I frowned at Stanley’s discovery. I should have insisted on seeing what was on the flash drive before agreeing to be interviewed for the woman’s podcast. “Okay. Thanks.”

  The aging landline phone on my office desk jangled with an incoming call.

  “Cold Case,” I answered.

  “Hi. Is Detective Miller there?” a male voice asked.

  “Speaking.”

  “Detective, this is Brendon Azure with Prior Lake PD. I wanted to give you the heads up that Danika Laroque’s bicycle was recently recovered.”

  I sat up straighter in my chair. I felt a little breathless. “What? Where?”

  “In someone’s yard on trust land. Folks were breaking ground to build the foundation for a new garage when their excavator dug it up.”

  “How do you know it belonged to Danika?” I asked.

  Both Stanley and Sarah looked on with interest at the mentioning of the missing woman’s name.

  “Her family identified the bike,” he said. “It’s a bright yellow frame bicycle with a banana seat. Pretty distinctive.”

  “Any signs of human remains?” I asked. “Or the possibility of DNA on the bike?”

  “Nothing but the bike was recovered. But they stopped digging as soon as the bike appeared,” he noted. “We sent it to the lab for DNA, but that could take a while.”

  “No offense, but why did you get called about a bicycle?” I thought it peculiar that anyone would think to call the police over finding a bicycle buried in their yard.

  “People around here are pretty sensitive about what they find in the ground,” Azure gravely noted.

  I bobbed my head in thought as I took in the new information. Captain Forrester would have no choice now. He’d have to let us fully investigate the missing persons case after this discovery.

  “Do you need extra resources to look for more evidence?” I asked. “Cadaver dogs? Forensic teams? How can we help?”

  There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the phone call before Azure spoke again. “Chairman Strong hasn’t given us permission.”

  “Chairman Strong?” I echoed.

  “He’s the elected leader of the SMSC. They don’t use words like sachem or chief anymore,” Azure explained.

  “And he’s refusing to let Prior Lake PD investigate the disappearance and possible murder of one of his own people?” I instantly became suspicious.

  “I told you. They’ve very private.”

  “Not good enough,” I decided. “Can you get me in touch with Strong? I’d like to speak with him. Face-to-face if possible.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Office Azure said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I hung up with Azure feeling encouraged, but also perplexed. What were the chances that a cold case someone else had been digging into had randomly produced new evidence? Danika Laroque had been missing for close to thirty years with no new leads. Why was this happening now? And now that it was, I couldn’t understand why the leader of the SMSC might refuse law enforcement access to this new, potential crime scene.

  Her recovered bicycle might hold important DNA evidence, especially since it had been buried rather than being tossed in a wooded area where it would have been exposed to the elements for thirty years. The fact that it had been buried, and not randomly found on the side of the road or ditched in a field somewhere, also confirmed foul play rather than Danika simply running away.

  “What happened?” Sarah asked. “Did they find something?”

  The office phone rang again, interrupting my thoughts with its shrill jangle. I assumed it was Azure getting back to me about a meeting with the Chairman. I held up a finger, bookmarking our conversation.

  “Cold Case,” I answered. “Miller speaking.”

  “Detective Miller?” A new voice—this one female—echoed through the receiver. “It’s Melody Sternbridge.”

  “Shit.” I swore without meaning to.

  I heard her chuckle. “It’s nice to talk to you again, too.”

  “Sorry,” I uselessly apologized. “What can I do for you?”

  “Quid pro quo. You still owe me an interview.”

  I wanted to swear again, but I knew it would have been unprofessional. “There was nothing on that flash drive,” I told her. “Nothing that we didn’t already know, at least.”

  “That wasn’t the deal, Detective.”

  “I’m waiting for an important call,” I excused myself.

  Sarah or Stanley could easily field a return call from Officer Azure, but more than that, I really didn’t want to go to this woman’s house.

  “You can’t forward calls to your cellphone?” she challenged.

  I doubted it was appropriate to record a podcast interview during work hours, but I didn’t want to pass my limited free time—time that should be spent with Julia—at this woman’s house. But, I suspected that Melody Sternbridge wasn’t going to forget that I apparently owed her a favor. She would only continue to hassle me about an interview until I satisfied my part of the bargain.

  I sighed deeply. “Fine. I’m leaving the office right now.”

  The front door of Melody Sternbridge’s house opened before I had the chance to knock or ring the doorbell.

  “They found Danika’s bike.”

  Her statement caught me off guard. I was too surprised to deny the discovery or to give her a vague response about ongoing investigations.

  “How did you—.”

  “Come in,” she said gravely.

  I thought she looked a little wild, standing on the other side of the threshold. Her copper-colored hair had worked itself free from the confines of a French braid. Her eyeliner was a little too pronounced. The cream colored sweater she wore was several sizes too big. She seemed to be drowning in the material.

  I removed my leather jacket once I stepped inside her house. Like my previous visit, the temperature was uncomfortably warm. At least there was no evidence of her overly excitable dog.

  “Where’s your dog?” I asked.

  “In the basement. I figured you’d appreciate not being tackled again.”

  I nodded, but I had more important questions that needed answers. “How did you hear about the bicycle?”

  Melody’s blue-green eyes shifted back and forth. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth before,” she disassembled. “I led you to believe that the person who first told me about Danika’s disappearance was anonymous, but that’s not really true. They thought they were being anonymous—they set up a fake social media account and everything—but I had a friend who’s good with computers find their IP address. The call was coming from inside the house.”

  “Say that again?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You know … the classic horror film trope? Black Christmas? When a Stranger Calls?” she supplied.

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  “Not important,” Melody readily dismissed. “My friend was able to track the IP address of the person who DM’d me. It came from a computer in Prior Lake. Specifically the SMSC’s tribal land.”

  “That’s not so suspicious,” I observed. “If someone in your community went missing, wouldn’t you want to find out what had happened to them? Reach out to every news media on the planet, even a podcaster?”

  “But the fake account,” Melody pointed out. “Why not just contact me as yourself instead of hiding?”

  “How did you know it was fake?” I questioned.

  “The account had been created the same day they contacted me. No followers. No profile picture,” she listed.

  Social media was like an alien planet to me, so I would have to take her word for it.

  “Did this person tell you about Danika’s bike being found?”

  Melody nodded. “Same fake profile. They messaged me a few minutes ago. Who told you?”

  “Brendon Azure. He’s the tribal liaison officer for Prior Lake PD.”

  “Do you think he could be our fake profile user?” Melody posed.

  I didn’t particularly enjoy her word choice. There wasn’t an our in this scenario. As much as she wanted to insert herself, she wasn’t part of this investigation.

  I shook my head. “Not likely. He’d be risking his job leaking information like that to an outsider.”

  “There can’t be too many people who know about the bike,” Melody speculated.

  “Probably more than you think. They’re a small, tight-knit community,” I observed. “I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in a small town before, but gossip travels pretty fast. I do find it suspicious that they discovered the bike in the first place, however,” I observed. “No new leads for thirty years. You come along and suddenly someone digs up her bike? That’s quite the coincidence.”

  Melody looked taken aback, wounded really, rather than offended. “What are you suggesting? That I planted a bicycle on the reservation?”

  I held up my hands. “Hey, I’m not making any accusations here. I just think the timing of this is interesting.”

  Melody hollowed out her cheeks. “How would I know what kind of bicycle she had?”

  “Again, not making any accusations,” I clarified. “It was only an observation.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Geez.” I rolled my eyes. “Forget I said anything, okay?”

  “Are you going to Prior Lake to see the bike?” she demanded.

  “It’s not there anymore. Prior Lake PD sent it for DNA testing.”

  Melody folded her arms across her chest. “Quid pro quo, Detective.”

  “Every time you say that, I can’t help but think of Hannibal Lecter.”

  An impressed look crossed Melody’s features. “So you’re not completely pop culture illiterate.”

  I wanted to defend myself that I’d been holed up at a military base for eight years where we only got second-run movies, but I had no reason to share those kinds of details with this woman.

  “New proposal,” Melody announced. “Let me tag along on your next trip to Prior Lake, and I won’t make you do the interview.”

  My knee-jerk reaction was to automatically reject her. But at the same time, I was loathe to sit in front of a microphone where my recorded voice could be cut and edited into misleading sound bites.

  I didn’t know when next I might be in Prior Lake, especially if Chairman Strong refused our help. I hesitated before giving her a response.

  “Don’t get in the way,” I warned her. “You’re an observer. Nothing else.”

  Her ear-to-ear grin made me wonder if I’d chosen the lesser of two evils.

  Officer Azure had called the Cold Case office again while I’d been taken hostage by the pesky podcast woman. I was annoyed that I’d had to take time out of my day to visit her at her home, but at least Azure had been able to secure a meeting for me to plead our case with Chairman Strong. I could understand the innate desire for privacy, and even the SMSC leader’s hesitancy to allow law enforcement onto trust land. Police in 1984 had clearly done the bare minimum when it came to trying to find the missing woman. But this wasn’t 1984. And I wasn’t the kind of cop who would be satisfied with the bare minimum.

  At the end of the workday, I took the bus from the police station to Julia’s public defender office in St. Paul. Julia’s office space was typically hyper organized, but over the past few days she’d been boxing up her belongings in preparation of the move to her new law office. Everything was almost packed, with the exception of her leather-bound law books. They were heavy and unwieldy, so she’d left them for me to finish packing up. They had also been a present from her father when she’d graduated from law school. I half suspected that leaving the packing to me wasn’t the result of her injured left wrist. Handling the giant leather-bound tomes might irritate wounds that were only just beginning to heal.

  “Last day,” I observed. I ripped off a particularly long piece of packing tape and sealed up one of the final boxes. “How does it feel?”

  Julia was perched on the edge of her office desk, overseeing my work. “Overwhelming. And a little like a traitor.”

  I paused my task long enough to lift an eyebrow in her direction. “Traitor?”

  Julia shrugged delicately beneath her tailored suit jacket. “This was never supposed to be my forever job, but I can’t help feeling like I’m abandoning a sinking ship.”

  “You’re not the captain, babe,” I tried to appease her. “It’s not your job to go down with the ship.”

  I was tempted to remind her she could always go down on me, but I was trying not to behave like a teenaged boy.

  “I know,” she sighed, “but between leaving the job in Embarrass and now this, I’m feeling a little rootless.”

  I swallowed down a complicated emotion. “You’re making a home with me though, right? That seems pretty, uh, root-y?”

  Julia’s mouth curved into a wonderfully warm and adoring smile—the kind of smile that made me feel safe and loved, like homemade chocolate chip cookies. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I think for so long my worth was bound up with my career. I didn’t have a life beyond the courtroom or my office. It’s a bit of an adjustment to realize that being a lawyer isn’t my entire personality.”

  I responded to the rare vulnerability with a small, encouraging smile. “Sometimes when you talk it’s like listening to my own inner thoughts.”

  Julia hummed. “I suppose you’re right. After being a Marine for so long, it must have been challenging returning to civilian life. To image a life where you’re not singularly focused on one mission.”

  “And it wasn’t even like I had an individual identity over there,” I added. “With all of that gear—after all of that training—I wasn’t Cassidy Miller from St. Cloud, Minnesota anymore. She was gone, and all that was left was a Marine. It was easy to feel like a replaceable part within a larger machine,” I remarked. “And when I got injured, when I no longer worked, I got tossed in the trash. I could no longer serve my intended purpose, so they replaced me with another dumb eighteen-year-old kid.”

  Another wave of emotion had me choking up. I self-consciously wiped at my eyes, sure they were leaking.

  “Geez.” I barked out a rough, embarrassed laugh. “You might be a better therapist than Dr. Warren.”

  Julia smirked. “My fees are far higher, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s right!” I said with forced brightness. I was eager for a subject change; I hadn’t intended the verbal vomit. “I’m gonna have a Sugar Mama soon. How much is Grisham & Stein paying you?”

  “You don’t strike me as the kept woman type,” Julia wryly observed.

  I flashed a brilliant smile, one that was sure to show off my dimples. “Give me a chance. I’ve never been in this position before.”

  Julia unexpectedly groaned. Her features turned sour and she rubbed at her temples.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You said ‘position.’ You in new positions. God, I feel like a prepubescent boy.” She waggled a scolding finger at me. “You realize this is your doing, right?”

  A proud smile found its way to my lips. I abandoned my moving boxes and approached Julia who had remained leaning against her office desk. I widened my stance so I was somewhat straddling her skirted legs, crossed at the ankles. My lucky hands fell to her cinched waist.

  “I love every version of you,” I stated. “Buttoned up, polished and professional. Dressed down in a ratty, stained t-shirt.”

  Julia wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip. “My clothes are not stained.”

  “Okay. Wearing one of my t-shirts, then,” I corrected. “And if you devolve even further to meet me at my level, I’m going to love that version of you, too.”

  “You’re very sweet, Cassidy.”

  I shrugged, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. She was easy to love. I was still in awe that a beautiful, successful, and driven woman like Julia might love all of my versions. The damaged ex-Marine. The Cold Case detective who routinely felt out of her element. The self-conscious teenaged girl in a twenty-eight-year-old body.

  I brushed my fingertips against her left wrist. She no longer wore a sling to hold the wrist immobile, but the heavy brace and wrap that remained limited her mobility. “I’m glad you’re still taking it easy with your wrist and asked me to help pack you up,” I approved.

  “Alice offered to stay late and help,” she noted, naming the pretty office assistant, “but I didn’t want to take advantage.”

  “None of that,” I censured. I dipped my head lower to brush my lips against her welcoming mouth. “I’m the only one you get to take advantage of.”

  Chapter Ten

  Afghanistan, 2012

  We’re running out of gas. I’ve tried to be smart about our stolen vehicle’s fuel efficiency, but we didn’t start with a full tank. It’s not uncommon to see an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road, but it’s too much of a gamble to stop and check if the other car has gas. All I can do is pray that we make it back to Camp Leatherneck before the Jeep gives up on us. I’m not religious though. Neither of my parents are either unless you count my dad bargaining with some higher power to make sure the Viking’s kicker doesn’t miss the next field goal.

  I jostle Pensacola, who’s slumped forward in the passenger seat. His eyes don’t open but he groans, letting me know he hasn’t given up on us either.

  “Hey, Pense,” I say, my eyes never leaving the stretch of unpaved road ahead of us, “did I ever tell you about the time my cousin hit me in the head with a golf club?”

  I woke up alone. The bedroom was dark, but I no longer saw Julia’s silhouette. The space beside me where she had been sleeping was empty. I grabbed my phone off the end table to check on the time. I squinted at the early hour. Where had Julia gone at 4:00 a.m.?

  I sat up in bed and swung my feet to the floor. An involuntary noise got caught in my throat. My lower back was sore, maybe residual muscle ache from hauling heavy boxes of leather-bound books from Julia’s office or from the unfavorable commute to and from Prior Lake in the stiff-riding Crown Vic.