s thoughts.

“Anything’s possible.” He got off the freeway to head to the hotel. “So he’s back in the country? I’m thinking that if we’re going to investigate him, we need to do it sooner rather than later. He may not be around for very long, especially if he suspects we’re onto him.”

“I agree.” Olivia stared ahead out of the windshield. “Brody and his house aren’t going anywhere. I think we need to talk to Claude first thing in the morning.”

Olivia slept like a baby that night and when she awoke, bright and alert, she relished it. She and Brock were taking a nice little drive down to see Connie and Claude this afternoon. She needed all her senses to be as sharp and at attention as they could be. Between Brody’s statement and now Marion’s suspicions of something even shadier, Olivia wasn’t going to let him go.

She formulated the questions she was going to ask as she took the first bit of driving; Brock sat beside her, going over some notes he had on Claude. Olivia remembered from the last time they were at Claude’s house that the mailbox was nonexistent and made sure to slow down when her turn came up. The house still towered before her, but this time, instead of just a BMW parked in the front, there was another car saddled in beside it, a snazzy-looking cream-colored Mercedes.

“Looks like someone’s home.” Olivia nodded to the Mercedes.

“Makes our job easier when the suspects are around to talk to,” Brock agreed.

He and Olivia picked a spot to park that was out of the way and got out. Olivia smoothed the imaginary wrinkles out of her suit, doing her best to look as professional as she could. She wasn’t sure what kind of man Claude McMillian was and if he did have some narcissistic tendencies, she wanted to be prepared before he had a chance to disarm her with his actions. She felt better with Brock beside her and stepped back to let him ring the doorbell camera. The sound of meadowlarks and sparrows chirping all around gave Olivia something to think about while waiting for the door to crack open.

Instead of Connie this time, there stood the man of the hour himself, the one she’d stared at on Abby’s profile a hundred times. Claude greeted them with an easy-going smile and a hint of surprise that raised his eyebrows. “Good morning. Can I help you?” Well, at least he had a warm and pleasant tone. Let’s see how that changed after Brock mentioned who they were.

Brock kept his posture straight, leaving no mistake that they were the ones in authority here and that he wasn’t going to let him put up a fight. “Claude McMillian?”

“That would be me.” Claude smiled at the confirmation.

“I’m Agent Tanner, this is Agent Knight. We’re with the FBI and we need to ask you a few questions.”

The surprise melted from his expression. “Certainly. About what, may I ask?”

“We need to discuss your acquaintance with Abby Fisher.” Brock allowed him an answer.

“Mm.” Claude nodded and something akin to sorrow flashed across his face. Did he know they were coming? He swung the door open and stepped aside. “Please come in and have a seat.”

Olivia stepped into the spacious palace once more, feeling out of place in the magnitude of wealth that dripped from every corner. She kept a poker face and stayed close to Brock as they retraced their steps from their earlier visit with Connie into the living room. Connie appeared at the bottom of the steps, recognizing them immediately. “Oh. You’re back.”

Had Connie mentioned the FBI had been here, poking around, asking questions? Did she inadvertently prepare Claude for what to say? Claude cast a look back at the two of them. “Oh, have you been here before? I’d say ‘welcome back,’ but I’m sure I’d like to hear what you have to say, first.” He crossed the space between him and his wife and slipped his arm around her waist. Olivia studied his behavior. He didn’t seem to know that they’d been here before, so maybe Connie hadn’t mentioned anything until now. She clung to the hope that Claude hadn’t had time to prepare a good story for them, tipped off by Connie’s mention of their presence here.

“Yes, they were here before.” Connie looked up at Claude.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help you.” He gazed down into her eyes and a smile ignited his face. “I’m here now, for a while, so no need to worry.” He swooped down to plant a kiss on her lips. “These people are here to talk to me about some things. I know that law enforcement stresses you out, so why don’t you go back upstairs and finish your painting?” He looked back at Olivia and Brock, seeming to apologize through his eyes about the delay in talking with them. “Connie’s been working on this landscape portrait for about three months. She’s very good at capturing the scene with canvas and paints. Maybe we’ll see her work in a Paris art gallery someday.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me?” Connie peered up at him, averting her eyes from Olivia and Brock. Last time she’d been a bit nervous, but this time she wouldn’t even look at them.

Claude looked over at Olivia and Brock to ask the same question. “Will you be needing Connie for this or can we talk alone?”

“We just came to talk to you,” Brock confirmed.

“Okay. You’re good, love.” Claude tapped Connie’s lower back and planted one more kiss on her lips before releasing her. “Just go relax. You deserve it.”

“Okay.” Connie finally looked back at them and gave them a quick smile. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

“Thank you,” Olivia shot her a smile that she hoped put her at ease. Connie turned, climbing the steps one by one as if they were mountains. Claude listened until the door clicked closed behind her and turned back to Olivia and Brock. “I apologize for the wait. Connie had a bad experience with law enforcement when she was younger. Nothing bad, just that her father was hauled away when she was eight and it was a traumatic time for her.”

Olivia made a mental note to check that story for accuracy. “We understand.” She knew that the presence of law enforcement did unnerve a lot of people, especially since they’d been here twice, but from what she recalled, Connie hadn’t had any problem with them last time.

Claude gestured toward the spacious living room. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything, water, tea, coffee?”

“No, thank you.” Brock declined and Olivia shook her head with the same. They settled onto the same couch they had before and Claude settled across from them. Olivia noted his open posture, the way he steepled his fingers and planted his elbows on his knees to lean into what they were saying. Most people who had something to hide averted eye contact or kept looking left, but he maintained direct eye contact with her and remained opened with his posture. Not your typical suspect-type behavior. Even Cindy, who believed that she was Queen Bee and Miss Everything, didn’t have quite the open posture Claude had. Her folded arms and defensive posture indicated that deep down, she knew she’d done wrong, even if she refused to believe it herself.

Claude took a moment to linger on her face, seeming to scan it with his eyes before letting his gaze drift over to Brock. Was he studying her? Or did he just have very intense eye contact? Olivia wasn’t sure why but she didn’t like the feeling it gave her, to be studied so intently. They were the ones doing the interview here.

“So what can I help you with?” Claude opened his palms like a book, and Olivia couldn’t help but wonder if that meant he was indicating that he was an open book to them.

Brock took over once again, explaining a few details of Abby’s case. “Let’s start with this.” He rattled off the date of Abby’s death by rote. “Where were you between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6. a.m. that day?”

Only then did Claude break eye contact to search the pristine carpet at their feet. A heavy sigh slumped his shoulders forward. “I heard she was killed when I got back home.” He tossed a glance upstairs to ensure Connie wasn’t hovering within earshot and lowered his voice in case she might be. He looked to be fighting back tears or some form of sorrow. “I guess that it was no secret that I had her as my mistress.” He looked back at them and yes, sure enough, there was enough sorrow in his expression to be difficult to contain. “Connie doesn’t know, and I’d appreciate your discretion on the matter. I want to tell her myself.”

Olivia normally didn’t appreciate being ordered around, but she had heard the request numerous times from other cheating men. She couldn’t help but think that if Claude were to get arrested for something, Connie would find out real quick that her knight in shining armor was more like a lousy brigand. She found her voice to ask a question. “You were the last person known to be seen with Abby alive, in Sparrow Grove. So how did you go from that to not knowing she was dead in the same location?”

Claude let his eyes drift toward the window as if gazing at a far-off memory. “Abby and I were moving to France that next week,” he said, longingly. “I was going on ahead of her; my business called me there early. So, we wanted to have one more date night in America before she moved. She had always been interested in Wild West history and all that, so we were driving down to the Alamo. We stopped at the café in Sparrow Grove late that night on our way down to San Antonio. We were planning to stay when we ran into her ex-boyfriend, Brody something, in the café. She was pretty upset to even be in the same state as he was, so we left quickly after we ate. We were going to stay at some bed and breakfast, but on the road trip, she hit me with something. She found out about Connie, somehow. I don’t know how.”

Memories of Juliette’s story came flooding back. Abby would never stay with anyone who was cheating. It was why she and Brody broke up, and she never wanted to be a sidepiece because she knew what it did to a relationship. She nodded as she listened, waiting for him to continue.

“We had a fight about it. You may hate me for this, maybe thinking that I’m some sort of scoundrel, but you gotta believe me when I tell you that I adore them both.”

“So you’d have Connie in America and Abby in France, is that it?” Brock asked.

“That was the plan at first,” he said. “But Abby wouldn’t have it.”

Olivia kept her thoughts to herself about how if he adored them both so much, he wouldn’t be cheating on either of them, and nodded for him to go on.

“I told her that I wanted to work it out with both Connie and her, but when I just couldn’t keep it up, I told her I’ve been trying to find a way to end things with Connie. Connie is a sweet woman, but I’ve never met anyone like Abby. I loved her, I wanted to marry her and I told her this. But she told me that she wouldn’t want to be with a man who cheats, no matter the money. She told me she wanted to leave me.” His voice wavered a bit and resignation took over his face. “So I said, ‘okay.’ You can’t force someone to stay with you, you know? I asked if she wanted me to take her back to Belle Grove. She said no. I guess she didn’t want to be in the car that long with me. She wanted me to drop her off at the hotel in Sparrow Grove and she would fly back to her sister’s place. So I did. I dropped her off at the hotel, and left. That was the last time I ever saw her.”

“If that’s the case,” Brock asked. “Why were you the one to return the keys to her apartment?” Olivia had been waiting for this and was more than curious to hear his explanation.

“Abby said she was moving in with Juliette. She had already moved out of the apartment and she wasn’t going back any time soon. She didn’t trust the mail to get her keys back to the apartment, so she handed them to me and asked me to do it. It was the least I could do.” A rueful sadness flickered in his gaze and he once more connected his gaze with Olivia. There his gaze lingered for a moment before looking back over at Brock.

The sincerity in his tone caught Olivia off guard. She’d expected him to be a little defensive, but if him dropping Abby off at the hotel was the last time he’d ever seen her, and if he was telling the truth, then something must’ve happened after that. But then again, this could very well be a polished story that he’d worked on to keep himself out of suspicion, and being a wealthy, powerful narcissist, she didn’t doubt that he could certainly have put on a straight face. She had more questions to ask, but Claude could say anything. The real answers were in the evidence.

“Mr. McMillian, we’d like to search your home and car.”

“Knock yourselves out.” Claude shook his head, settling back against the couch. “I have nothing to hide. I loved Abby and I’m devastated that she’s gone. I wished we could’ve found a way to work things out. If we had, she would’ve been with me and not have wound up dead.”

“Thank you.” Olivia rose to her feet. The interview with Claude had left her more confused than she wanted to be.

It wasn’t that his story didn’t line up other than his earlier behavior with Connie when he had practically fawned over her, only to tell them that he was looking for a way to end things with her. Olivia hadn’t missed the seriousness in his tone, nor the way that he’d maintained eye contact with her for a few seconds more than normal. Was he trying to establish some kind of connection? Get her feeling his side while distracting her from what he was really saying? Or was she just going into this believing he was a narcissist and that suspicion colored everything she observed about him?

She set aside her thoughts about him for now and began her search. Where would she start in a mansion like this?

“I’ll step out onto the front porch. I’ll give Connie a call and let her know to join me there.” Claude rose to his feet, making no protest to Olivia and Brock poking around his home and disappeared out the front door.

Well, that was probably the easiest Olivia had ever obtained permission to search someone’s house before.

“I’ll take the kitchen.” Brock moved to where he said, leaving Olivia to decide where to start. She began with some of the closets, looking in coat pockets and examining shoes for sizes. The good thing about the house was that it was pristine and she didn’t have to go through piles of junk to get to anything good. She easily searched the closets on the lower level, and finally when she and Brock had worked the first floor, they moved on to the second one. By now, Connie had disappeared from her art room, the fresh painting still standing on an easel positioned to catch the natural light as Connie worked on shading the different areas. She really wasn’t bad, and Olivia couldn’t help but notice how Claude had praised her for her work. If she remembered correctly, narcissists didn’t do that. They did the opposite of that. So maybe Abby was looking at Cindy’s videos for someone else, after all. Then again, that didn’t mean that he had meant the praise. Maybe it was just yet another manipulation from a controlling man.

After a fruitless search throughout the house, Olivia and Brock moved outside. The acreage felt overwhelming, but Olivia didn’t let it distract her. “Let’s start with his car.” She nodded toward the shiny Mercedes.

Brock began to search the back seat while Olivia combed the front. The plush leather seats showed no sign of wear and tear. Heated, leather – typical of a high-dollar vehicle. She examined the passenger seat carefully, checking the seatbelt attachments for hair, or maybe some clothing fibers, but the car was almost brand new. There were more signs of use on the driver’s side than there were on the passenger side. She flipped back the floor mat, opened the glove box, but after carefully looking everywhere, she came up empty. And from the sounds of it, Brock had, too.

“Nothing in the back seat.” Brock ducked out of the car. “Can you pop the trunk for me?”

“Sure.” Olivia took some time until she found a button that opened the trunk. Brock started looking around in the back while she focused on the front seats.

After a few minutes of this, he came around to the front, shaking his head. “No signs of a struggle. There are no hairs or any sort of fibers in the trunk. But it’s been so long, he could easily have gotten it cleaned.”

“Nothing in the front seat, either.” Olivia felt their search winding down, feeling frustrated that it had turned up nothing. Were they missing something? Olivia swept a glance around what they probably considered their yard, which to her felt like half of Texas. The heat was starting to get to her, and she wished she’d worn a cream-colored jacket instead of black. “Are we missing anything?”

Brock’s sigh told her that he agreed with her. Olivia wasn’t ready to give up yet. There had to be something, anything that could give them some guidance in their case but Olivia was slowly starting to feel like Claude was guilty of nothing more than cheating on Connie with Abby.

“Let’s check out the burn bin. Then we can go.”

Olivia agreed, letting Brock take the lead on this one, following him around the back of the mansion to the burn barrel. “You’d think that people this wealthy would pay to haul off their trash, rather than burn it.”

“Maybe it’s like chopping wood for them,” Brock tossed out by way of suggestion. “Something relaxing, an excuse to have a fire.”

“A smelly fire. You won’t catch me roasting marshmallows over burning trash,” Olivia smirked.

The charred barrel sat several yards away from the house, empty. Olivia peered inside, seeing nothing but ash and some fibers of something that had recently been burned. The charred smell in the wind, which blew in her direction, indicated that it had recently been used.

“What’s that in the bottom?” Brock grabbed a pair of tweezers and bent himself until he hunched over the barrel. He reached in, plucking something from the bottom of the barrel and pulled out a long string of some type of burnt fabric. Olivia studied it, puckering her lips as she shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Let’s take it back to the lab. What could it hurt? The material is kinda stiff.” Brock shook it. It didn’t flutter in the wind, it blew as one, stiff strip of fabric. “What are some things that are made of sturdy fabric or material?”

“What, we’re riddling each other now? Is that really how we solve cases?” Olivia arched an eyebrow, laughing.

Brock shrugged. “Isn’t that what a case is? One big riddle we have to figure out?”

“It’s a little more hands-on than that, but I’ll humor you.” Olivia sank her teeth into her lower lip as she studied the fabric. “Jeans. Uh, tablecloths, maybe?”

“How about travel bags?”

Bingo. Olivia could see where he was getting his ideas and nodded, gesturing to him. “Travel bags, yes.”

“There’s some more scraps down here. My question is, why not donate clothes or travel bags you’re no longer using? Why burn them?” Brock shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

“Like you said,” Olivia reached with her gloved hands to take the material to bag it while Brock dug for the rest, “what could it hurt?” The least they could do is say they examined every angle to rule out Claude as a suspect. But that still left a sea of questions. Not that Olivia was known to believe the account of a confessed stalker who’d led them on a car chase, but if Brody’s account was true and the evidence corroborated it, then who was guilty of Abby’s death? What happened to her between the time when Claude, supposing his story was true, dropped her off at a hotel and she was dumped like trash, twenty miles up the road?

Olivia was ready to get out of the Texas heat. Clutching the evidence bags containing the strips of fabric, she and Brock began the trek back to the car. “Do you think we wasted our time, coming out here?” Olivia looked around the property once again, unable to keep her dubious thoughts to herself.

“It’s never a waste of time when you’re following a lead. Even if that lead is wrong,” Brock reassured her. “If anything, if what Claude said was true, it eliminates him as a suspect in Abby’s murder. We just have to find the evidence that confirms his story.”

“His and Brody’s. But where do we look next? All we have are,” Olivia held up the bag, “scraps of fabric that will probably turn out to prove nothing.” Was she letting her frustration show too much?

Brock let a sigh slip through his nose. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Olivia.” He calmed her with his voice as he always did when she felt her frustration getting stronger, or when things in the case weren’t working out as they should. “We’re going to find out what happened to Abby. We just need to keep following what we have. Something will turn up. We have the hotel’s security footage to confirm Claude’s story, we have the hotel manager to question about Brody, we have other things we can follow. We just wanted to chase this one before it was gone.”

Olivia sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated. Abby and her family need some closure. She was too special of a person to just be dumped on some back road somewhere and not have any indication as to what happened to her. We owe her that much, at least.”

“You’re not letting Abby or yourself down.” Brock read her mind and stopped walking. “Hey.”Olivia fought another sigh and bit back retorts consisting of we need to get back to focus on other leads. She squared up to face him. “Hmm?”

Brock reached out, cupping her shoulder in his hand. His touch instantly calmed her and eased her tension slightly. “I know it’s been a while since I reminded you. After everything over the last few months, and then the rush of the Cape Fremont case and then this one, I know things got crazy and time is just blowing by like a freight train. But have I told you in a while how proud I am of you?”

His words reminded her of a time after they had been working together for a while. When he had so gently cupped her cheek in his hand and told her the same thing. How proud he was of her. How he had asked her to teach him her ways, so he didn’t have to feel like the inadequate one in the relationship. The memory brought a smile back to her lips. “Maybe it’s been a while.”

“I need to do better about that.” Brock lingered for another moment, his hand on her shoulder. “But I am proud of you and I know you’re going to crack this case, sooner or later. You took down three traffickers in South Carolina, you battled the Gamemaster and won. This case is small compared to that stuff, Olivia. You’re doing amazing.”

He knew just what she needed to hear. She softened her gaze, love replacing the frustration from a few moments earlier. She’d felt so detached from him during the chasing of Abby’s killer. Focused on the case as usual and setting all personal things aside. She realized that even in their talk of finding a home to move into together, those dreams had been pushed to the back burner as they worked this case together. She needed to change that and remind him that she loved him for giving her wings to fly with his daily affirmations. “Thank you, Brock.”

“I love you, baby.” He smiled and pulled away. “Now let’s move this somewhere else, shall we? Let’s get back to the lab and look at what we’ve got with fresh eyes. I don’t know about you, but I’m hot.”

“Yeah, we should do that.” Olivia grinned, then turned and started walking, passing one of the outbuildings that scattered across Connie and Claude’s property. Something hissing stopped her in her tracks.

“Psst.” Brock stopped the same time Olivia did, probably hearing the same thing.

Olivia’s widened eyes looked around. “Hello?”

“Psst. Over here.”

She followed the sound to see Connie’s big eyes peering out from a crack in the barn door. Olivia fought a frown, choosing a curiously professional face instead as she closed the gap between them. “Mrs. McMillian?”

Connie only opened the door slightly. “He’s cheating on me, isn’t he?”

Olivia was stunned, surprised by the woman’s direct question. How did she put that together after all this time? “Mrs. McMillian,” she tried again.

Connie started talking as if she hadn’t even asked Olivia anything. “After you asked me about that woman, I did some investigating. I found her Instagram, and I found this picture.”

She slid her arm between the space she’d created in the door, cupping her phone. From the notification bar showing up twice on her phone, Olivia assumed Connie was showing them a screenshot. Olivia leaned forward to examine the picture that Connie swiped to show her, recognizing the picture. It was the same one that showed Abby standing in front of a coffee shop or old-fashioned bookstore. Beyond her smiling face was a reflection of a car. The same cream-colored car parked in Claude’s driveway, Olivia suddenly realized.

Connie filled in the blanks as soon as her realization clicked. “See the car in the background in that reflection? That’s Claude’s car. I know because of the hood ornament. And then y’all are coming around, asking about her? Saying that Claude was probably the last person to see her alive?” Connie shook her head the hurt coming into her eyes deep enough for Olivia to feel. “That’s when I put two and two together.”

Olivia let a sigh slip through her nose. She longed to comfort the woman, friend to friend. “Mrs. McMillian, I’m very sorry.”

The hurt disappeared from the woman’s gaze, replaced by a hard determination. She looked past Olivia and Brock, her eyes set somewhere between them. “I go grocery shopping every Wednesday. I’m a woman of routine.”

Olivia inconspicuously shot a look at Brock, asking the same question he was thinking. What does that have to do with any of this?

Connie’s gaze flickered back to Olivia’s and switched between her and Brock. “I need to tell you both something, but I can’t do it with Claude around. Meet me at the coffee shop inside of Whole Foods, day after tomorrow, at 11:11 sharp. I need to tell you something.”

Before Olivia could confirm or deny anything, Connie slipped back into the barn and pulled the door shut, sealing off any further interaction between them. Olivia exchanged another look with Brock. What was this about? Without a word spoken between them, they started toward the front again; wondering what Connie had to say was weighing both of them down.

They found their way to the front where Claude was rocking on the front porch. “Find anything?” he called with a smile.

Before Olivia could remind him that she couldn’t really say, he waved her off. “I know, I know you can’t tell me. Hey, if you need anything else, I’m usually out and about when I’m stateside so feel free to call before y’all come down just to make sure I’m here.”

Olivia wasn’t sure whether his openness meant he was preparing for their visits or genuinely willing to cooperate. “Thank you, Mr. McMillian. We’ll be in touch.”

She slid into the driver’s seat of her car, Brock beside her. Once they were sealed and the air conditioning was on full blast, she drove out of the driveway.

“That was nothing short of interesting,” Brock stated the obvious.

Olivia snorted a laugh between her lips. “You can say that again. What on earth is Connie going to have to tell us at the store on Wednesday?”

“I don’t know.” Brock stared out of the windshield, the evidence bag spread in his lap. “I can’t help but wonder if it’s something important, something related to the case, or if it’s just something stemming from a wounded heart that won’t really help us. Either way, we can’t dismiss it. And while we might not get anything off this pile of debris, either,” he held up the fibers in question, “we still need to get that warrant to Brody’s house. If anything, I bet we find some interesting stuff there. Because we can’t rule him out as a suspect yet. The kid can say anything, but the physical evidence will tell a different story.”

“I know.” Olivia had been thinking the same. “Do you think any of these leads will finally bring us to some kind of breakthrough?”

“They have to,” Brock assured her. “Something’s gotta give, one way or another.”

While Brock called in to get a warrant to search Brody’s house, Olivia carefully handled the scraps of fabric Brock had dug out of the burn bin. She took a small fiber sample from the bag and placed it under the microscope, adjusting the lens until the focus came into view. Against the burnt residue, she could see a distinctive, telltale pattern of a smooth, synthetic texture and weave. As she gazed through the microscope, Brock strode into the field office’s forensic lab where she had set up a space to examine her evidence. “We got the warrant for Brody’s house. Since we’re going to be in Sparrow Grove, let’s stop by the hotel again. I need to confirm the surveillance footage from the night Abby was killed and verify Claude’s story. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to the hotel manager about Brody, either.”

“That sounds very good to me.” Olivia removed the scrap of fabric from underneath the microscope. It would be good to talk to the manager again. She wanted to make sure he was all right after the fight-and-flight nonsense Brody had pulled. The hotel manager had been nothing but helpful and Olivia hated to see how Brody had shoved him aside to get to the back, possibly hurting the older man in the process. “I’m just running a few tests on the fabric scraps you found. I was able to get enough of it to run an FTIR analysis on it.”

To confirm her statement, her printer hummed, spitting out a sheet lined with the test she had just been speaking of.

Brock couldn’t resist a little humor. “I have impeccable timing.”

“Sure. We’ll go with that.” Olivia playfully rolled her eyes and scanned her results. “Well. You were right. The materials we found at the bottom of the burn barrel are a blend of polyester reinforced with nylon. Typical of a duffel bag or overnight case. The piece you found wasn’t burned badly enough to not be recognizable.”

“It could be nothing,” Brock hummed, reaching for the FTIR report. Olivia relinquished it into his hands and he read it over himself. “I’m just curious why he’d burn something like that.”

“Maybe it was old and he got a new one? He was planning on moving out of the country.” Olivia knew her suggestion sounded weak and she wasn’t even sure why she went with it. Brock seemed to have a hunch that this burned up polyester and nylon bag was important somehow, but neither of them could put their finger on why. “When we get back from Sparrow Grove, I can run a few more tests through the textile materials base, see if I can narrow down a brand.”

“Sounds good. In the meantime,” he handed the report back to her. “Are you ready to head back to Sparrow Grove?”

“Ready to go over the security footage and talk to the manager? Yes.” Olivia took her report back, inwardly groaning. “Ready for another drive down there? No.”

“Aw, come on, it’s not that far. We can grab some food on the way.” Brock winked at her then started out of the lab.

After stopping for some food along the way, they began the drive back out to the small town they were starting to get very familiar with. Olivia wondered how many times they’d find themselves out here before they finally dug up something of worth. With Brody in the hospital, was this the last time they’d need to drive out here? Now that Cindy was behind bars and Brody’s crime scene was there, ripe for the picking, unless something new popped up, they might not need to drive back out here again. Unless all the evidence ruled out every one of their suspects.

Brock pulled into the familiar parking lot of the hotel. He’d called ahead to make sure they were open, considering that they were probably short-staffed. The manager hadn’t seemed the least bit overwhelmed.

“Remind me his name, if he ever told us?” Olivia asked.

“Wayne Skinner,” Brock replied. “I don’t think he ever told us. We were too focused on chasing Brody when we were here last.”

“There was that, yes.” Olivia walked through the doors, noticing that there was a line of people in front of them. Olivia took this time to look around the hotel while they waited. It certainly wasn’t a five-star resort, but it was clean and well organized for a town this size. A welcoming haven for travelers to stop in and take a rest when needed.

Olivia and Brock waited patiently until the guests in front of them had been helped. She couldn’t help but smile when she stepped up and Wayne returned her smile. “Well, y’all just can’t stay away, can you?”

“Apparently not.” Olivia loved the warm welcome he always gave them. Law enforcement hanging around probably wasn’t good for business and probably took up a large chunk of his time, but he never seemed to mind. “Are you doing okay since yesterday?”

“Just fine.” The man rotated his shoulder to demonstrate. “Got a little bruise here, but nothing I haven’t handled before. I heard that you got Brody, though. Heard he got in some kind of accident?”

Some kind of accident was one way of putting it. “It was a rush, but as you said,” Brock gestured to the man. “Nothing we haven’t been through before.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m sorry he caused you folks so much trouble. I had no idea he was in trouble with the law.”

“We’re not sure about that, yet,” Olivia reminded both him and herself. Someone jumping to conclusions about Brody was how he wound up in the hospital in the first place.

“We need to take a look at your security footage.” Brock glanced up to the camera in the lobby. “How long does your footage keep?”

“It keeps it for about two months.” The man got to his feet. “I try to keep it as far back as I can. Being a remote town, you never know when it might take some time to catch up to someone, you know?”

Such as in this case. “Thank you for that.”

The older man led them to one of the back rooms where some monitors were up on the screen. “It’s all that newfangled digital tech. Brody usually takes care of it for me if I need adjustment, but I couldn’t tell you how to begin to work that stuff.”

“That’s okay.” Olivia hid her trepidation behind a smile. If Brody was in charge of security footage, was it possible that he erased something that might have incriminated him? She made a note to watch for any jerks or shifts in the footage from the night Abby was killed, indicating that something may have been cut. “We can handle it.”

“I have to go up front.” Wayne nodded to the lobby. “If you need anything, please feel free to call. Take what you need, I have nothing to hide.”

“Thanks again,” Brock nodded to him and the man disappeared back to the front.

Olivia settled down in the wheely chair and moved the mouse. “This is my favorite part of the job,” she muttered.

“Watching endless footage?” Brock chuckled. “It gets exhausting, doesn’t it?”

“If it leads to a break in the case, it’s worth it.” Olivia began clicking past the images until she found the date of Abby’s death. “The waitress said that she and Claude stopped for dinner around a quarter to eleven. We can start there, so we don’t miss anything.”

“Sounds good.” Brock settled in beside her. Watching silent footage of a quiet hotel driveway wasn’t the most stimulating way to spend an hour or two, but Olivia didn’t mind the chance it gave her to slow down for a few moments. She plopped her chin into her hand, drinking in the sight of the hotel parking lot. After eleven p.m. no cars were visible, save for the old beat-up station wagon that pulled into a parking space. A young man, who looked like he’d had a few, sauntered out of the car and into the hotel, not to be seen again for the rest of the footage.

As Olivia watched, she thought back on her conversation with Brock the day before, when he’d pulled her aside and gave her the encouragement she needed to go on. Discouragement had been running rabid in her mind, but Brock had brought her back down to earth again.

“You know, not to be mushy or anything,” Olivia cast him a small side-eye before looking back at the screen. Who knew what could happen in a matter of seconds? “But thanks for what you said yesterday.”

“What? About how much I love Texas and want to live there, out in the boonies?” Brock jabbed at her.

“No,” Olivia rolled her eyes playfully. “You know what I mean.”

“Let me think.” Brock tapped his chin with his finger in thought. “Remind me again?”

“Would you knock it off?” Olivia laughed.

“Why? I’d rather hear you say it.”

Say what? That she was a good detective? That she’d cracked more cases than a dozen eggs and her confidence had risen since she had partnered up with Brock? “The part about how you know that we can solve this case.” She didn’t want to make it all about her. Brock was here, too, and just as good of a detective as she was. It was because of him that some cases were solved efficiently. Olivia couldn’t count the number of times he’d brought out a point that helped her nail down the answer she was chasing or found some clue that she might’ve missed. Those nights they’d stayed up until the wee hours in the morning brainstorming and bridging together pieces of evidence or logical thought.

“I seem to recall telling you that you would solve the case,” Brock adjusted himself to lean forward, watching the screen.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Olivia started to say but Brock cut her off.

“Neither do you.”

“I…” Olivia’s lips creased into a smile. “I was frustrated, okay? But I’m fine, now. We’ve got leads, we’re going places, we’re just stuck on this one for now, that’s all. We’ll keep finding things and piecing them together until all the pieces make sense.”

“That’s exactly right.” She kept her eyes on the screen, but her peripheral caught Brock turning to her with a smile. “See?”

“Whatever.” Olivia rolled her eyes again. “I just wanted to say thank you, but then you had to go and make it all long and drawn out.”

“That’s what I do.” He slipped his hand into hers and she felt instant warmth spread through her hand.

She fell into silence again, watching the dead screen and how the only thing that changed was the time. Was it possible that Brody had taken a picture of the parking lot and somehow worked that still shot into the time frame? Olivia checked the time. 11:58. Of course all would be quiet, it was midnight. The camera pointed to the U-shaped hotel driveway. An awning stretched over the doors that led into the hotel and the curb took any guest right up to the sidewalk like an airport drop-off. The camera was positioned inside the awning to point down toward the front door while another one attached up higher on the building caught any traffic driving in or out. She was about to try and time skip a bit when a car’s headlights appeared in the camera that pointed at the whole driveway.

“Whoa, here we go. There’s a car pulling in.”

She switched back to the camera that viewed the driveway and noted the license plate, make and model of a Mercedes pulling into the U-shaped driveway. Her chest tightened and her heart rate kicked up a notch. “That’s Claude.”

“And it was nearly midnight. So he did come back.” Brock leaned closer as if it could give him a better view of what happened.

Once the car drove under the awning, Olivia switched to the camera pointing at the front doors. Claude drove rather close to the curb and paused for a moment, half of the car hidden in the shadows that the camera didn’t illuminate. After taking a moment or two, the car idled forward to stop again in front of the sidewalk trash can. Olivia noticed the passenger side door open slightly as a large object was slipped into the trash can. Then the door closed. A few seconds later, the Mercedes drove off.

“Wait,” Olivia paused it. “Did you see Abby get out?”

“I couldn’t see,” Brock leaned forward. “The car was angled away from the camera and in the shadows. If Abby did get out, she didn’t go in the front door.”

Olivia went back a bit, noticing the car pull up to the front door and pause. Brock was right – the passenger side was pointed right toward the shadows. Olivia was sure the passenger door opened and closed, but why would he let Abby out in the bushes? Or maybe those weren’t bushes, maybe they were just shadows? Olivia leaned forward and pointed. “One of the lights is out in the awning. So that explains the shadows.”

“I can’t see anything. Except that he threw something away.”

“So Claude was here…” Olivia sat back, chewing her lip as she stared at the screen. “But Abby never checked in.”

“We can’t really see, but he might’ve dropped her off in that shadowy location, there.” Brock pointed. “So what happened to her between when she was dropped off and when she never checked in?”

“Unless Claude was lying and just drove through the driveway to get his car on camera,” Olivia suggested. She watched Claude leave again, somehow managing to stay just barely within the frame of the camera. “I wonder what he threw away.”

Olivia and Brock decided to bring the footage with them for further analysis. Olivia did a time skip until six that morning but Claude’s car never reappeared. She gathered the thumb drive where she’d dropped the footage and went back to the lobby with Brock.

“Excuse me,” she asked the manager. “When is trash pickup?”

“We empty the trash every night,” Wayne replied, folding some linens on the counter. How much had his workload doubled since Brody got into trouble? “It gets thrown in the community dumpster out back and hauled away every Wednesday.”

Abby had been found on a Wednesday. So the trash was long gone by now. “Thank you. We took the footage of the night when Miss Fisher was killed.” Olivia informed him.

“Take what you need.” Wayne shrugged. “Like I said, I’m more than willing to help.”

“Thanks for all your cooperation during this investigation,” Brock said, and Olivia knew he meant it. Not everyone was so eager to have law enforcement poking around. “On that note, can you tell us anything about Brody? Did he ever not show up to work, or maybe he had some odd behavior of late that was out of the ordinary?”

Wayne huffed a laugh. “That boy is odd behavior.” He finished folding the last linen and flipped it onto the counter so he could give them better attention. “For kind of a sketchy-looking boy, Brody’s a good worker. He shows up mostly on time, does his work, never really complains, even though it’s obvious he hates his job. Quiet. Hardly ever talks. Seems to pretty much live on his cell phone. Ain’t allowed to have it out on the clock, but when it’s the dead of night and ain’t nothing else to do, I let him have it. As to any unusual behavior of late? No, not really. He’s been at work all the days he’s been scheduled and hasn’t missed any. Nothing more than the ordinary.”

“Has he left town to your knowledge?” Brock followed up. “Maybe left for a weekend or something?”

“He always works weekends and never has two consecutive days off,” Wayne confirmed. “So if he did leave town, it would have to be during one of his twenty-four-hour periods off. He works the afternoon shift.”

Well, that wasn’t very helpful, but what more could they do? “Did he ever mention anyone by the name of Abby Fisher?” Olivia asked.

Again, Wayne shook his head. “No, sorry. Brody never talks about anything personal. Like I said, he’s basically always scrolling on his phone.”

Olivia and Brock thanked Wayne again. Leaving with the thumb drive and the security footage, they found their way outside and back to their car.

After taking a moment to log the evidence, Olivia stashed it away. “What do you think we’ll find at Brody’s place? Anything?”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find something.” Brock started the car, checking the directions for Brody’s address. “Whether or not it ties into this case, though, I’m not sure.”

Brody’s apartment was the typical, classic example of a young man’s abode. A disorganized mess met them at the door, piles of laundry scattered throughout the house, which smelled of ramen and more ramen. Given the circumstances, Olivia and Brock took their time, examining every detail as they carefully picked their way into the apartment. The apartments lay along one strip of buildings laid with brick that held them together, featuring a living room, then a kitchen behind a wall that formed something of an island. The wall that formed the island led down the hall to a bedroom and bathroom. The other side of the apartment looked like it was used as a gamer room or an office. Probably a game room, given Brody’s profile pictures and what little Olivia and Brock knew about him. Every surface of the kitchen counters had some clutter, and Olivia didn’t miss the grayish stains on the carpet.

“This is nice. I almost want to go back to Claude’s place,” Brock managed to find some humor as he and Olivia began their search.

Olivia’s lips lifted in a smile. “Same. No signs of a struggle here.” She glanced around the living room, noting that it was just disorganization, but nothing chaotic like tipped-over lamps or tables. Of course, any signs of a struggle would’ve been picked up by now if he were smart. “I’ll take the bedroom and bathroom. Can you take the office and the kitchen?”

“Sure thing.” Brock pulled out a small briefcase containing a kit with a few field tools inside of it. Olivia did the same with hers and started down the hallway.

Brody’s bedroom was even more of a disaster, but since it only had a bed and box springs – he didn’t care enough to put it on a bed frame – a dresser and piles of clothes everywhere, there wasn’t much to look for. Olivia’s first inclination was to look for any evidence near the bed, so she killed the lights in the room and withdrew an ALS, Alternate Light Source, from her kit. She clicked it on, emitting a blue light that played with her vision a bit as she swept the bed for any signs of activity, but to her relief, she found none. Brody didn’t strike her as the change-the-sheets kinda guy, and a quick perusal through his laundry pile indicated that this was probably the only set he had. So at least there was no evidence of Abby being here against her will. And again, just like in the living room, no signs of a struggle.

She scoured everything she could, the overflowing trash, the toilet, sifting through piles of laundry, but nothing stood out to her as important. It sounded like while she was coming up empty, however, Brock had struck gold in Brody’s gaming room.

“Hey, Olivia?” he called from the other room. “You might want to come take a look at this.”

Overly curious as to what he had found, Olivia left Brody’s room and made it to the gaming room in little time. Brock stood over a makeshift desk, probably the nicest thing Brody owned. The desk held a computer terminal and was scattered with electronics, mostly game controllers. It was hard to tell which were for the computer and which were for the TV mounted on the wall.

“What kind of kid who plays games for a living leaves a cell phone charging at home?” Brock pointed. A USB plugged into the tower trailed down to hide in the top right-hand drawer. Brock pulled it open. “And that sure doesn’t look like a wallet Brody would go for.”

Olivia’s eyes widened. “That looks like a girl’s wallet.” Lying beside the fully charged cell phone was a long wallet, studded with pink and purple gemstones that formed the shape of flowers. Olivia picked it up with gloved hands and popped it open. The snap resounded through the quiet room and she immediately turned to the transparent card holder. Sure enough, just as she feared, there was Abby’s ID nestled into the flap.

“This is Abby’s wallet.” Olivia drew the ID out and held it up for Brock to see. “Lookie there.”

“So he took more than her engagement ring.” Brock unhooked the cell phone. “I wonder if this is hers, too.”

“Let’s see.”

Brock pushed the power button, but the screen didn’t light up. He held the button down and the phone vibrated back to life. “Interesting.”

Olivia looked in the drawer directly under where Abby’s wallet was found while Brock waited for the phone to boot to life. “Found a purse.” She withdrew a floral crossbody bag with a long strap and plopped it onto the desk. Digging through it, she found the usual items expected in a girl’s purse, from personal items to lipstick. Olivia popped the top of the lipstick and rolled the color up for visibility. “This looks like the same shade of lipstick she wore the night she was killed. Remember her lipstick was smeared?”

“I do remember.” Once the cell phone lit up, Brock showed it to her. Behind a dot pattern that locked prying eyes from the phone was a retro lock screen with swirls of green and blue forming an abstract pattern. “I don’t see Abby not having any sort of happy picture as her lockscreen. She doesn’t strike me as the type who would leave the wallpaper the phone came with, but you never know. This could be something.”

“Let’s take it.” Olivia un-zipped the inner pocket of her purse and drew out a cell phone. “Well, this one is probably Abby’s.” She clicked the on button and sure enough, a flowery background lit up the phone behind a lock key. “This looks more like her phone.”

“I’m still curious about this one, though.” Brock motioned to the cell phone. “Let’s take them both back to the lab and see what they can tell us.”

Olivia looked around the rest of the room. “I didn’t find anything but a mess in Brody’s room, so it’s hard to say if she was here or not. But it’s not looking like she was, except that her belongings are here.”

“So, let’s just say Claude’s story is right.” Brock faced her, fully. “He drops her off at the hotel. Brody is there, stalking them. He could’ve easily grabbed her and taken her to his house where he killed her.”

“It does make sense.” Olivia hated to admit it. “Maybe he took her here, but when things might’ve gotten out of hand, he accidentally killed her? That would explain the anonymous phone call. He might’ve felt guilty after dumping her body and two days later, reached out to the police.”

“It starts to put things together,” Brock agreed. “Because either one of them is lying or someone else got to Abby before she checked in at the hotel. And by the looks of it,” He held up Abby’s personal belongings. “It doesn’t look like he just randomly found her. And any signs of a struggle could’ve been cleaned up. It’s been a month.”

“So let’s see what we have.” Olivia could hardly wait to sink her teeth into this. “And what we can piece together.”

Olivia loved working side by side with Brock, and back at the field office, they dove into their work. “I’m going to check out that image of Claude’s car we got at the hotel,” Brock said as he walked with Olivia toward their work area. “If I can see her get out of the car, then maybe I can examine it further to see if she was intercepted by anyone. And I know it’s probably something stupid, but I’m going to try and see if I can tell what he threw away.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid to me. Go for it.” Olivia entered the work area where her computer was and plopped down in front of it. “I’m going to tackle this cell phone, first, and see if I can tell who it might belong to.”

Brock settled in beside her. He plugged the footage into his computer and set to work analyzing it. Olivia, however, tried her best to get the cell phone open. It took some time, but she managed to unlock it from her end and began looking through. The phone was a cheap burner with a call button, a gallery and a few other regular apps scattered across the home screen. It didn’t look like it had been used at all. She clicked on the message app. No messages. She swung over to contacts, only to find the same. Any calls, maybe? Why would Brody be charging a burner phone next to Abby’s items? She tapped on the call log, not surprised to see it devoid of calls, as well.

“So far, this phone is completely empty. He must have just gotten this phone and was planning on transferring the data from his old phone to this one.”

Brock typed something on his keyboard and threw a glance at her. “Well, it was worth a try.”

She swiped up, seeing what apps might have been in use and navigated her way to a folder titled “Technical Stuff.” Amid the mandatory Verizon apps, she found one that caught her attention. Instagram. The only app that someone downloaded on a phone with nothing but mandatory apps. Olivia tapped on it, and waited until the account filled her screen. She fully expected to see pictures of Brody but when the account finally loaded, Olivia’s eyes widened. Bingo.

“Wait just a minute.”

“What is it?” Brock paused again and glanced at her.

Olivia cupped the phone and moved it out to face him. “Look what I got.”

Brock leaned closer, recognition hitting his face. “Stella Star.”

Olivia turned it around to look at it again, more than curious. “So Brody has her phone, too. She must’ve bought this as a cheap burner phone to use for her fake account. I’m going to confirm Cindy’s story.”

She typed the password she knew by heart, Monet22Best and the profile filled the screen. Olivia opened the messages at once and sure enough, the conversation sitting at the top was addressed to none other than Cindy McGuire. Olivia scrolled back through what seemed like an endless conversation, walls of texts between Cindy and Abby until she reached the top and read over the messages.

Hi, Cindy, I know this is a totally random message out of the blue, but I was wondering if you could give me some advice? My name is Abby and I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that I may be dealing with a narcissist. Could you help me?

Olivia pushed the message to the top, reading Cindy’s response.

Absolutely! A very professional kissy-face emoji right after the first word. Definitely someone Olivia would trust with her secret, she thought with sarcasm. What’s been going on?

Dying of curiosity, Olivia devoured Abby’s response.

I don’t want to get into a lot of details, but I accidentally stumbled across one of your videos about how a narcissist uses guilt tactics to make you feel guilty for stuff that you didn’t do, or better yet, they make you feel guilty for stuff that they themselves did. And it surprised me that I was kind of vibing with it. I just set it aside but then I started noticing that this guy in my life has been showing some of the signs you talked about in your video.

Just as she was reading, a notification popped up.

Username233 commented on your video.

So Abby was posting videos? Olivia clicked on the notification, which dumped her out into the video that had spawned the notification.

The comment was of little worth, just a heart and a sad face, but the video caught Olivia’s attention. There, facing the camera, was Abby, but gone was the usual light from her eyes and replaced by some kind of heavy sorrow. “Hello.” She settled back into her cross-legged position on her bed and stared right into the camera. “My name is Stella. Well, that’s not my real name, but we’ll go with that.”

Brock abandoned the work he was doing to lean over Olivia’s shoulder, managing to plant a kiss on her cheek as he looked over, watching the video with her.

“I’m making this account because I’ve been recently inspired by this girl I’m following, Cindy McGuire. If you don’t know her, you should totally check out her account. She tells the story of how she escaped from a narcissist. Well, here’s my story.

“I’m deeply in love with my fiancé, but there have been some things that have confused me, lately. So I made this account and blocked my fiancé from finding it. I bought a cheap phone that he doesn’t know I have. I’ve done all the steps. And now I’m going to document my journey.”

“So she was suspecting that Claude was a narcissist,” Olivia breathed. “Oh, Abby. This isn’t the way to go about this.”

“She should’ve just left.” Sorrow stained Brock’s tone.

“Sometimes, it’s not that simple. The gaslighting makes you question whether or not things are really as bad as they are and the love-bombing makes it even worse.” Olivia had done a little research on the topic before going to bed last night. Something about Claude’s behavior had struck her as odd, and while she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, she wanted to hear Abby’s side.

“I won’t pin him as a narcissist, yet, because it could just be that he has certain faults. He doesn’t really want to ever meet my family, who’s been dying to meet him since we met. He never invites me over to his place, he just comes over to mine. Sure, we do stuff together in public, but I’ve never been to his house once. And he has been really, really insistent that I move in with him overseas. I thought it was great at first, but then I started wondering if there are some sort of red flags I’ve been ignoring. Anyway, I don’t know. But I’m going to document my journey and I promise to keep you guys updated.” Abby blew some kisses at the camera. “Love you guys, and keep supporting one another! We’re in this together, all of us.”

When the video ended, Olivia skipped to the last video that Abby posted. Instead of her happy-go-lucky smile or determination, her eyes were red and puffy. Olivia checked the date. It was a few days after she and Brock had met with her to pick up the furniture. Was this the reason why she wasn’t at dinner that night? Her red puffy eyes indicated something had caused her world to come apart. A sniff before she started speaking told Olivia she’d been crying her eyes out.

“Hey, guys.” Her voice was drowning in unshed tears. “Stella here.” She looked toward the ceiling and sipped a long breath in before she started speaking. “So I just found something out. You’ll never guess. My fiancé is cheating on me.”

So she had found out. Olivia’s heart went out to her. How did she find out? The video cut and Olivia wondered if Abby had broken down into another wave of hysterical tears before she composed herself enough to film again.

“Well, actually, it’s worse than cheating on me. He’s cheating with me. So here’s the story. I posted a picture of us on my regular Instagram account. He called me almost instantly and told me to take it down. He said something about how he wasn’t ready for his Instagram followers to find out because of all the questions and stuff, or whatever. Red flag, anyone? So anyway, this got me thinking. Why doesn’t he ever want to show me off on social media? So I did the one thing that I shouldn’t do. I paid for a subscription to some site and ran a background check on him.” Another wave of sobs started to overtake her. “He’s not only cheating. He’s married! He’s been keeping me as his mistress this whole time. I can’t... I can’t believe this is happening. So this is why he never asks me to his house. He doesn’t want his wife to find out. I can’t imagine…” Her voice trailed off, a sentence and thought never to be completed. “I’m going to catch him. I’m not just going to leave, I’m going to catch him. I have my ways. He has access to things that give me access as well and I’m going to use his own stuff against him! You’ll understand by and by, but right now, I need to go watch a kid’s show or something to lighten my mood. Thanks, guys.”

Her video restarted and Olivia turned the cell phone off. What on earth did she mean by that? He had access to things? She was going to use his own ‘stuff’ against him?

“She knew,” she murmured.

“She said she was going to catch him.” Brock shook his head. “And Claude said that she brought it up on the road trip, so she made good on that promise. But what happened to her?”

“Do you think Brody knew?” Olivia looked up at him. “I wonder if maybe she went to Sparrow Grove knowing that Brody, as creepy of a stalker as he is, would do anything for her?”

“She could’ve used Brody as her pawn. It depends on what her plan was. ‘He has access to things, and because of this, so do I?’ What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know.” Olivia shook her head. “But that begs the question. Why did Brody have her phone?”

“What if going to the Alamo wasn’t Claude’s idea? What if it was hers? She begged him to stop by the town where Brody was, and that’s how he wound up with this.” Brock nodded to the cell phone.

“But why would she go to her ex-boyfriend who was using her as a sidepiece as well?” Olivia shakes her head. “We need to know where he found this phone.” She let a long sigh reverberate through her entire being and her gaze flickered up to Brock. “This whole thing is a mess, no matter what happened. Abby’s dead and her heart was broken for the last week of her life.”

“I know.” Brock’s voice chilled and he looked back at his computer screen. “I wish she would’ve told someone.”

“Us, you mean?” Olivia nodded. “Me too. We could’ve helped her. She had no idea what she was doing, going up against Claude alone, if that’s what she did. And if he really is a narcissist, which I suspect he is…”

Brock read her mind and finished her thought for her. “Then things could’ve gotten very ugly, very fast. Maybe she was in Sparrow Grove by accident and saw Brody by accident, so she could’ve run to him for help as a last resort if things didn’t go as planned.”

“Maybe that’s why she was so insistent that Claude take her back to the hotel at Sparrow Grove. Maybe… I don’t know.” Olivia pushed her fingers through her hair, heart heavy over what had happened to sweet Abby. She didn’t deserve any of this. She groaned and sat back in the seat. “Well, we’ve got that meeting with Connie tomorrow morning. We should also stop by the hospital and get some more information from Brody as to how he ended up with Abby’s personal belongings, including her cell phone. That’s important.”

“It is,” Brock agreed. He took hold of Abby’s purse. “I’m going to dust this and her wallet for fingerprints. It would be interesting to see if Brody and Abby’s aren’t the only ones on them.”

“Good thought.”

Brock started with the wallet inside and lifted a few fingerprints from it. He carefully dusted the shoulder strap and the sides for fingerprints and used some tape to lift the ones that showed up in the black powder. Once he had finished, he stashed the wallet away inside where he’d found it and tried to snap the purse closed. It popped open as soon as he removed his hand. He pinched the two sides again, trying to work the two snaps together but to no avail. “She must have had this for a while. The snap won’t close.”

“It’s a wonder Claude didn’t buy her a new one. Since he seemed so intent to buy her love,” Olivia said, bitterly.

Brock set the open purse aside. “I’m going to go scan these into IAFIS.”

“You do that. Oh, any luck on that footage analysis?” Olivia leaned back and looked up at him before he could leave.

“None whatsoever.” Brock shook his head. “I’ll keep looking, but Claude mostly keeps to the shadows. And his car roof is between the camera and the trash can, so I have no idea what he threw away.”

“Well, we know what he threw away.” Olivia looked back at Abby’s puffy-eyed face on her Instagram account as she turned the cell phone back on. “Connie and Abby both. But as for what landed in the trash can, we’ll never know.”

The best way to find out where Brody got the phone was to have another conversation with him, so Olivia and Brock set out for the hospital before going to their hotel for the night; they met with Dr. Sinclair on the trauma floor where Brody was kept.

“Mr. Ray is doing much better,” Dr. Sinclair informed them. “The bump on his head is healing and he shows no signs of residual damage from the mild concussion.”

“That’s good news,” Olivia replied. “We’re going to need to ask him a few more questions. Is he in a good mental state for that?”

“He did well this morning when we checked on him, so I’d say that he’s good to go for now. Nothing too overly taxing should be fine.”

Brock thanked the doctor and found their way back to Brody’s room. The nurse was just leaving as they walked in and Brody sighed again upon seeing them. “What do you guys want? Did you catch the guy who actually did this?”

Olivia felt her defenses rise, seeing that Brody was already not in a helping mood today. “That’s why we’re here. We need your help.” She settled into a chair beside the bed to be more eye level with him and Brock settled down at her side. Brock leaned forward, starting the conversation off. “Brody, we need to know where you found that cell phone.”

Brody looked up at them, recognition dawning on his face. He knew. When he didn’t make a move to say anything else, Olivia tried again. “We also found Abby’s ID and wallet in your apartment.”

“In other words, the victim’s personal items were found in your house,” Brock reminded him in a firm tone. “That doesn’t look good for you, buddy.”

Buddy. Olivia liked how he threw that word in there to make it sound like they were on his side. As much as they could get, that is. She watched Brody’s reaction, but instead of getting defensive, he shrugged his good arm very slowly. “I found them in the trash at the hotel.”

Olivia’s reservations about the kid melted away as she remembered how Brock had been so insistent upon something he’d seen on the camera. “In the trash? Tell us more about that.”

Brody spoke with a much slower tone, either from the medicine or weariness over the topic, Olivia wasn’t sure. “The day after I said I saw Abby at the diner? I went to work that next morning after driving around, trying to find Abby. When I was going into the hotel, I noticed the trash was full. There’s a trash can out front, and it hadn’t been taken out that night. When I took the trash bag out, I saw the ID and stuff lying there near the top. You find all kinds of things in the trash, so I took it out and went through it. It was all Abby’s stuff.”

“What all did you find in the trash can?” Brock leaned forward, interest driving his tone.

“A purse, a wallet, that’s how I knew it was Abby’s. And a cheap phone. I took it to the break room and was messing with it, but I couldn’t figure out how to unlock her phone. I thought if I could figure out how to get into her phone, I could find out what happened to her easier.”

“So, you took off with a key piece of evidence?” Olivia challenged. “Why didn’t you report it?”

Brody looked steadily up at her. “I don’t trust law enforcement to find out what happened. I reported her death and then beyond finding her body where I found it and said it was, they were completely clueless. Abby deserves better than that. So I decided that I wanted to try and figure out what happened to her. The cops never would. Besides. When I found her things, I didn’t know she was dead.”

“Which trash can exactly did you find her items in?” Brock confirmed.

“There’s a trash can near the front entrance where people pull up and throw stuff away all the time. That’s the one I found them in.”

So Brock had been right to pay extra attention to that. Olivia exchanged a small look with him. Before they could ask another question, Brody cut into their thoughts again. “It wasn’t just one cell phone, she had two. One was in the main pocket of her purse. The other one I was charging was hidden in the inner pocket. It’s the truth, I swear!”

Olivia checked the time on the clock in the hospital room. Tomorrow was the meeting with Connie, so she knew that she needed to get back and get some rest before tomorrow. If Brody didn’t have anything more worthwhile to contribute, it was best if they all got some rest.

“Thanks again, Brody. Hope you get to feeling better.”

Brody sent a glare that suggested he was caught off guard. “Sure. Not like you guys caused it or anything.”

Olivia bit any sarcastic remark back and turned to leave. Brock hesitated for a moment as if he was going to take that retort she kept to herself, but then decided against it and followed her out.

The streetlights left a soft glow on the dash as they drove back to the hotel. Olivia watched them, one by one, finding them hypnotic for how tired she was. “All we have is Brody’s eyewitness account, but a lot of evidence points to the fact that he might be telling the truth. Her stuff was found at Brody’s apartment, but it’s possible that he did dig it out of the trash.”

“My question is, why?” Brock mused.

Olivia was silent for a long time, turning the case over and over in her head. They had Brody’s eyewitness account, not that it meant anything. Brody could be lying, but it didn’t account for the fact that he’d mentioned getting something out of the trash can.

A thought clicked in Olivia’s mind and she turned to Brock. “Do you remember how Wayne said that Brody did all the,” she made air quotes, “‘digital stuff’ for him, like running the cameras?”

Brock nodded. “Yeah.”

“That means that Brody knew exactly how to access it. What if he was there? He saw Claude drop Abby off, he also saw Claude throw something away. Maybe he only said that he found Abby’s personal belongings in the trash can because he knew we’d see Claude on the security tapes throwing something away? What if Brody took Abby, killed her, and then took all of her things for himself? He could’ve gone back through and erased anything from the next morning, but left the bit that showed Claude throwing something away.”

“You’re thinking Brody might be trying to frame Claude?” Doubt rang in Brock’s tone, but Olivia could tell he wasn’t fully dismissing it.

“It wouldn’t surprise me. The man is obsessed with Abby. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being with anyone else, and that means Claude. He had her ring, Brock. He pulled it off her finger, claiming he had just found her. What if he just made that bit up about finding it?”

“It’s not something to dismiss. I think you’re onto something.” Brock tilted his head in thought. “What if that’s what Connie wants to tell us?”

“Do you think she knows about any of this?” Olivia asked. “She didn’t seem to know that he was cheating with Abby until we brought it up the first time and she found her Instagram account.”

“The woman obviously did some digging. It’s very possible she knows that her husband might be being framed. We’ve been coming around, asking questions. She has to know something’s up. How she would find that out, who knows? But she knew how to find out that he was cheating on her.”

“I’m just dying to know what she has to say.” Tomorrow couldn’t get here fast enough for Olivia to see if her hunch was correct.

Olivia and Brock arrived at Whole Foods in record time. Pretending to be just two regular civilians out for a mid-morning shopping trip, they strode into the store, looking as casual as they could. Olivia made sure to pay attention to her surroundings, marking the cars in the parking lot. She didn’t see a cream-colored Mercedes anywhere, so that was good. At least Claude hadn’t insisted upon coming with Connie, thus ruining her time with them. Once inside, Olivia scoped out the Whole Foods. Business as usual went along, with shoppers in line with their groceries, cashiers scanning groceries, or aiding in other things that were needed. The cafeteria to the left that held the coffee shop seemed to be dwindling in crowds as the morning rush died down. Olivia recalled the time she and Brock had arrived, around 10:45.

“Want to go look at some groceries with me?”

Brock nodded. “Sure. One of my favorite pastimes.”

Olivia fought a smile. “I’m sure it is.”

She fell into line behind Brock, striding up and down the myriad of stocked aisles, keeping their eyes out for anything that could pose a threat or to see if they could spot Connie. By the looks of things, she wasn’t here yet. Olivia couldn’t help but reflect how grocery shopping was what had alerted her to this case in the first place – how she’d been carrying her groceries up the stairs and had seen Abby struggling to get her boxes in her apartment. A wave of sadness passed over her as she thought about how those boxes and the circumstances surrounding them had eventually led Abby to this point. What had she done when she realized that she’d uprooted her entire life for a man who was not only unfaithful to her but had been playing her and his wife all along?

As the uneven time Connie had requested to meet them ticked near, Olivia and Brock drifted toward the coffee shop. There were about three people in line ahead of them, so they placed themselves near the back, reading the menu of overpriced drinks. They took turns keeping an eye out for Connie, facing the door at all times to see if she’d come walking in right on time.

Olivia checked her phone, thinking that looking at her watch might be too obvious for anyone who might be watching her. It was 11:03, shortly before the point Connie had requested to meet them, so they were still early. By the time they settled down at a table, looking like normal people on a coffee break, Connie’s meeting with them would look like a coincidence. When they got up to the counter, they both ordered coffee, then retreated back to a table along the wall that faced the door. While waiting for both their coffee and their meeting, Olivia noticed every person coming through the door. A red-headed mother with five kids. An elderly couple with a few miles between them as they walked. A jogger in yoga pants, probably coming in for her daily green smoothie. But no Connie.

The barista called out their orders. “I’ll get them.” Brock got up, but Olivia kept people-watching. Another couple strode in, this one who looked like they could run a healthy cooking channel with how they both looked. Perhaps they did. But still no Connie.

When Brock returned, Olivia tapped the screen on her phone. It illuminated the time: 11:12.

“Where is she?” Olivia cupped her drink and returned her attention to the doors.

“Maybe Claude decided he wanted to keep her home today?” Brock muttered before taking a sip of his coffee.

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Olivia drummed her fingers on her coffee and tried to look casual like they really had opted for coffee by the spur of the moment and not something premeditated.

Brock sensed that they needed to keep it casual, so he smiled and sat back in his seat. “Did I mention how beautiful you look today?”

She blew a raspberry as she took a sip of her coffee. “Did I mention that you’re full of crap?”

“You did, once. One of the last times I told you that you were beautiful.” Brock gave her a boyish grin and sent another look toward the front door as another elderly woman in a walker came hobbling in, outflanked by three giggling teenagers.

“Well, maybe because it’s true.”

“Well, maybe because it’s not.” Brock winked at her. “It’s a compliment, Olivia, and a true one at that. You should take it.”

“Whatever.” She playfully rolled her eyes and checked her phone again.

She made playful banter with him as five minutes bled into ten, then fifteen. Once the clock read 11:30, Brock sighed, rolling his empty coffee cup in vertical circles. “It is Wednesday, right? And she said for us to meet her here this morning, right?”

Olivia nodded. “She did.” What if something had happened to her? Or maybe she forgot. She got the same feeling about Connie that she had with Abby when Juliette had come to the apartment complex, asking about her. That something was wrong, but nothing appeared to be wrong except for the fact that Connie had stood them up for a meeting she organized.

“Maybe it slipped her mind.” Olivia surveyed the store again.

“Or maybe Claude had insisted on going with her and she called it off, planning to come later.” Brock suggested.

All these were viable options, but Olivia couldn’t ignore the gut feeling that something had happened to her. “Can you think of any reason why we would need to go to Connie and Claude’s house? Any evidence we need to follow up on, any more questions we have to ask without tipping Claude off that she set up this meeting with us?”

Brock studied the lid of his coffee cup. “I can’t. He hasn’t given us any reason not to believe his story. His car was seen at the hotel. He was open with the information, not trying to hide that he was two-timing his wife. But he denies the murder. And we don’t have any evidence that incriminates him.”

“But we couldn’t see Abby exit the car in the security footage.” Olivia fished for answers, anything that might take them back out to check on Connie.

“Because it was in the shadows. If anything, finding Abby’s purse, wallet, and cell phone in Brody’s apartment points to him and not to Claude. And I think you’re onto something about how he might have made the whole thing up about finding it in the trash. He probably saw it happen and knew we’d check the footage.”

Brock was right. The truth settled like a bowling ball in Olivia’s stomach as she sighed, looking down at her own empty coffee cup.

The crowds in the market started to pick up around noon, and Olivia could wait no longer. “I think something happened to her. Come on.” She stood to her feet with renewed energy. “The longer we wait for her, the more we could be doing something to find out what happened. Let’s get back to the lab.”

Brock stood up and reached for her empty cup to throw away. He studied the two cups he was about to dispose of as if they gave him an idea. “Do you think the fingerprint results are back on Abby’s personal items yet?”

“Maybe.” Olivia shrugged one shoulder.

“Well, if anyone else’s fingerprints are on the purse, if it’s an unknown in the system, we could always drive out there to get something of Claude’s that we can compare them to. It would be probable cause, since he was technically the last one to see her alive.”

“We can say we’re there to eliminate him as a suspect.” That is, if the fingerprints on the purse came back unknown. Olivia could always hold on to that hope.

Brock threw her cup and his away, then turned to leave the store, the same determination in his step that was in hers. “Let’s pick this thing apart. We’ll find a reason to go out there and check on Connie without tipping him off. I have a feeling we’ve just got to look harder.”

“Okay.” Once Olivia shut herself into her workspace with Brock, she felt like she was able to raise her voice to talk about the evidence, unlike when they had sat in the coffee shop talking in murmured voices. “We’ve got the scraps of fabric you found. You said it yourself, they could be nothing. But you also mentioned, who would burn a duffel bag rather than just donating it?”

“A small trail, but all right,” Brock agreed. “We’ve also got Abby’s purse, wallet, and phone found at Brody’s apartment. Any results from the fingerprints?”

“Well,” Olivia leaned over her screen and unlocked it. “What do you know? Some are a match for Abby. Some are a match for Brody. And one set is unknown.”

“Bingo.” Brock gave a smile. “Well, at least we have that. But we still have to get that warrant for his fingerprints.”

“In the meantime,” Olivia looked at the evidence lying on her workstation, shaking her head. “There’s got to be more. Brody says he didn’t kill Abby. That he stalked her when she left, found her dead, and anonymously called 911 after running off with all her personal belongings, including her ring. Claude also says he didn’t kill her, that he loved her and dropped her off at the hotel and then left her there.” Olivia lifted her left hand to chew on a hangnail on her index finger. She’d been so focused on the case that she hadn’t even thought to clip her nails that morning. As she did, Brock zeroed in on her hand, studying it like it was the smoking gun clue to the case. When Olivia put her hand down, he caught it, bringing it closer to himself to examine. “Babe…”

She turned to look at him, perhaps a little confused. Why was he staring at her hand so intently? Her engagement ring caught the fluorescent lights overhead, glimmering tiny rainbows and rays of light that shot upward when the light hit it just right. “Have you never seen my hand before?”

“Your ring.” Brock nodded up to her, lifting her hand in acknowledgment. “If you broke up with me today, right now, what’s the first thing that you would do?”

Well, that came out of the blue. Olivia blinked, yanking her hand back. “Well, uh, depends on the reason I was breaking up with you, I guess. If I found out you were cheating on me, I’d probably break up with you, then punch you in the face, and claim self-defense.”

Brock’s lip ticked in a smile and he couldn’t help but dismiss his serious tone and laugh. “Good one. But I’m thinking of something that every girl does. Something tells me you’d want to get me out of your life and wash away evidence of me hanging around as soon as possible. Which means if today were the last time you’d ever want to see me,” he nodded to her finger. “You’d probably be wanting to return something.”

It clicked. His hypothetical nightmare made sense. Olivia blinked, staring down at her ring. Slowly, slowly, she began to nod. “You’re right.”

“So why didn’t she return the ring to Claude if he dropped her off at the hotel? Brody obviously wound up with it. But how? I doubt, even after their little fight, that Abby would give it to Brody. Not even as payment if he were doing her a favor. He wouldn’t want a keepsake of another man’s ring from the girl he was obsessed with.”

“And she wouldn’t want to keep it, either. Unless she thought she could sell it, but that doesn’t sound like Abby.” Olivia chewed her lower lip. “So... you think that there’s a reason she didn’t give him back her ring.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.” Brock nodded. “Either something happened before she could, or they didn’t break up at all.”

“And Abby knew he was cheating on her,” Olivia followed up. “And she mentioned she was going to trap him. So the first option is sounding pretty viable right now.”

“So, what happened?” Brock reached for the purse while Olivia reached for Abby’s personal cell phone. “I’ll go through her burner phone for anything we might’ve missed.”

“I’ll do the same for her personal cell phone.” Her texting conversations with Claude showed no signs of foul play. Olivia had scanned them before, finding nothing but details about rendezvous points, moving to France, or cringy love messages from Claude to Abby. Claude hid it well in text, she thought. Would she really find anything on Abby’s personal phone? Then again, Abby was smart. She had hidden her Instagram app in a subfolder of another subfolder on her burner phone. Had she done the same with something else on either one of her phones?

She opened Abby’s full list of apps again and began tapping on any folder she could find. She found one that looked like it was all technical stuff, but dismissed it quickly, seeing that she had gathered her phone settings and Verizon apps all into one folder. She typed in Downloads in the search bar, then clicked on the first folder that came up, My Files. Probably one of those folders that only came up if you were looking for it in the search bar. Olivia scrolled through and decided to check Abby’s storage settings. Interesting. Her storage was nearly full.

Olivia pulled up a list of apps that took up the most storage and recognized the one at the top. CloudCam.

“Brock, take a look at this.” She tapped on the app as he came closer. “Her storage is nearly full and this one app, CloudCam, has taken up a huge chunk of it.”

“CloudCam.” Brock mused. “Isn’t that an app for connecting camera footage to the cloud?”

“Yeah. And not just cameras that come on your phone.” Olivia waited for it to load and dismissed the ad that came up first. “You know, Abby would know about hidden cameras because her fiancé was in the business.”

Brock paused for a minute. “And, she said she was going to trap him. That she had access to something because he did, too. And was going to use it against him.” He hesitated for another minute before grabbing Abby’s purse. “I couldn’t get this thing to snap earlier.”

“They wear out,” Olivia commented, absentmindedly.

“Maybe.” Brock pulled the opening apart and looked inside one of the snaps. He stopped for a minute before turning the purse around to show her. “Olivia. Look at what we have here.”

Olivia was more interested in the video that popped up on CloudCam, so it took her a minute to fully digest what Brock had said. She looked over and focused on the snap portion of the purse where a tiny black dot took up the center of the snap. The realization seized her with both hands. “Smart, smart Abby.”

“I bet this hidden camera is what she connected to CloudCam.” Brock snapped a picture of the camera’s location for evidence, then used a pair of tweezers to take it out. “Man, she really glued that thing in there.”

“I bet this thirty-plus minute video is whatever that camera recorded.” Olivia checked the time and date stamps, which only confirmed her theory. The date of Abby’s death.

Brock grew somber as he wheeled closer to her. Olivia turned the volume up all the way on the phone and clicked on the thirty-minute video.

There she was. Abby, with perfect makeup and lipstick, the same clothes she was wearing in the crime scene photos, but not the familiar smile. She settled back in a car seat and looked down at the camera at an angle that made Olivia wonder if she was holding her purse in her lap. Bright white lights flooded the car, yet cast shadows in beams across her face.

“Hey, guys.” Her voice was quiet as she cast a glance outside the car window, then back to her purse. “My fiancé is pumping some gas right now. He doesn’t know this, but I’m going to record this conversation I’m about to have. Just so that I don’t doubt reality later on. And I want to catch him red-handed. So here it is. Here is where I will confirm my fiancé is cheating on me, part one.”

With that, she sat back in her seat and gazed out of the window, a sad, forlorn look on her face.

“I think that’s the gas station in Sparrow Grove,” Brock commented while Abby waited for Claude to pump gas.

Olivia nodded. “And look at the time stamp. 11:25.” It struck her that they were about to witness beyond any doubt exactly what happened to Abby.

A car door opened and Claude slid into the front seat with a sigh, pulling the door closed behind him. “Ready to leave this dumpy town behind?”

“More than ready.” Abby set her purse against the car door at an angle that caught all of her upper torso and face and part of Claude’s shoulder. She didn’t aim the camera at a very good angle, but at least they could hear the recorded dialogue.

The lights pulled away from her face, dousing her in darkness.

“Mind if I turn the light on?” Abby asked after the humming of the engine indicated they’d turned on the highway. “The darkness is making me tired, and I don’t want to fall asleep just yet.”

“I don’t see how you think that would make a difference, but sure, go ahead.”

Olivia clenched a fist. “Well, there’s your narcissist, right there.”

Brock nodded. “You can say that again.”

Abby paused in hurt for a moment. “Thanks.” She clicked the light on and sat back. “Claude, I need to talk to you.”

“Is this about seeing your ex at the diner?” Claude’s voice sounded compassionate, maybe mirroring her serious tone a bit. “I know that must’ve caught you off guard, but you’re with me and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I would have taken the guy out to the alley and showed him how a real man behaves if it came down to it.”

Ego. Conversation redirect. Olivia closed her eyes. Keep it strong, Abby. Don’t break down!

Another silence preceded her answer. “No. It’s not about my ex.”

“Then, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Abby drew in a long breath through her nose. From the dim glow of the light in the car, she looked as worried as could be, but strength overpowered that worry. “Remember when you told me to take down that Instagram picture of the two of us?”

“Yes.” Claude’s voice cooled. “I wasn’t ready to make it public yet. I like to keep things private on the internet because you know how people use stuff against you. I like to keep anything personal like relationships where they belong: behind closed doors.”

Abby didn’t follow his redirection this time. “Well, it caught me by surprise and I did some digging, maybe a little background check.” She let a beat or two go by, letting the hum of their road trip fill the silence until her voice came out, quaking but drowning in sadness. “Why didn’t you tell me about Connie?”

The silence that filled the car was thick enough to suffocate. The kind that sucked out every noise, replacing them with bewildered thoughts before an eruption.

Oh, and Claude erupted all right. “What, you didn’t trust me? That’s why you did a background check on me, you didn’t trust me?”

“Well, I’d say I had a pretty dang good reason not to!” Abby exploded. Even in her fury, she still minded her language and tried to keep her sweetness about her, but it didn’t hide the mounting frustration in her voice. She cracked. He matched. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

“Because I love you —”

“You don’t lie to people you care about, Claude. You don’t lie about being married to someone. You know my history. I trusted you and told you my history and you still chose to keep up the charade, all the while knowing that I hate unfaithfulness!”

“Look, I know. I know. I’ve been trying to find a way to end things with Connie. We aren’t happy, Ab. We haven’t been for a long time, and I’ve been working my way toward the end of a relationship…”

“Oh, so not only are you two-timing her, but you’re also leaving her for me!” Abby’s head nodded in a furious spitfire. “That’s real nice of you, Claude!”

The camera buzzed a bit, Abby’s raised, high-pitched voice probably messing with the gain or feedback in the sound. It didn’t cut off Claude’s reply, though.

“I wasn’t leaving her for you, Abby. I was leaving her because I wasn’t happy and you showed me that. Besides, how could I tell you about her? I never meant for things to go this far, but you made it so easy for me to fall in love with you that I didn’t want to lose you. Connie and I are headed for divorce anyway, it’s just taking a little while to get there, and I knew that if I told you that, I’d lose you. And I don’t want to lose you.”

“Maybe you already have.” Abby’s voice choked, as she probably fought back tears.

Claude huffed a sigh. “Great,” he bit out. As if it was Abby’s fault. As if by blowing his cover, she was inconveniencing him. “Look. I know there’s things you don’t know. You’re young, you haven’t experienced life yet…”

“Don’t you throw that in my face! You need to tell Connie. Because if you don’t, I will!”

“Honey!” Claude roared. Coating her in sweetness with a pet name even as he pummeled her to death with words. “You can’t tell Connie; she won’t understand. Besides, if you tell her, that’ll make me out to be the bad guy when I’ve had nothing but both of your best interests at heart! I love you and I love Connie, so imagine the predicament I’ve been in this whole time!”

“Imagine my predicament finding out the guy I love is cheating on me after I told him that I hated that!” Abby clawed her fingers through her hair.

“I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t understand.” Claude huffed a sigh. The car was silent for a minute or two before his voice finally cooled. “Look. I don’t want to fight while driving. Let’s pull over and talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” Abby growled. “The fact that I can’t be with you anymore or the fact that you need to tell Connie? Because those are the only two options.”

“Just... hold on a second,” he said, condescendingly. Brakes squealed and Abby jolted forward in her seat, a sign that Claude had braked suddenly. Olivia heard the crunching of gravel under tires as Claude put the Mercedes into park, then turned to face her. His face came into the frame and Abby kept her distance, side-eying him with enough disgust to convey her point.

“Honey,” Claude tried again. Abby cut him off.

“Don’t call me ‘honey!’”

“Abby, then.” Claude sighed and reached his arm around behind her seat as if to hug her. “Look, I’ve been trying to find a way to end things with Connie. I love you, and I want to marry you.”

“That’s what he told us, that day.” Brock leaned forward, not wanting to miss a single detail. “So far, all of this is confirming his story.”

“Yeah, it is.” Olivia gritted her teeth. “He left off the part about making it all out to be her fault, though. He didn’t tell her because she wouldn’t understand? Make that one make sense.”

Abby stood her ground and Olivia silently gave her a standing ovation. “I am leaving you. I will not be with a man who cheats on his wife, and I will not be the woman he cheats with! I’m leaving you. I don’t care how much money is involved or what you gave me. We had a great run. But it’s all ruined now that I know you were cheating on your wife. And on me!”

Claude scanned her face, up and down, as if drinking in all her features. If Olivia didn’t know any better, he looked like he was sad, devastated that his relationship with her was coming to an end. Maybe he was holding back tears, like she was. Abby had done a good job of holding back her tears and Olivia wondered if he was mirroring her actions.

“Will you reconsider if I divorce Connie?”

“No.” Abby’s answer bolted from her mouth. “And what about this whole moving to France thing? You were trying to make it so that we’d never know that you were married to both of us, weren’t you? You’re already controlling, Claude. You never came to see my family, always dictated my time; looking back I see that now. Is this what all this is about?”

“I was protecting you. You don’t know this, but there are so many creeps in the world and…” his voice fell. “That’s beside the point. The point is, Abby, I love you. You mean everything in the world to me. You have shown me what it’s like to really fall in love and that’s not something I can easily forget. You have no idea how much I love you and how I’m just... hearing you say that you’re going to leave me is honestly pretty devastating. I don’t know how I’ll get on without you. You were the sunbeam in my life. My life sucked until I met you and now that’s gone, too.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have been cheating on your wife with me.” Abby’s embittered words countered his narcissistic guilt-tripping and Olivia held her breath.

Finally, Claude sighed. “I’m sorry, Abby. If this is how you really feel, I can’t force you to love me. Maybe we can try again in the future. But…” his voice choked, his eyes were wide with shimmering tears. “You were my whole world, Abs. That being said, I’ll let you go, but all I ask is this. Can I get a final kiss goodbye?”

Abby’s eyes were pooling with tears. They reflected the dome light of the car as she nodded. Claude bent forward, angling his head to breathe across her lips one last time.

Then it happened. As he cupped her face with one hand, the other hand had found its way from behind the seat to tangle with her hair, his elbow twisted down. Abby gave a muffled cry, her lips still pressed against his, and her body went limp as a rag.

Olivia’s eyes went wide and she laid a hand against her mouth. “Did he just…?”

Claude drew back and Abby flattened against the seat, her head rolling to one side, her neck and jaw at an odd angle. Her lipstick smeared up the face of her cheek.

“He killed her,” Brock said, softly.

Claude sprang into action, opening his door. A few moments later, Abby’s door was yanked open and the footage on the camera blurred, probably meaning he tossed her purse, dousing the footage in darkness. A seatbelt unclicked and the noise stopped.

After a few moments, the footage came back. The camera showed Claude tossing her purse back into the passenger seat, throwing his car in drive, and turning onto the road. He reached up and killed the dome light, his face lit only by passing cars as he kept driving.

“She never even stood a chance.” Brock shook his head.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Trap-The-Narcissist approach brings you.”

They watched for another twenty minutes, wordlessly, as Claude pulled in somewhere with lights overhead. The car was half-encased in shadow as he reached across the seat. The whirring of a window went down as Claude grabbed Abby’s purse and leaned over the seat, stuffing it somewhere.

The rest of the video was nothing but darkness until the time limit ran out.

“Well, now you know what he was throwing away.” Olivia nodded to Brock. “Abby’s purse, wallet, phone for Brody to find.”

“Probably to frame him, too. Knowing he was obsessed with her,” Brock mentioned.

“So, Brody was telling the truth.” Olivia drew the conclusion. “Claude kills Abby, dumps her body, then tosses her things in a trash can at the hotel where her ex works. All because Abby was going to tell Connie herself that Claude was cheating on her.”

Brock sighed, shaking his head. “Someone needs to talk to Cindy. Abby may still be alive if she hadn’t listened to that woman’s advice.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Something Brock said triggered something in Olivia and with a gasp, her head shot up. “Oh, no.”

Brock caught her glance, coming to the same conclusion she did as he said in sync with Olivia.

“Connie.”

A trail consisting of a few local police as well as some fellow agents for back-up followed Olivia as she guided them out to Claude’s house. She drove the car along the dirt road, urgency pounding with every heartbeat. She was sure that the team that had come together to arrest one suspect probably was the most consecutive traffic this small town had seen in a while.

She cranked the wheel, tearing up the driveway, leading the host of police behind her. She didn’t care about the parking job she did along the wall of the barn where, a few days prior, Connie had peeked out, setting up the secret meeting with them. Claude’s Mercedes was absent, leaving only Connie’s BMW.

Olivia put the car in park and sprang from her seat. Brock was already hastening toward the porch when she closed the door behind her, so she shadowed his footsteps. He rapped a few times on the door, calling “Claude McMillian, FBI. We have a warrant for your arrest!”

Silence greeted him. Olivia noted the camera pinned on the door frame and wondered if Claude was somewhere else, watching their every move. If he was, he was now fully aware that they were out to arrest him. Great. Maybe Connie would know where he was. If she was still alive.

Olivia shook that thought out of her head. “Let’s get inside.”

Brock nodded to her and she stepped to the side. He burst through the door, swinging it into the spacious house. “Claude McMillian?” His voice echoed in the empty space and Olivia couldn’t help but feel how empty the house was. One could usually sense another person’s presence in a building, but this one just felt too empty. Well, it didn’t stay that way for long. Not with the agents and local officers backing them up as they spilled into the house. Olivia’s senses were all heightened as she took the familiar path to the living room. But the living room was not even close to the way she remembered it. The desk near the staircase along the wall was tipped over and balancing precariously on the chair scooted in front of it. The doors hung open, suspended by their glides and littered their contents onto the floor. Pens and other supplies rolled out in a circumference surrounding the desk, indicating that a struggle had ensued near there.

The struggle carried over into the living room where couch cushions were upturned, a shoeprint embedded into the pure white of the couch and the carpet was folded halfway up onto itself. The coffee table was also upturned, spilling coasters and a flower arrangement onto the carpet. There was something sticking out from behind the upturned coffee table. She called to Brock and hastened toward the coffee table, dreading what she’d see as she looked over the edge.

There was Connie. Her eyes wide, her face pale, and her neck painted in a purple and brown bruise with two smaller, darker bruises near her windpipe. Her right knuckles were busted open and caked with flowing blood and her still form showed signs of fighting back.

“No!” Olivia lowered her weapon and shot a desperate look at Brock. “We’re too late.”

Sighing Brock shook his head.

Olivia felt the weight of failure crashing down on her and suffocating her, just as Connie had struggled to breathe in her last moments. One of the officers from the police force came up beside her, his seasoned face masked with authority and showing no signs of shock. He’d been at this a while. “I’ll call the coroner,” he assured her, then stepped from the room.

“I’m going to take a team and search upstairs,” one of the agents told her, but she barely heard him. Her focus was on Connie.

“Honey,” Brock read her mind. “It’s not your fault.”

Not her fault. Sure. She knew something had been wrong when Connie hadn’t shown up to her predetermined meeting with them. Olivia nodded in nothing more than acknowledgment and crouched down beside Connie. She wanted to reach out and touch her, but she couldn’t do anything until the coroner arrived except scan her body for evidence. She noted the broken fingernails of her right hand and the blood that coagulated on the surface. “Looks like she got a piece of her attacker.” Her attacker. Like she and Brock didn’t know his name. Of course they had to be professional and not jump to conclusions about the attacker and murderer being her husband. It did help to know, however, that Claude usually went for the neck.

Brock slowly lowered himself down beside Olivia as if hesitant to say something. “Yeah,” he said in a cautious tone, judging how she might react. “We can pick up a toothbrush or something of his and compare DNA since he’s not in the system.”

Olivia nodded.

“Hey.”

She didn’t want his pep talk right now, so she jerked her head up. The fire in her gaze softened as she read the softness in his, but she maintained the hardened wall around her heart. She didn’t want to go there.

“We did everything we could,” Brock pinned her with a serious tone. “This is not your fault.”

He could have thrown the word legally in there, as the only thing that had stopped Olivia from coming out here and bursting down the door when Connie hadn’t shown up was procedure. They didn’t have anything to pin on Claude at the time. He hadn’t given them any leads. The only reason they knew that he was the one to kill Abby was because the girl outsmarted him with his own tech.

“You’re right.” Her voice clutched at her throat.

“Olivia.”

“I know.” She cut him off, not wanting to dwell on the guilt. She knew he was right. She knew. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She got to her feet and he watched her, desperately. She sniffed, refusing to lose her professionalism in the face of this moment. Interrupting whatever Brock might have tried to console her with, an agent came into the room.

“Most of the men’s clothing from the upstairs room is gone. There’s a gaping space in the closet.”

Brock rose to his feet, letting the conversation go and jumping back into the case. “Claude’s going to skip the country.”

“We’ve gotta stop that from happening!” Olivia jumped into action, getting on her radio. “This is Agent Olivia Knight, I need an APB on a vehicle.” She rattled off the Mercedes license plate number by memory, having investigated that car enough times to remember it. She called instructions into her radio as Brock came all the way down. He slowed his steps as he approached Connie, looking down at her and shaking his head. “Why would he kill her?” he asked once Olivia had pocketed her radio.

“The guy’s a narcissist,” Olivia bit out. “He wanted to keep his double life. Connie probably got tired of the love-bombing and the gaslighting. When a woman has had enough, she’s had enough.”

“But what was she going to tell us?” Brock crouched, examining what he could on Connie’s body without touching her. He waited for the coroner for that, but his eyes gathered any evidence he could until then. “Maybe Claude’s dirty business in France? That it’s somehow connected to that weapons shipment Marion was looking into?”

Olivia shook her head. “I don’t know. But right now, we have to find this guy, preferably before he skips the country.”

“A manhunt is underway for a wanted man, Claude McMillian, who may be traveling under a false identity…”

“Suspect is considered dangerous, do not approach…”

“Police are asking civilians to keep an eye out for this car and this man, pictured below…”

Olivia scrolled through the news clips on her YouTube app as a picture of Claude was presented up on the screen. The make, model and license plate of his Mercedes blew up every phone in the area with alerts. Local news and TV newscasters flashed his unforgettable picture around, along with his car. Brock drove under one of the LED light-up boards with the license plate, make, and model of the Mercedes on the highway. Nothing. No leads yet. It frustrated Olivia, but she tried to keep calm, knowing it was the only way to think clearly.

“Do you think driving to Dallas Airport is a waste of time?” she asked. “Surely someone would have seen him and called the FBI or Texas State Patrol by now if he were there.”

“Not necessarily. If he’s trying to skip the country, it may not be easy to get a last-minute flight out.” Some hesitation crept into Brock’s tone as if he were unsure of himself. “Before we left, the coroner said Connie had been dead about nine hours. So roughly around six or so this morning.”

Olivia glanced at the clock, inwardly groaning at the time. It was nearing three in the afternoon, the crime scene investigation taking up a huge chunk of that time. “Let’s just hope he didn’t use a fake name.” Olivia looked down at her phone. “Dallas Airport said that no one by the name of Claude McMillian flew out of the airport in the last forty-eight hours. The last record they had of him flying was when he came back from France this last time.”

“So where could he be? How hard is it to hide in the state of Texas?” Brock blew out a sigh between his lips, keeping his eyes on the road.

A message from the field office crackled on the radio in the car with their codes. Olivia took hold of the radio and held it to her mouth. “This is Agent Knight, we copy.”

A burst of static. “We had a report coming in from the downtown Bank of Dallas. The suspect was in early this morning. The bank manager called it in.”

“Got it.” Olivia typed the coordinates into her phone. “Take this next exit and we’ll have to get back on the southbound highway,” she said to Brock.

Brock followed the directions. He let a few moments go by. “Listen, Olivia,” he started to say. “About earlier,”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Olivia cut him off. “I know it’s not my fault. Head knowledge is different than heart knowledge. Why couldn’t we see through him when we talked to him? We knew going into that interview that he was a narcissist; we just hadn’t confirmed it yet.”

“We did, and that’s why we kept him as a suspect. You can’t blame yourself for something that happened. You’re not able to predict the future, Olivia.”

Olivia wasn’t sure why, but his statements frustrated her more than comforted her. “Just let me have my thoughts and we’ll talk about this later.” Changing the subject quickly, she looked down at the GPS. “You’ve got about twenty minutes.”

Brock nodded, dropping the subject. Olivia hoped she hadn’t hurt him. He was just trying to help, but her own inner turmoil wouldn’t allow her to be comforted right now. It didn’t matter that they had done, and were still doing, everything they could. Olivia still struggled with that nagging feeling they could’ve done more.

They spent the rest of the ride in silence and before she knew it, they pulled up in front of the grand structure of the bank. “He just can’t do anything small, can he?” Olivia shook her head as she unbuckled her seatbelt. “Big house, fancy cars, big bank, business overseas.”

“Method of killing innocent women,” Brock added as he got out. He and Olivia climbed the stone steps that led into the lobby of the bank. They approached one of the desks near the front and Brock showed off his badge to the woman sitting there. “We’re with the FBI, we need to speak to the bank manager.”

The woman nodded and scurried from her desk, disappearing somewhere into one of the back rooms. In a few moments, a well-dressed man emerged looking like he could be from England from the sophisticated way he was dressed and carried himself. He approached Olivia and Brock, introducing himself. “Vinny Harrel, how can I help?”

Olivia greeted him, then asked professionally, “We got a call saying that you saw this man in here earlier?” She showed a picture of Claude McMillian.

“I did. He’s one of our patrons. He was sitting in the parking lot when the bank opened at eight.” Vinny looked around, then motioned for them to follow him to a quieter portion of the bank. Once they were out of the way of traffic, he leaned in to speak quietly with them. “He has an account and a personal safe with us. This morning, he came in and cleaned out everything out of his personal safe.”

Olivia inwardly groaned. That would’ve been about six or so hours ago. “Do you mind if we take a look?”

“You’re more than welcome to.” Vinny motioned for them to follow him to the back where the safes were kept. “But you’re not going to find anything, unfortunately. He cleared it out, then closed it down so the safe’s empty.”

He led them down a row of files and safes stashed against the wall. He approached one and unlocked it with a key, rolling it open. Sure enough, the only thing taking up space in the drawer was air.

“He didn’t happen to say why he needed to clear it out, did he?” Brock asked.

Vinnie shook his head. “No. Just that he needed to move out. He didn’t elaborate and I didn’t think to ask.”

Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t a known suspect as of that morning. “Thank you,” Olivia thanked him anyway.

After finding nothing of great importance in the bank safe, Olivia offered to drive for a bit. Both she and Brock felt the urgency and possible defeat nipping at them as they closed themselves inside the car from the Texas heat.

“Well, that’s just great.” Brock sighed as he buckled his seatbelt. “I bet I know what was in that safe of his. Passports with a fake ID, an obnoxious amount of money, just enough to either fly out of the country unnoticed or lay low for a while until the public forgets your picture.”

Olivia started the car and guided it out of the parking lot. “I guarantee you the families of these victims will never forget.” She kept up with traffic for a few minutes before continuing a train of thought. “My question is, he’s killed his mistress. Why kill his wife, too?”

“Maybe she also threatened to leave him and he didn’t like that. Or whatever she had to tell us was important. Unfortunately, we’ll never know what that is, now.”

Olivia let a sigh ripple through her, keeping her eyes on the road. The Dallas traffic was less tense than what she was feeling. Why hadn’t they found the hidden camera sooner? If they could’ve discovered the footage, then maybe they could have at least saved Connie’s life and stopped a known murderer from leaving the country. Olivia hoped his picture was enough, but what if he disguised himself well? Dyed his hair, shaved off the beard, maybe was even creative enough to put in some contact lenses to disguise his eye color? That, combined with the possibility of someone who hadn’t seen the news or the timing of when the news came out, he could easily be on a plane headed to Europe somewhere.

After a few minutes of driving, Brock’s cell phone buzzed into her thoughts. He answered on the first ring. “Agent Tanner.” There was a long pause, one that made Olivia hope that whoever the other party was had some good information. Brock nodded. “Thank you. We’re on it.” He rattled off information as he hung up. “We got him. Traffic cameras spotted him on the highway headed to Houston. About an hour ago, police received a report of some gunshots coming from one of the ships that was leaving the port. They’re investigating it now, but it sounds like there’s a possible 419. Could be our guy.”

Houston. A hot spot for shipments and deliveries in and out of the country. “Of course.” Olivia drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “He knows he can’t leave the country via plane. Every airport security in France will be waiting for him and every airport in the US is also on the lookout. He’d try to leave the country another way.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Brock’s determination rang in his voice as he looked out the window. “The ship is on lockdown. We should get there soon enough. I’ll type in the coordinates.”

Olivia nodded. What would they find when they got to the ship? She hoped it really was Claude and not another wild goose chase where they could have been looking elsewhere. Either way, he was headed to Houston, so whether he had caused the gunshots or not, they were headed in the right direction.

It was early evening by the time Olivia and Brock pulled into the Houston port. The GPS took them right to the middle of all the action, crawling with police cars, a few civilians, and what looked like the ship’s crew. Olivia surveyed the situation as she stepped out of the car, noticing a crew gathered around a state trooper who appeared to be taking statements. A few ambulances and a black vehicle parked near the dock where a ship anchored, probably meaning that someone had either been critically injured or died.

Near the edge of the crowd, an officer looked up. He clicked his pen closed and slipped it into his pocket as he approached them. Olivia readied herself. The officer seemed to know they were with the FBI before they even had a chance to introduce themselves. “FBI?”

Olivia nodded. “I’m Agent Knight, this is Agent Tanner.”

He nodded to each of them. “Officer Grinley, I’m the officer in charge here.”

“What’ve we got?” Brock squinted toward the ship before giving Grinley his full attention.

Grinley didn’t need to peruse his notes as he informed them of the situation. “Witnesses called in numerous gunshots coming from the ship near the time of its departure. By the time we got here, there were a few injuries and one death. The DB matches your description of the suspect you’re after. He’s in the ambulance over here.”

“Can we see him?” Olivia asked. What was Claude doing dead in the back of an ambulance? Had he been discovered as a stowaway?

“Of course.” Grinley led the way to where a man lay covered with a white sheet. Grinley nodded to a man standing near the ambulance, taking notes. “This is Clifford Huff, the coroner. He can tell you more.”

“Let’s start with some identification. He was found with quite a few passports containing several different names, so we’re not sure which one to go by.” Huff pulled the gurney out of the back of the ambulance enough to flip the sheet over, revealing the same face that Olivia and Brock had come to know as their suspect throughout their investigation.

“That’s him,” Olivia confirmed. “That’s Claude McMillian.”

The coroner stood near the ambulance. “From what we’ve got so far, he has a single gunshot wound to the chest. He has GPR on his hands, also noted. The gunshot appears to be the cause of death, being on the left side, probably going through his heart and killing him instantly. We’ll know more after autopsy.”

“Where was he found?” Brock worked on getting as many details as possible upfront.

“He was found below deck, behind a stack of some crates. Lying on his back, indicating he was probably facing whoever shot him. For now, that’s all I know.”

Brock said something to him but Olivia took just a few minutes to stare at Claude’s body. His eyes were closed, his face as pale as Abby and Connie’s had been. Just like that, the narcissist who had destroyed the lives of two women wound up dead, himself. It was amazing how some things had a way of turning out.

The coroner returned the sheet over Claude’s head and Olivia turned to finish the investigation. She was dying to know what happened.

“Well, you were right about the passports,” she casually noted to Brock.

He nodded again. “I figured that’s what a guy like him would keep in a bank safe. No one would ever suspect him of anything and just in the case he did run into trouble with the law, as we’ve seen he has, he had a major back-up plan.”

“I wonder where he was headed.”

Olivia and Brock approached the huddled bunch of crew members. “FBI, we need to ask you a few questions.” Olivia put on her authoritative tone, ready for a jumbled mess of stories.

Several faces of different races and colors turned to face her, a conglomeration of different parts of the world right here on this dock. Some had very strong European features, others darker, more Middle Eastern looking, and some others looked like they were from just south of the border.

One older-looking man with a European accent Olivia couldn’t place stepped forward. “I’m Captain Baird.”

“Can you tell us what happened, here?” Brock nodded backward to the ship and the ambulance hauling Claude’s body away.

The captain exchanged a worrisome look with his shipmates before he began. His eyes were wide and he looked pale, as if he’d never seen a dead body before. “We were getting the ship ready. We were about to leave on time. One of my men went down below deck to ensure the last fine details were in order and we saw him.” The captain pointed with a shaking finger toward the ship. “He was over on the far side of the crates, trying to duck and hide behind them.”

“I thought it was one of my crewmates playing a trick on me,” the one with an amber hue to his skin replied, a different accent marking his voice. “That he was hiding and jumping out to scare me or something. So I went over to sneak up on him, only I realized as I got closer that I didn’t recognize him. I ran back and called for help.”

“We didn’t recognize him,” still another said. “We told the captain, who said he was probably a stowaway. So a bunch of us went down to get him off the ship. We can’t be smuggling no one into a different country, you know?”

“Right.” Olivia nodded for them to go on.

Captain Baird spoke up again. “He was armed and started shooting at us when we went to confront him. I was on deck, but I heard gunshots from below and came running.”

“He fired at me first,” the first man interjected. He held his arm out, showcasing a bandage wrapped around his upper arm. “They said I got nicked. I’ll be okay. He popped up when I called out to him and started shooting at me.”

“By the time I got down there,” Captain Baird went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “One of my crew members had wrestled the gun from him and shot him in return. That’s when we called 911, but the cops were already on their way. Guess some people called in the gunshots they heard.”

Brock nodded, continuing to ask them mandatory questions, but Olivia let her attention drift over to the ship for a moment. The name of the ship embedded itself into the side, just under the railing. The Black Rose. At the end of the name was a lacy-looking black rose painted on the side, giving her a sort of Gothic sensation to it. Olivia pressed a dimple into her chin as she stared at it. Where had she seen that symbol before? It looked familiar, and somehow, her memory reminded her that wherever she had seen it had been just as big as it was on the ship.

The captain sniffed, the saltwater probably making his nose run. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a pest, but can you guys hurry this up a bit? We’re due to be in Rotterdam by a certain time.”

Olivia looked back at him. Well, at least she knew where the ship was headed. But why would Claude be going to the Netherlands when his business was in France? Maybe he knew he’d be wanted there, too?

Brock kept his tone professional, so used to people trying to rush them through their investigation. “We’re working it as fast as we can, sir.”

Olivia and Brock spent the next hour receiving the crime scene photos from local law enforcement and perusing the crime scene itself. The captain wasn’t going to be happy to learn that he was being detained, but what was he to expect after shooting a man? Self-defense or not, it was still a homicide they were dealing with.

Olivia stood on the dock at the end of her investigation, away from the crowds, finding a quiet place to watch the sun sink below a huge cloud bank and be visible only by a sliver between the clouds and the horizon. So much had happened and yet, even with Claude dead, she still didn’t feel satisfied with the outcome of this case. Claude had killed two women in cold blood. He had stowed away on a ship intent to leave the country but had wound up getting shot and killed because of that. He was trying to smuggle himself into a different country and had been discovered before he even left. Olivia let a sigh mix with the saltwater air and felt the weight of everything hit her.

Well, Abby, we know, now. We know what happened to you and he’s been dealt with. Just not in the way they were expecting.

She heard Brock come up behind her and sent a glance over her shoulder just to confirm it was him. He slipped his arms around her and drew her against him, nuzzling a kiss into the fold of her neck, reminding her how warm she was whenever he was around. “You okay?”

“Just thinking about everything,” Olivia admitted. “How we get to tell Juliette that she was right, that Abby’s amazing fiancé killed her and then got killed, himself, when he tried to leave the country. There was so much that went into this case.” She looked out over the water. “Who knew that one missing persons case could turn into something this grand?”

“That’s usually how it works. I’m just glad it’s over.” Brock set his palm against her shoulder and turned her to face him. Soon, she felt his arms encircle her as she pressed her face into his chest. There, they stayed by the light of the setting sun until the last ray faded. Memories of the day came flooding back to her. She remembered how short she’d been with him, slapping his hand away when he’d extended it to help her. She sighed. “I’m sorry for the way I was earlier.”

He pulled away just enough to look down at her eyes and patiently waited until she was done talking.

“It just hit me wrong. How we knew that something was wrong and there wasn’t anything we could do.”

“The coroner said she’d been dead since this morning. Claude probably killed her around six in the morning.” Brock’s face softened. “That doesn’t make it easier, but she was dead before we even knew she was missing.”

“I know,” Olivia’s voice turned to velvet. “I get that. I’m sorry I was snappy earlier.”

Brock reached to tuck a stray hair out of her face and gazed at her with enough affection to melt her troubles. “It’s okay, babe. You know I still love you.”

Olivia couldn’t wait any longer and leaned forward. She felt his lips brush against hers, closing her eyes as he forgave her and she reconnected with him. The stress of the case, from beginning to end, began to melt away along with the last rays of sunlight. Brock swayed back and forth a bit before he broke the kiss off and angled a look down to stare into her eyes. “Let’s go home,” he murmured against her.

Home sounded pretty good right about now.

“What about this one?”

Olivia scrolled up to a picture of a house with a nice wrap-around deck on the second story, overlooking a forest. For the past week, it had taken some time to settle in and get some of her sanity back, not feeling as exhausted as she had upon their arrival home seven days ago. It was fun to be back to daydreaming with Brock about their living arrangements.

“Too blue.”

“What?”

“Too blue. I’d be depressed every time I came home to that!” Brock grinned at her.

“It’s barely gray!”

“Like I said. Too blue!”

Olivia playfully rolled her eyes. “Okay, so no blue houses. That narrows it down to, oh, maybe fifty percent. Got it.” She clicked to the next image. “Have you ever heard of this concept called repainting?”

“And we have time for that, when? Remind me?” Brock elbowed her in the ribs.

“Oh, shut up,” Olivia chuckled. “What about this one? It has a nice backyard.” She reached for the tea she’d made earlier when she had agreed to sit down and shop houses with Brock. Yesterday, she and Brock had ended the week by opening up a separate savings account at their bank just for the new home they were working toward. The future looked bright and they were both delighted to see the sum of what they had contributed so far start the ever-growing number that would one day be put forth as a down payment for a house. Until then, it was fun to spend a Saturday afternoon daydreaming about different houses and teasing about them. Olivia leaned back in her chair, trying to crack her back by arching over the chair’s back. “I need a break. I’m going to go for a walk and check our mail.”

The single mother who had taken over Abby’s apartment next door had moved out already, leaving a gaping hole of emptiness in the complex beside her. Olivia sighed as she closed her door behind her and took a moment to stare at the empty apartment. Number 212, where once a young, bright-eyed woman had lived and planned her future. Olivia only wished they might have met earlier, to perhaps have somehow helped to avoid her tragic end. Finding closure for her and for Juliette and the rest of the family just wasn’t enough, but it never was, was it? Olivia still thought about the teens in South Carolina that had never been found. In the end, she had to remind herself that she’d done what she could. For both the teens and Abby.

Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs and approaching her. Turning in their direction, she saw a courier in a navy suit coming toward her, a manila envelope clutched in his hand. “Agent Knight?”

She recognized him as part of the Bureau, one who had made a confidential delivery to her before. “That’s me.” She intercepted him, so he didn’t have to walk the whole way to her. As she did, she tried to hide the trepidation she felt. Why was she receiving a package from a courier? She didn’t miss the urgency that marked his steps, the way he hurried toward her.

He handed her the envelope. “Urgent message from Texas, from the coroner’s office.”

Texas? Her trepidation only grew into dread. What was so urgent that something from Texas had to be sent straight to her? Olivia arched an eyebrow as she examined the package. “Thanks.”

He gave a polite nod. “Yes, ma’am.” With that, he turned, his mission completed and started for the stairs.

Olivia stared at the envelope, marked “special attention” to her and Brock. What could it be? She wasn’t expecting anything. Forgetting the everyday mail, she walked back inside, feeling a bit tense. What could be so urgent from Texas as to require a courier to deliver it? “Hey, Brock?”

“What is it?” Brock leaned back from the table.

Olivia seated herself beside him and showed him the envelope. “We just got this delivery, marked ‘special attention.’ It’s from Texas.”

“From Texas?” Brock took the package and examined it. “It doesn’t seem like there’s much in there.”

“Let’s take a look.”

Brock tore the package open and reached inside. He withdrew two folded papers, a long one that slid along the inside of the envelope and another, bent into tiny folds and crumples inside a small evidence bag. The ink blurred from some kind of moisture, but from here, Olivia couldn’t tell what it was.

He unfolded the longer note. “Coroner’s report.”

“For who?” Olivia asked, astounded.

“For Connie McMillian.”

Connie? Why would the medical examiner be sending them a report about Connie? Had something new come to light? Was it possible that they had uncovered some evidence that Claude hadn’t killed her?

Brock’s eyes scanned the report, reading it aloud to her. “Cause of death, strangulation; we figured that. But the medical examiner left a note. ‘This was found in the stomach contents of Connie McMillian. We think she swallowed it before she died, knowing we would find it and get it into your hands. We put a rush on it to send it to you.’”

Had she found a way to get her message to them after all?

Brock opened the evidence bag and took the smaller piece of paper. He unfolded it, corner by corner by corner until a note scribbled onto a shopping list bordered with flowers appeared. Feminine handwriting addressed it to Olivia and Brock. The inside contained a note in Connie’s flowing hand.

Olivia, Brock, found this out on my wedding night. You never know who someone really is. - Connie.

Underneath the cursive hand, a website was written in plain print as if she had wanted to make sure the letters were visible.

“What in the world is this?” Ignoring the informal way she addressed them, Brock blinked, showing the note to Olivia. The difference in handwriting caught her attention. The website was clearly written in even, legible print. The note seemed scribbled as if written in a frantic hurry, as if her note wasn’t as important as the website was. So what was the website, anyway? When she read it for herself, her eyes widened.

“.onion?”

“What in the world is Connie doing on the dark web?” Brock shook his head. He dragged his laptop over in front of him and minimized the everyday browser, along with the houses they had been daydreaming over. It seemed like they had been looking at them two days ago rather than the fifteen minutes it had been, given the new information they’d discovered. The relaxing afternoon they had been enjoying now had a dark cloud hanging over it.

Olivia felt like crying. “She was so desperate to get some kind of message to us.”

“Now we can see why. Let’s find out what it was.” Brock pulled up Tor, the browser that connected them to things that should never be accessible, and double-checked his work as he typed the website link. With a final punch of the enter key, he and Olivia waited with bated breath to see what kind of disgusting things the link would lead into. After a spinning indicator that the website was loading took its time, a website spilled onto the screen. It had a Gothic-type appearance with roses and their thorns tangling down the borders of the website. A Gothic, cryptic lettering across the top spelled out words all too familiar to Olivia.

The Black Rose.

“That was the name of the ship Claude was trying to leave on,” she whispered, breathlessly. “What is this?”

Brock began to scroll. A few tabs aligned on top of the website with gray font standing out against the dark background. “Members only,” one of the tabs read. Another labeled “transactions” was the one Brock tried first.

“It’s encrypted.” He returned to the home page and scrolled down. Larger boxes containing faded gray text against a black background caught Olivia’s attention. Missing persons, one of them read.

Her finger trembled a little bit as she pointed to it. “Try that one.”

Brock did as she suggested, clicking on it. After a few moments, the screen loaded with row after row of pictures of young people, all looking like they were under age twenty, with faces that indicated they were haunted and unhappy. Each teen stood in a sexy pose with a hip jutted out or elbow tucked behind their bushy hair. Makeup adorned the girls, making them look older than their listed ages. Next to each picture, a status column stood out in plain white, some reading available. Product. These teens were being sold as products. Olivia’s stomach twisted.

As Brock scrolled, that sinking feeling only tightened. “Wait. Go back.”

Brock scrolled back a few pages to a picture of a familiar red-haired girl. The age beside her read 15. Freckles speckled her skin below unhappy eyes as her red hair framed her face.

“Brock... that’s Melissa. Remember that red-haired teen, the one from Cape Fremont?”

“You’re right. She’s the one that had the necklace that Alana was wearing.” Brock exchanged a look with Olivia. “You don’t think…”

Olivia scrambled to her feet, jogging into the back office where she had stashed her file away a few weeks back. She ripped open the file cabinet drawer and let her fingers run through every file, paper-cutting herself in the process. She didn’t care. When she finally found the file she was looking for, the one containing the missing teens, she rushed back into the room and sat next to Brock, plopping it open on her lap. One by one, she looked through the last recent pictures of the missing teens. Sickeningly, one by one, they were able to match several of those pictures to the ones listed on the Black Rose website.

“I can’t believe this.” Brock’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head. “All this time and Connie knew about those teens? She must have looked us up and saw that we worked that case in Cape Fremont and thought she could help.”

“But why set up a meeting with us at Whole Foods when she could’ve told us right there? Write the website down, hand it to us?” Suddenly, it hit Olivia like a ton of cement. She sat back, trying to remember how to breathe. “The Black Rose... can you scroll back to the top?”

Brock did, eager to get off the faces that would haunt his and Olivia’s dreams. She studied the emblem on the top of the website. The website’s emblem was a spider-webby, Gothic-looking black rose with the initials AC carved into the middle. The same she’d seen on the side of the ship that Claude had tried to use to skip the country, minus the initials.

“Hold on…”

She fumbled for her phone, thumbing it to life and found Marion’s contact information. After a few rings, Marion’s voice picked up on the other end.

“Got something for me already?”

“Marion?” Olivia asked. “Can you tell me if there was any sort of emblem on any of the crates of that weapons shipment you were looking into? The one attached to Claude McMillian’s business?”

“Sure,” Marion sounded hesitant as if she caught on that something was wrong. After a while, her voice came back on the line. “Yeah, it looks like there was.”

Olivia closed her eyes. “Was it a black rose? With some initials in the center?”

A long pause preceded her contact’s answer. “Yes.”

That was it. “Thank you.” Olivia couldn’t piece it together on the phone. Not right now. She lowered the phone to her lap, the screen going dark after the tip of her finger found the end call button. “Brock... I think I know why Claude was on his way to the Netherlands.”

“Why is that?” Brock’s voice was grave.

Olivia swallowed, again, the realization too heavy. “These are the teens who were trafficked from Cape Fremont. Do you remember how Alasdair Crosby was so angry with Mila for getting his initials in her tattoo?”

“Yeah.” Brock’s face darkened.

Alasdair Crosby, another classic case of a guy playing mental games, had played Alana Fleming, the local teacher, and a waitress, Mila, to help him get in touch with teens from rough homes, only to get them to run away with him so he could deliver them to the warehouse. At the warehouse, he’d hand them over to Angela and Carl, the husband-and-wife team who took the teens over from there. He had blown his stack when Mila got his initials tattooed. On the thought of the Cape Fremont case, Olivia suddenly remembered where she had seen that emblem before. She’d seen it on a ship, sailing off the coast of Charleston or somewhere close by.

“Claude knew exactly where to go... because he was in league with them.”

“In league with who? Alasdair and Carl?”

“Yes. You know that weapons shipment Marion was looking into, thinking it was from Claude? The crates had the same emblem on them that the ship and this website do. Not to mention, that trafficking ring we thought we busted was based out of the Netherlands.” Olivia looked back at the computer and the faces of the teens who were out there, somewhere. It all connected to the Black Rose. Alasdair Crosby or Carl and Angela Schmidt weren’t the only ones running the operation. If so, the Black Rose would’ve shut down. But clearly, judging by the weapons exchange right under the nose of local law enforcement through Claude’s business, it was still fully operational. Connie must have found out about Claude’s involvement on her wedding night.

“Yes,” Olivia repeated, feeling suddenly sick. “Brock. Their trafficking ring is still active.”

Thank you so much for reading THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR! We’re so excited to have you back with Olivia and Brock for another round of mystery and intrigue. Your feedback on THE RUNAWAY GIRLS was absolutely amazing, and we couldn’t be more grateful for your support as we continue this journey. With each book, we try to take things up a notch, and we think the choices we made with this one led to a much more layered and intriguing investigation. We hope you agree and that this new adventure kept you glued to every page!

And if you thought this case kept Olivia and Brock on their toes, just wait until you see what’s next! In THE GRAND HEIST, the disappearance of one of the rarest gems on Earth throws them into a whirlwind of deception, high-stakes crime, and undercover intrigue. A priceless pink diamond vanishes from a museum, replaced with an uncanny fake, and with international tensions on the line, failure isn’t an option. As Olivia goes undercover and Brock works behind the scenes, they soon realize this isn’t just a simple heist—it’s a tangled web of professional thieves, deadly secrets, and a scheme far bigger than they ever expected.

Olivia isn’t the only one caught up in a tangled mystery—Birdie Hartley has her hands full in FATAL OBSESSION, the latest addition to our Serenity Springs series. When Birdie receives a cryptic note that could be tied to her missing sister, she and Maisy set off to investigate, only to find themselves in a town where danger lurks around every corner. The deeper Birdie digs, the more she realizes that her ex, Gavin, and his new girlfriend are hiding something—something that might just turn deadly. Some secrets refuse to stay buried, and this time, Birdie’s pursuit of the truth could cost her everything.

As indie writers, we rely heavily on the support and feedback from readers like you. If you enjoyed THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR, please consider leaving a review. Your reviews make a significant difference, helping us reach more readers without a big marketing budget or a massive following.

Thank you for your continued support, and we can’t wait to take you on more exceptional adventures!

By the way, if you find any typos, have suggestions, or just simply want to reach out to us, feel free to email us at egray@ellegraybooks.com

Your writer friends,

Elle Gray & K.S. Gray

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