the woods? Impossible. He hadn’t returned. Or had he...? Maybe he’d anticipated she’d come here, or at least been suspicious. Or was it Jax at all?
Back in her car, she spun her car around and raced down the narrow dirt road. As she came to Jax’s driveway, she saw no movement around the log house and only a few lights were on.
She made it to the highway and almost felt in the clear when she noticed a car behind her. Had whoever had the flashlight followed her? She sped up, passing a few cars and weaving back into the right lane. The car behind her did the same thing.
Penny slowed down. The car slowed down as well and allowed more distance to separate them.
All the way to Salt Lake City, Penny kept track of the other car, a dark Jeep Wrangler she didn’t recognize. Rather than drive home and lead a potential killer to her residence, Penny headed to the Salt Lake City Police Department. When she parked in front, she watched the Jeep zip by, darkness and tinted windows preventing her from seeing the driver.
The short, bubbly applicant had an exhausting, fast-talking, high-pitched voice. Kadin Tandy looked past her curly hair and heavily made up face, her voice drifting off into white noise as he looked through the window of his Rock Springs, Wyoming, office. He could see part of the street and some of the oldest buildings in town, red-and-tan brick trimmed in varying colors, rooflines square and some with signs that lit up at night. Heat waves rippled on the pavement and Rosa Romero unlocked the door of her Mexican restaurant, The Spicy Habanero. Her green chili was the best he’d ever had.
Having his office here made him feel at home—as at home as he could, anyway. He’d rented the upstairs apartment so that he could spend more time working. Dark Alley Investigations had been open a couple of months now and he’d accumulated enough cases to warrant some help. And then he’d received that call from Detective Austin Cohen, the lead in the Sara Wolfe case. He’d attempted to read the file before the applicant arrived but hadn’t gotten past the first paragraph. The little girl might as well be his own.
Would he have this kind of trouble with every child case? He felt like a useless coward for reacting the way he did. He could help those parents. Why didn’t he? Why couldn’t he? Why did he even have to think about it?
Because he’d seen the file detectives had put together on his daughter’s case.
Because he’d tortured himself with those images until he captured her killer.
Because the pain had not lessened in three years.
He still ached with loss, still yearned for the impossible, to see and hold his little girl again, to go back to the time before her abduction and be ready to miraculously save her. Daddy to the rescue.
Except it hadn’t happened that way.
“Mr. Tandy?”
Kadin jerked his gaze from the window to the applicant.
“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”
The woman had to know he’d wandered off somewhere far away from this interview. “No. Thank you for coming by.” He stood, needing to get rid of her, to be alone so that he could get thoughts of Annabelle out of his head. “I’ll call you if I need to talk to you again.”
The woman looked disappointed. People knew when they were being rejected. “Oh. Okay.” She stood up. “Thank you.”
He walked the woman to the door and as he watched her go to her car, he spotted Lott Trumbauer getting out of his blue Jaguar. A trust-fund baby who was a fishing guide, Lott spent a lot of time on the banks of the Green River. That was how they’d met. Kadin had gone fishing and had run into Lott with a family, teaching them how to fish. They’d struck up a friendship. That was fifteen years ago.
“Great,” he muttered. Just what he needed. More badgering. Lott had been talking to Kadin’s mom about the shocking news of his resignation and move back to Rock Springs.
He went to his corner office next to the conference room where he’d just conducted the interview. He had a view of a side street from here. That was where he stood until he heard Lott enter. Then he turned as his friend’s booted feet creaked over the old wood floor and he stopped at the office door with a smile.
“Nice,” Lott said. A tall, charming jet-setter with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair cut short, he wasn’t married but always had a girlfriend. They never lasted more than a few months. Kadin had attracted women like that before he married his one and only love. Maybe he still did now that he was single again and just didn’t notice. Lack of interest did that. He had too much to do, anyway.
“What brings you to town?” Kadin asked.
His pal stepped into the office, checking out the barren walls. “How’s business?”
The diversion tactic told him enough. Lott had come to talk unpleasant things. “I’ve got three cases.”
“All cold?”
“Cold enough.”
Lott stopped at his desk. “I saw a girl leave here in tears. Are you interviewing again?”
“She was crying?”
“You have a way of doing that. I can’t figure out if all your murder investigations have desensitized you, or if you’ve just installed a switch to shut off your emotions.” He gestured with his hand toward the bare walls. “Are you ever going to decorate this place?”
Kadin grimaced. He cared about how he made people feel, and truly hadn’t meant to hurt the girl. It was an interview, for God’s sake, not the budding of a new romance. As for decorating, he’d only furnished one conference room and his office. “I haven’t had time to do more.”
“You could make time.”
“Why are you here, Lott? Talking to my parents again?”
His friend grinned but not with genuine humor. He was caught. “Your mother is worried about you. She called again.” Kadin blinked and turned toward the view. A man walked by in the afternoon, late-summer heat, a dry heat in this western town.
“I’ll call her.”
“She asked me to check in on you. I don’t think they understand why you moved back here.”
His parents had wanted him to stay out East. He’d grown up in Massachusetts.
“I lived here for ten years.”
Lott nodded. “That’s what I told her. She thinks you’re obsessing over their deaths.”
“And that by moving here I don’t put it behind me?” Kadin looked back at his friend, who cocked his head in a yeah-I-know gesture. “There are some things I don’t want to forget. And that’s everything I had when we lived here. Them. Before...”
“I get it, Kadin. You should call your mom and tell her. Then maybe she’ll stop using me as a messenger.”
Lott was like a second son to his parents. They had been
