She’d driven the truck once since Clint’s arrest. Brian had driven it. Any apparatus touched during the driving process had already been thoroughly tested...

  When the gazes of the men met, rather than landing on her, she took a deep breath. “I understand the need to check it out,” she assured them, doing her best to calm the agitation inside her. “I just don’t want the discovery to take away focus from finding my daughter.”

  They couldn’t stop looking for a live child due to circumstances that didn’t belong to the baby’s case. “As much as Clint Johnson nauseates me,” she heard the tremble in her voice, but continued with, “I know that he isn’t a killer. I have no idea why he had that gun,” she added, knowing she was going to grill the man with every bite of anger inside her during their scheduled video conference later that afternoon. “But I know he didn’t use it to hurt Brooke.”

  “People change,” the detective said, that hint of sympathy and...something more in his tone. A type of well-meaning condescension. He not only felt sorry for her. His conversation had taken on tones of pats on the head to her. He was always kind. Attentive. Always picked up her calls.

  The married man of four definitely cared about the case.

  He also clearly thought that Jessica’s drive to find her daughter, her belief that Brooke was still alive, was...misguided. And not healthy for Jessica.

  Sometimes, in the dark of the night, she laid awake in bed and mentally entertained some of the “move on” advice Duane Anderson had given her. Replayed conversations the two of them had had on the subject.

  And never once, even in her lowest moments—and with memories of her stepmother’s similar words adding sustenance to his message—had she been completely convinced that he was right.

  She didn’t argue. There was no point. “I’ll ask him about it,” was all she said.

  Anderson shook his balding head. “Not until after I get a sit-down with him. I want to see his reaction to the fact that we found the gun, that we’re testing it,” the detective said, glancing at his watch. “He’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive from here...and there’s no guarantee I’ll make it there today at all. And I’d like to have forensic results back first, if possible.” He, better than anyone, knew her visitation schedule, knew that she’d be speaking with Clint later that day. On his say-so, he was the first person she called at the end of every visit.

  “In fifteen months’ time, Clint has given you nothing,” Jessica reminded him. “He talks to me.”

  “Yes, he does.” Anderson’s response had that compassionately humoring tone again. “But not one of his hints has led to anything...he’s using you, Jessica, stringing you along for his own sadistic amusement. You’re playing right into his hands. Please, just let me handle this...”

  Even while she appreciated his sincere concern for her emotional well-being, Jessica bristled. “I have to—”

  “If I might make a suggestion...” Brian interrupted, seeming, to her, to have shifted his weight so that he was leaning slightly in her direction. But then, she was still suffering from a bite of that “him being a savior” bug that had gotten her that morning.

  “Of course.” Anderson appeared grateful for the interception. The man had come to know her fairly well over the past year. He couldn’t stop her from speaking to Clint about anything. And he knew she acted upon the premises in her own mind. Even in the olden days when her life had only been about spreading cheer and helping others and raising her baby, she’d been a woman who’d trusted her instincts and pretty much always chosen to follow them.

  “Today’s visit is by video,” Brian said. “I can set it to record, and be present—outside of the camera view so that Johnson doesn’t know I’m there—and position myself with pen and paper within Jessica’s view so that if there are any questions that need to be asked, from a law enforcement standpoint, they’ll get asked.” He glanced at Jessica. “Assuming you’re willing to go along with this and ask them.”

  Maybe he was testing her. Didn’t matter. She’d hired him to find Brooke. Not to find the outcome she wanted, but to find Brooke. If she wasn’t going to trust his process, she might as well save her money and send him home.

  If she wasn’t going to trust his process, she could be failing her daughter. “I’m fine with that,” she said, looking between both men, meeting them eye-to-eye—equals in their quest.

  “I’ll get a look at his initial response,” Brian continued to their little threesome in the circle on her front walk, and then turned to Anderson. “And you’ll also have the tape to view, so that you get a look, since you know his tells.”

  Chin jutted, his tie seeming to strain against the tension in his neck, Anderson put his hands in the pockets of his gray dress pants, tipped back and forth, heel to toe, in his shiny black shoes, and then nodded.

  For a second, Jessica wasn’t sure what had just happened. She’d won her first ever argument with Duane Anderson. Or, Brian had won it for her. But...winning usually meant someone lost, and that hadn’t happened either.

  Her newly acquired expert had negotiated a compromise between two people who held polar opposite opinions. A compromise that suited Brooke best.

  Maybe, just maybe, hiring Brian Powers had been the answer for which they’d all been searching.

  Chapter 4

  You really got a sense of a person when you stood in their past. And as Brian—staying at Jessica’s home until the truck was returned—studied reports, the impression he was getting from Clint Johnson was all bad.

  All of it.

  The man was above-average smart, with an IQ and scholastic records to back that up, but had wasted every ounce of that gift in terms of contributing to society. Or even his own family.

  Clint had had good jobs—a few of them—and, according to his own trial testimony, had had to quit every one of them through no fault of his own. In each place of employment, all in the information technology field, he’d been treated unfairly. Hadn’t had enough time off. His ideas stolen by others who’d taken credit for them. People were jealous of his abilities and bullied him.

  According to Clint Johnson.

  How did you remove your six-month-old nursing daughter from her adoring mother, her family, her home, and show no remorse?

  Even if he’d had good reason—more like a self-aggrandizement issue, according to prosecutors who’d described Clint as a man who thought he was a godlike figure who knew best—he’d feel sorry, wouldn’t he? For the breakdown of the family? For a child starting life as a seeming orphan since she was no longer with either of her biological parents?

  Unless he knew the child was no longer alive?

  The baby’s father had said, over and over, that he didn’t know where Brooke was. While his mantra to Jessica was that she was in a better place.

  He just didn’t know where.

  He swore under a lie detector that he hadn’t given her to anyone, or left her with anyone.

  And that he knew she was being well cared for. Loved, even.

  He’d continued to proclaim that he was innocent of the kidnapping for which he’d been sent to prison.

  So how could he be certain Brooke was in a better place?

  Unless he’d killed the baby.

  And considered her loved in a heavenly realm.

  He hadn’t been charged with her murder—yet—because there was no evidence of one having been committed, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

  The evidence of the kidnapping had been overwhelmingly convincing enough to get a guilty verdict—but it had all been circumstantial. There was no definitive proof that Clint Johnson and his daughter had been together outside of their home on the morning in question.

  Most of what Brian was going over, seated at the breakfast bar in Jessica’s kitchen while she worked in her home office, was a rehash of what he’d already studied.

  Reading it while sitting in the man’s previous home, in the room Clint Johnson had been standing in the morning of the kidnapping, brought it more to life.

  Completed trial transcript in hand, Brian walked slowly through the downstairs rooms, leaving the master suite—the scene of the kidnapping—until last. He skimmed over myriad baby pictures, having no way of knowing which were present when Clint was in the house and how many had been put up as a means of coping after Brooke was kidnapped.

  The baby’s room, decorated in a unicorn and rainbow motif, appeared as though the child still lived there, even down to lotions and diapers on the shelves of the changing table, a sheet on the crib mattress, and the flannel blanket thrown over the arm of the solid wood rocking chair.

  The chair called to him. Three different times, he looked over at it.

  Suspecting that Jessica Johnson had spent many hours in that chair since her daughter’s disappearance.

  He could almost see here there. Feel her anguish and frustration...

  And had to move on. He wasn’t there for her, except in terms of her dealings with the kidnapper.

  A reminder that became much more acute as he entered Jessica’s bedroom.

  And was hit with a gut-wrenching sense of emptiness.

  Unlike Brooke’s room, Jessica’s space was...benign. No real character. Opposite the bed hung a large, generic, screened canvas, depicting individual squares filled with random swirls all in beiges, golds and maroons. The bed was covered with a comforter and pillows all in the same colors. Two dressers, two nightstands, same kind of polished dark wood as the bedframe, and a whole lot of empty beige carpet finished off the room.

  He glanced toward the double doors leading into the bathroom suite. No sign of the baby swing Brooke had been sleeping in at the time of the abduction. And the window Clint had climbed in...the long curtain that had been slightly torn in the process was also missing. Open wood-slatted blinds that did not appear in crime scene photos covered the space.

  He couldn’t see the shower from the vantage point of where the swing had been. But Brooke had been able to see the television that had been tuned to a baby music video station.

  Jessica had been in the shower. At her most vulnerable when she’d come out, wet and naked, to find her daughter’s swing empty.

  Feeling another chink in the armor that he wore through life, and most definitely on the job, Brian stood there, amass with sensation as he imagined how she must have felt—a strong woman attacked without a chance to fight back, to defend, when her guard was most down...

  When she’d least expect it.

  That had been the point, of course. Clint Johnson was the only one who’d known about the faulty window clip that allowed the locked window to be shifted slightly to the left and opened. He’d been in the area at the time of the kidnapping since he’d just been in the kitchen of the home half an hour before, been given the box of things he’d asked for and then been politely shown the door. He’d known Jessica’s schedule, kept down to the minute, because it was Brooke’s schedule, too.

  Had known she’d nurse the baby for her 7:30 a.m. feeding, then put her in her swing to snooze while she showered so they’d both be ready for the nanny to arrive at 8:15 a.m., allowing Jessica to be in her office when the Wall Street bell rang at 8:30 a.m. Arkansas time.

  The twisted fiend had stolen the infant away from her loving, secure home while his ex-wife, the baby’s mother, had been just feet away in the shower.

  “I had the monitor in the shower with me, set up on the top bar of the door casing.”

  Brian’s head swung toward the sound of Jessica’s voice. He hadn’t heard her approach on the carpeted floor. And he hadn’t had water sluicing over his head, as she had eighteen months before.

  Shoulders straight, gaze steady, she spoke without a hitch in her tone. But that glint in her eyes...moisture being refused the right to fall...

  Emotion washed over him.

  He tensed. Said, “I know.” He’d read about the monitor in the police report, and in the trial transcript, too. But standing in that room, seeing her there...

  He was going to find Brooke Johnson.

  Find the proof that would make Clint Johnson pay for the rest of his life for the heinous thing he’d done.

  “I should have had her swing in the bathroom with me.”

  “You testified that the video channel made her happy.”

  “So, she’d have cried for five minutes...”

  Five minutes as opposed to losing a lifetime. Even if Brooke was alive, there was no telling what might have happened to her in the past fifteen months. No way she’d ever be able to tell them everything.

  He couldn’t put the thought out there. Jessica’s stark expression didn’t ease his tension any.

  “There’s no part of this that’s your fault. You know that, right?”

  Just like it hadn’t been his detective father’s fault that his cop mother had taken risks that had cost her her life.

  Brian’s strong mental shake chased away the cobwebby thought.

  “He turned the monitor off the second he came through the window,” he reminded Jessica. Getting himself back on track. She was paying for his time and it didn’t come cheap.

  Because he was good. Focus came then. The intense inner study that made him an expert. Facts settled themselves in his mind. He’d been drowning himself with them...

  “Clint was successful because he used his single-focused intelligence, and his intimate knowledge of you, to complete his mission,” he said. “Having the swing in the bathroom, or even in the bathroom doorway, wouldn’t have made a difference to him. He knew your showering routine. My guess is he’d studied it as he had everything about you. If he’d had to, he’d have hidden within arm’s reach of the swing, and snatched Brooke the second you closed your eyes to rinse your hair...”

  He might not be able to bring her baby back to her alive, but helping with any misplaced guilt...that was a critical piece, too.

  He was there to bring her whatever peace of mind he could. To give her what she needed to be able to move on.

  Jessica needed facts. Truth.

  He’d just given her some.

  And could tell, by the way those strikingly attractive oval cheeks relaxed, that he’d helped.

  So maybe, just perhaps, the emotion hitting him out of the blue wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it was all just part of that particular job.

  * * *

  Jessica could hardly breathe for a second there, staring at the tall, strong-looking, jeans-clad man in a room she’d grown to hate. What he’d said, this total stranger...he was right.

  Oh God. Holding on to his gaze, her only visual those unusual hazel eyes, she felt herself weaken for a second. As though something inside her had started to melt.

  Deep breath. Exhale, pushing out from the diaphragm. Words from a counseling session came to her. She heeded them automatically.

  Drew in a long stream of life-giving air.

  And knew that the previous moment didn’t matter. Whether she could have prevented Clint from taking their daughter from her or not wasn’t going to bring Brooke back.

  Getting Brooke home was all that mattered. The thought brought her back to her reason for making the trek down the hallway to begin with.

  “If you have any questions...anything that’s not in the reports that I can add to help you...”

  He was there to find what others hadn’t. Everything he’d read, all that had been written, recorded, documented...what she needed wasn’t there. At least, not in enough entirety to lead a single one of multiple law enforcement agencies to Brooke.

  “There were a couple of more things on the dresser in the crime scene photos...”

  Crime scene. The words jabbed her heart every time she heard them. A year and a half later and the pain didn’t recede.

  Not even a little.

  “I mention them because I need to know if Clint left any of them there. Or moved them. What might seem innocuous to some could mean something to me. Anything out of place. Anything he might have touched. I know his fingerprints were on things in the room. He’d lived here. I’m asking for anything different that morning...”

  She nodded. Shook her head. Nodded again.

  Couldn’t keep a single aspect of her life private from the man. Not and have him do his job.

  “Yes,” she said. “I kept a picture of Brooke on my nightstand. I noticed it missing a few days after the kidnapping. It, um, was the first time I’d been back in the room since.”

  “So the rest of this...” He held out a photo, showing her the bedroom she’d shared with a madman. The room she’d last nursed her baby in...

  “It’s all exactly as it was that day, and every other day,” she told him, looking around at the current emptiness. “I...don’t sleep here,” she started to explain. Stopped. Forged on. “With all of the time I spend looking for Brooke, I often end up doing research for my clients late at night or early in the morning.” Sometimes the two ran right into each other. “Just seemed easier to go to the spare room right next door to the office to fall into bed...” Her things had moved with her. Gradually. One by one.

  No one had to know what she did in her own home alone. Though some, her stepmother mostly, had offered her a place to stay, no one had offered to stay with her. She’d have declined if they had.

  Just as she’d refused to leave Brooke’s home.

  Brian seemed to silently compel her to tell him everything.

  And she would. She’d lay her life bare, wide open, to find Brooke.

  But she would not, absolutely could not, allow any form of affection toward the man himself.

  Not him or any man.

  She couldn’t take that chance.