Hope set the towel aside and gripped the edge of the counter until her knuckles turned white. She felt scared and alone and in completely uncharted territory. Usually in times like this, work settled her, letting her focus on something outside of herself. But she’d just given up the project that was taking up most of her time, so what to do now? Part of her wanted to run straight back downstairs and curl into Logan, to let him take her burden, to accept the protection he wanted to offer.

  But no. She couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. Not after everything that had happened.

  He seemed like a different guy now, but looks could be deceiving.

  After brushing her hair and putting it back into a ponytail, she slipped on socks and shoes and went back downstairs to find Logan still on the sofa, his jacket off now to reveal his broad shoulders and muscled arms. Hope bit her lip at the sight of his sinewy forearms, the veins standing out. She used to love tracing those with her tongue when they’d made love. There was just something about a guy with good, strong arms that got to her. He’d stretched one along the back of the sofa now, causing the short sleeve to ride up a bit and reveal the bottom of his tattoo, the Special Warfare Insignia of anchor, trident and eagle. She’d licked that too in the past. Licked him all over, really, and…

  Damn.

  None of that. She cleared her throat and finished walking downstairs and into the open kitchen. Being without a project made her restless. She could work on her book more, but after the eventful day, a decades-old mystery didn’t hold her interest just then. She opened the fridge, grabbed a water and offered him one too, then carried the bottle out to the living room where she took her seat on the sofa again.

  “How are you doing?” he asked as she twisted the cap off his water bottle. “You made the right call with that story, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s just weird and makes me feel useless as a writer and a reporter.”

  “I get that.” Logan took a swig of his water, and Hope did her best not to watch the sleek, tanned lines of his throat work as he swallowed. “When I came home to get my mental health and life in order instead of re-upping, I felt the same way. Took me a while to adjust, to process those feelings.”

  She snorted. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me the stoic Logan Miller has emotions now?”

  “It’s true.” He grinned and warmth buzzed anew in her core before she could stop it. He tipped his bottle at her. “I wasted a lot of time and burned a lot of bridges by trying to self-medicate my feelings away. That was a bad time. For me. For you. For my SEAL team. It affected everyone and everything. Took some time and a lot of therapy, but I’m in a better place now.”

  “Sounds like it.” She wanted to believe him, more than she let on, but her heart was still hesitant. Hope nodded and took a big drink of her own water, grateful for the cold shock to her system. “So, any advice then?”

  “Let’s see.” Logan sat forward to put his bottle on the coffee table. “Stay motivated. Stay busy. Stay moving.” He checked his watch then stood. “How about a walk around the neighborhood?”

  “That actually sounds like a good idea.” Hope pushed to her feet and grabbed her phone again before walking to the front door to set the alarm system. The sun was still out, and the temperature wasn’t too bad. Her neighborhood was nice, suburban, with lots of kids and dogs around. Keys in hand, she and Logan walked down the steps of the porch and out onto the main sidewalk. As they strolled past manicured lawns and artfully arranged flowerbeds, they chatted about their lives for the past two months. Halfway back to the house, the conversation turned toward the day’s events again.

  “You don’t have to worry, you know,” he said, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he kicked a rock with the toe of his black boot. “About your job. With your bestselling books and your reputation for excellence, you’ll be in demand no matter what.” Logan shrugged and gave her some side-eye. “And if you’re worried about making ends meet or needing to save up some money so you can take a writing break when the baby comes, you should know that I’ll help you pay for the expenses with the baby, too. This isn’t all on you, I promise.”

  They walked on half a block more, quiet, until they stood in front of her house again, and Hope finally gave in to the impulse she’d been fighting for hours. Before she could stop herself, she turned and wrapped her arms around Logan’s neck, giving him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. He felt just as solid as she’d remembered, his scent—sandalwood and soap—surrounding her like a warm, fuzzy blanket on a chilly evening, and her heart pinched with the sweetness.

  “Thank you,” she whispered near his ear. It felt good, too good, as he squeezed her back, holding her close to his chest. Before, when they’d been together, she’d thought he hung the moon and stars. He’d been the first man she’d loved, really loved. She’d envisioned them having this perfect life together. Of course, that hadn’t happened, and she’d felt so betrayed. But today had gone a little way toward healing the wound of the past, allowing her to remember the good man beneath his tough exterior.

  They were in a difficult situation, no doubt. But perhaps they could brave their way through parenthood, not as a couple, but as a team.

  4

  A couple of days later, Hope was settled at her kitchen table, ready to start a video interview for her book project. Making the transition from the gang article to working full time on the Lauren cold case had been harder mentally than she’d imagined. She wasn’t sure if it was because of all the stress of the past few days, or the fact that Logan was still hanging around her house, true to his word. In fact, she could hear him down the hall now, working in her spare bedroom that he’d commandeered and turned into a makeshift office, his fingers tapping furiously on his keyboard as he messaged with his security firm colleagues.

  Her computer dinged and she refocused on her task. Onscreen, a woman’s face appeared. Late thirties, blonde hair, green eyes, Jennifer Rees vaguely resembled what Hope would expect Diana Lauren to look like now, if she was still alive—which she very well might be. They’d been roommates back in colleges, and Hope had her fingers crossed that Jennifer might provide some new details that could lead the decades-old investigation in new and more productive directions.

  “Thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me today,” Hope said, smiling. “I appreciate you getting up so early, with the West Coast time difference and all.”

  “No problem,” Jennifer said, raising her coffee. “We’re three hours behind you guys, though, so I can’t attest to how sharp I’ll be.”

  “I’m sure you’re fine.” Hope picked up her pen and got ready to take notes. “Okay. Let’s get started then. You and Diana both lived in a house on Franklin Street while you were attending Johns Hopkins, correct?”

  “Yep. There were a bunch of us in the house. Crazy times.”

  “I remember.” Hope chuckled. At Jennifer’s curious look, she said, “My family lived down the street. I remember all of you girls. It’s one of the reasons why I decided to work on this case. Not sure if you remember, but Diana even babysat me a few times.”

  “Oh, wow! No, I don’t remember that. Sorry. But we all babysat a lot, to make ends meet.”

  Hope asked some more questions—just background information about what life was like back then, the things that Jennifer and Diana used to do together. It helped Hope get a general picture of what life was like before the disappearance—but hopefully it also got Jennifer digging into that part of her memory bank so that she’d be able to share as much as possible about what had happened surrounding Diana’s disappearance.

  “Do you have any idea why Diana went missing?” Hope asked.

  “No, I don’t. Even now, it all seems so nuts. She was the last person you’d expect that from. Diana was always a great student. She wasn’t a wild partier. Didn’t do drugs—barely even drank. We had fun, sure, but she was totally responsible. Not at all the type to run off without telling anyone where she was going.”

  “What about boyfriends?” Hope tried next. “Any chance she ran off with someone?”

  “I mean, I guess there’s always a chance—but she definitely wasn’t seeing anyone that I knew about. And it didn’t seem like she was sneaking around to meet anyone either. Besides, why would they run off like that? People asked us that back then—if she might have gotten mixed up in some kind of crime, something that made her want to get away from the police. But that wasn’t Diana. No way.”

  Right. Basically, exactly what the cops had found, and the newspapers back then had reported. She tried a different tack. “What about any strange occurrences or odd happenings around the time she disappeared? Maybe it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, nothing you’d report to officials, but now looking back it sticks out?”

  Jennifer seemed to consider that a moment, frowning into her coffee, then said, “Not really. I mean, nothing from back then at all. But I did just talk to one of our other sorority sisters a couple days ago. She used to work in the financial aid office part time, and she mentioned that Diana’s scholarship was created just for her. I never knew that until now.”

  “Huh.” Hope scribbled that down on her legal pad. “That does seem odd.”

  “Yeah. When I asked Sally where the money came from, she said it was donated by some rich guy. Apparently, he just called up the financial aid office one day and said he wanted to set up a fund to pay for Diana’s expenses completely. Tuition, room and board, everything. The only condition he had was that he wanted to remain anonymous.”

  Hairs prickled on the back of Hope’s neck, both from her journalistic instincts and also from the fact that Logan had come into the room, meeting her eye over the computer’s monitor. Goose bumps of awareness prickled up her arms despite herself. Hope did her best to ignore him and concentrated on her interview instead.

  “So, no one except the financial aid office knew who this mysterious donor was?” Hope asked, tapping her pen against her pad to relieve some of the rising energy inside her due to the nearly tangible sensation of Logan’s eyes on her. He’d always had that effect on her, darn him, even after everything he’d put her through. Like shaken, corked champagne, ready to fizzle over. She cleared her throat and narrowed her gaze on the screen. “That seems hard to believe.”

  “Yeah. Turns out Sally couldn’t keep her mouth shut and blabbed the guy’s name to Diana a couple days later.” Jennifer shrugged. “I’m surprised Diana didn’t tell me about it herself, but I guess she didn’t get the chance. Right when Sally told her was when our landlord had to do some emergency repairs on the house, and we all had to move out in a hurry. I was staying with my boyfriend and didn’t have a chance to catch up with Diana for a couple of days. That week we were gone was when Diana disappeared.”

  “Did Sally tell you the donor’s name when you talked to her a few days ago?” Hope pressed.

  Jennifer hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Sorry. It was a long time ago when that happened, and Sally couldn’t be sure she remembered it correctly anymore anyway.”

  From the way Jennifer was squirming and avoiding eye contact, Hope was pretty sure she was lying. Sally had remembered the name and had told it to Jennifer—but Jennifer didn’t seem to want to divulge it. “Hmm.” Hope wasn’t about to give up that easily. “Even if she’s not one-hundred percent sure, a name could prove to be the lead we need to figure out what happened.”

  “It’s just secondhand,” Jennifer said. “What if she remembered wrong? I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

  “And you won’t,” Hope promised her. “I’m not looking for some exposé, I just want to figure out what happened. Maybe it won’t even lead anywhere; who knows? But seriously, any name at all would help so much.”

  “Well…” Jennifer set her coffee mug aside and leaned closer to the screen, lowering her voice, like she was afraid to say anything too loud. “Sally said it was Desmond Jones. He’s the one who paid for Diana’s scholarship.”

  Yes!

  Hope hurriedly wrote the name down on her pad, then thanked Jennifer again before ending the call. Desmond Jones was the last man Diana had been seen with at a hotel bar before she’d disappeared. Hope closed her laptop, then turned and gave a mighty fist pump of triumph, feeling like she might finally be getting somewhere with this case. It felt like a gift had dropped right into her lap.

  “That good, huh?” Logan asked, walking over to the fridge to grab an energy drink.

  “Better.” Hope grinned, taking her now-empty tea mug to the sink to rinse it out. “I love that moment when a lead pops up. So satisfying.”

  “Sure.” Logan leaned his hip against the edge of the counter, watching her. “What made you take this case on anyway?”

  She shrugged. “All of my books have been about true crime. A disappearance fits the bill. Especially since this case was never resolved.”

  He crossed his arms, looking not quite convinced. “But there are hundreds of missing person cases in the US you could’ve dived into. Why this particular one?”

  “Well, like I told Jennifer on our call, my family lived down the street from the house Diana and her friends were living in. Diana even babysat me a few times. I guess I felt closer to the case somehow because of that. I figured that connection might help me write a better book, choosing someone I actually knew, even tangentially.” There was a bit more to the story, but Hope wasn’t sure she wanted to share it with Logan. Maybe he’d let it drop at this.

  No such luck.

  “Is that all?” Logan asked, his dark gaze far too perceptive for Hope’s comfort. He had a dark brow raised at her, and he looked cocky and concerned and far too handsome, darn him.

  Hope sighed. “Fine. Truth is, I started thinking about doing this book when you were overseas last time. Things between us seemed more distant than ever, and I kept remembering how much Diana loved Baltimore. She loved the sports teams and the history. I remember how she could answer any trivia question about this city and inserted all these facts into her conversations. I wanted to know what made her fall out of love with this place—enough that she decided it was better to go. How do you just stop loving like that? What makes a relationship like that end? I thought there had to be more to the story.”

  Logan blinked at her, silent, and Hope looked away. The parallels between her situation with Logan and Diana’s disappearance weren’t lost on her, and she felt exposed and raw and far too vulnerable. She shrugged and walked past him out into the living room. “Anyway, I felt like I owed it to Diana to figure out what really happened all those years ago, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  As she sat down on the sofa and clicked on the TV, Hope heard Logan rustling around in the kitchen. His low voice sent a fresh shiver of unwanted warmth through her when he said, “Thanks for telling me.”

  5

  The next day, Logan went with Hope to the Lord Baltimore hotel where Diana Lauren had disappeared two decades earlier. They were still waiting on the all-clear from the police about the Slayer situation, and until he knew for certain Hope was out of danger there, he wasn’t leaving her side.

  He opened the door for her to the swanky lobby then followed her inside, the murmur of conversation between guests battling the low strains of piped in music over the speaker system surrounding him. As they traversed the marble and steel expanse, he took note of all the exits and service entrances as his SEAL training demanded.

  “What are we here for again?” he asked, scanning the people for any signs of a threat. “Clues? Wouldn’t everything have been cleared away years ago?”

  “No, not clues.” She gave him a look. “I just want to get a feel for the place. Helps me better describe it in my book. With this place, we’re in luck—they haven’t had a major remodel in years.”

  Hope was thorough, he’d give her that. They walked around, checking every nook and cranny. Even the bathrooms. By the time they reached the bar, Logan had had enough. He didn’t like her parading around out in public in broad daylight with what had happened to her car.

  “Ready to go?” he asked her for the umpteenth time.

  “No.” She looked back at him over her shoulder as she surveyed the bar, snapping pictures with the camera on her phone. The place was closed for business, since it was only ten in the morning, and Hope was examining each inch of the place, it seemed. Her expression brimmed with annoyance. “Why are you in such a hurry anyway? Am I keeping you from something? You chose to come with me; I didn’t ask you.”

  Huffing out a breath, Logan called on his fraying patience and glanced at the roped-off entrance to the bar again before answering. “I don’t like you being out here like this. All exposed and everything. It’s dangerous.”

  She scoffed. “Listen, this is a five-star hotel. I doubt some rogue gang members are lurking around here. And isn’t that the whole point of you being here? To guard me against attacks?”

  “Yes,” he ground out, heat prickling up from beneath the collar of his black T-shirt. “But part of protecting you means keeping you away from exposed situations unless it’s absolutely necessary. And I don’t see why we need this. You’re not even investigating anything. You could’ve researched this on the internet and saved us both a lot of trouble.”

  “Trouble? You want to talk about trouble?” Hope started then stopped abruptly, taking in a deep breath. “Look, arguing won’t help us right now. Being here is good. It keeps the events of the disappearance fresh in my mind.”

  Shoulders sagging, Logan relented, for now. “Fine. Talk me through it, then. At least that will keep us both busy, and it will fill me in on the details. Maybe I’ll even be able to help. I’m good at spotting things.”