Because she knew, no matter what anyone thought about her being at fault for Brooke’s disappearance, that she was partially to blame.

  She’d married Clint. Had stayed with him in spite of her growing awareness of his emotional selfishness. She’d made excuses. Had focused on how attentive and gentle and sweet he’d been in the good times. The way he’d tried to be the best cook, the best at whatever he’d attempted to do. When it had been just the two of them and Jessica had been giving him whatever it was he’d wanted in the moment, he’d been more fun to be around than anyone else she’d ever known. She’d believed in him, believed that he’d grow up.

  She’d chosen him to be the father of her child.

  She couldn’t go back, couldn’t undo. But she could give her life over to saving her daughter. And then make damned sure that she provided the child with a safe, loving home. That meant no man in Jessica’s life. She didn’t trust herself to choose a father for Brooke’s future.

  Chapter 5

  She didn’t sleep in the space anymore. Brian wasn’t standing in Jessica’s current bedroom. The small step-back from intimacy helped him stay focused.

  “Did the photo from your nightstand ever turn up?” He hadn’t seen mention of it. Anywhere. Not in it being missing, or having been found.

  Frowning, seeming as though she was someplace far away, Jessica blinked. He could tell when she focused on him again. And lost a bit of the emotional distance he’d just managed to reinstate between them.

  “The photo from the nightstand,” he repeated, ignoring the rest.

  She shook her head.

  “Did you tell Anderson about it?”

  Another shake of the head. “Like I said, I didn’t realize until later that it was even gone. And it doesn’t matter to the case, other than to prove further that Clint took her. I like to believe, and actually do think, that in his own way, he loves Brooke. He liked to hold her when we were sitting on the couch watching television. And he was worried when she had a fever. But his resentment of her was more prevalent. He hated how much of my time she took from him. Hated that I wouldn’t just leave her with a sitter to take the week at the beach he’d said he needed. He’d been furious when I suggested taking her along, going as the family we’d become. And he detested the fact that when I did have a minute, I was so tired I just wanted to sleep. Needless to say, when I put that picture of her next to our bed...” She shrugged.

  “But you left it there.”

  She nodded. “I kept hoping that he’d see that she was a part of us. A product of us. Not the wall between us he was making her out to be. And...honestly, at that point, after so many fights about taking weekends away just the two of us—even after I gave in once and had my stepmom come stay with her while I went to the boat with him—I felt like I couldn’t take away that picture of her from my room for my own mental health.

  “I’d begun to see who Clint really was when I started talking about having a family, but it took a long time before I saw what others, my stepmother in particular, had seen for a long time. He and I had always talked about having kids. He’d always prevaricated, with logical enough reason to have me capitulate, until I started talking about turning thirty and running out of time. He eventually pretended to be fine with the idea, but only after I agreed to buy a little houseboat, which was what he most wanted...”

  Radar blaring, Brian pinned her with his gaze. “You still have the boat?” It hadn’t been in any of the reports. A boat. Means of transportation. Ability to drop anything overboard... “Where was it docked?”

  “Over in San Diego, and no,” she answered his second question first.

  Clint and the baby had been missing four days before he’d been apprehended... The ocean, thousands of miles of dump space...

  Hard lumps of dread filled his gut.

  “The boat is what prompted him to take Brooke from me.” Her tone, her entire countenance, seemed to have been physically drained of all emotion. One minute he’d been speaking to a grieving woman and the next, a beautiful android.

  He got it. The need to push all emotion aside in order to move forward, to accomplish. The understanding started to plummet him back into the mire of her suffering. He couldn’t let it.

  Eyebrow raised in question, he didn’t have a chance to get the associated words out before she said, “I filed for divorce when Brooke was three months old. I knew what he’d want most was the boat, and offered it as part of the settlement, with the caveat that he take over the payment and dock rent. He agreed, right up until the next week when he felt that he’d been disrespected at work and quit his job. He was certain I’d carry him until he found another job...”

  “And you said no.”

  “For the first time in ten years, I didn’t catch him when he took a dive.”

  “He lost the boat.”

  “I sold it. It was either that or bail him out by making the payments myself, and I just couldn’t do it again. It was never going to end...”

  The picture she was presenting came through loud and sickeningly clear. “That original bargain you made...a baby for a boat...” He let the words trail off when he saw her nod.

  The sickening man had kidnapped his daughter because, in his mind, Jessica had stolen the baby’s counterpart from him. She’d been the one to break the bargain.

  Brian was pretty sure it didn’t get any lower than that.

  And knew then and there that, no matter what, he was not going to leave until Jessica Johnson had the means to fight her way out of the hell her ex-husband was trying to drown her in.

  He had to end Clint’s insidious hold over her once and for all.

  * * *

  By three thirty that afternoon, Jessica felt like a hot mess. Sitting in her office—trading done with a day of nice profits for her clients, in spite of the monumental personal interruptions—she couldn’t find even a hint of satisfaction. Instead, her meeting with Clint loomed, half an hour away, and her insides were shaking. She should never have agreed to have an expert private detective—or anyone—present for the video conference. Even in hiding.

  Clint knew her so well. And if he figured out that she had anyone else, let alone another man, joining in their weekly time together...

  She hated that half hour with her ex each week, dreaded it, and yet it was the highlight of her week, too. Her chance to get another lead, something else to add to the list of clues Clint had given her, another opportunity to unscramble his sick puzzle and find Brooke.

  Every single Friday she awoke with the thought that, by nightfall, she could have her daughter back home. Even if her ex didn’t yet mean to reveal their daughter’s whereabouts, he could inadvertently say something that would lead her to Brooke.

  That morning, knowing she was picking up an expert detective who’d be working solely, and full-time, on Brooke’s case, plus speaking with Clint, her hopes for her baby’s return had been high for the first time in months.

  But having that expert present during her private conversation...

  Brian Powers was no longer just a figment out there coming in to help. He was an impressively tall, lithe, strong, and yet sensitive man who’d stood in her and Clint’s bedroom and made her actually feel, for the first time, that Brooke’s kidnapping wasn’t because she’d been careless and left the baby’s swing out of her sight. That her hurry to get her shower in while keeping Brooke happy hadn’t been the determining factor.

  Clint knew her. Their home. Everything. With his diabolical intelligence, he’d have found a way...

  She hadn’t been solely to blame.

  But what if Clint knew she’d hired someone to work for her full-time to bring Brooke back? Not just someone, but an undeniably attractive man who’d been alone in her home with her all day? The way he’d grown so possessive after their marriage, and her professional success...the way he grilled her still, every week, about her free time—making sure, she knew, that she wasn’t dating anyone...

  He’d made sure she wasn’t even getting close to girlfriends. The way he’d slowly isolated her all those years, teaching her, without her even realizing, that she wanted to avoid certain expressions on his face—the features that stiffened, denoting disapproval that would trigger his sadness, or depression, or neediness.

  Expressions that appeared whenever she mentioned other people in any way that could be construed as being grateful for them, or affectionate toward them.

  He’d groomed her to keep him happy, instilling guilt in her anytime she did anything that she knew he wouldn’t like. Even after she’d been living alone for fifteen months, his ability to make her feel guilty, even in her thoughts, was still there.

  In the background most of the time. Fading, quite certainly.

  But...

  Clint wanted her to believe he was the only one who really understood her. The only one who could ever love her as much as he did. The only one who could make her truly happy.

  Clint was the only one who knew where he’d taken Brooke. She couldn’t lose his cooperation.

  Firm on that one, she stood, shoulders back. She had to renege on that morning’s agreement with Anderson. No way was anyone else going to be present, giving her hidden messages, during her half hour brain-picking session with her daughter’s kidnapper.

  Her daughter’s father.

  Headed toward her newly hired employee, she met up with Brian in the hall just a few steps outside her office door. Still in the snug-fitting jeans he’d had on that morning, satchel on his shoulder.

  Of course, since he didn’t have transportation back and forth, he hadn’t changed. The truck had been promised by five, but hadn’t yet been returned.

  “I thought I should get set up plenty of time before the video conference, give us time to practice how you want to communicate,” he said, and then, meeting her gaze for a long look added, “Were you coming to find me?”

  “I was,” she told him, silently thankful for the opening. For a second there, she’d wanted him to be present for the meeting. Not because she thought there was a chance it would be good for Brooke, but because the idea of someone else witnessing Clint’s behavior after fifteen months of such meetings, had been...welcome.

  Sometimes being the strong one, carrying the burden of the relationship all alone, wore her out.

  More so since she’d realized how badly she’d been manipulated. Since the counseling sessions that had, after the fact, helped her understand how she’d allowed it to happen...

  “You can’t be there,” she said baldly. She wasn’t going to argue about it. He was her employee. They were in her home. And she knew it couldn’t happen.

  “What do you mean I can’t? Who told you that? If it’s prison guidelines, we can get around that. I’ll make a phone call.” He reached into his pocket for his phone.

  “No, Brian,” she said, feeling odd using his first name, but doing it firmly. “I’m saying it. You can’t be there. If Clint sees me looking anywhere but at him, or sees my eyes move in a reading motion, even being distracted by something popping up on my computer screen...he’ll cop an attitude...” She heard the worry in her tone even as she tried to make it go away.

  He was shaking his head. “You were fine with it this morning,” he reminded her. “Anderson agreed to let you be the first one to speak with him about the gun...”

  She shook her head right back. “He really didn’t have a choice.” Her gut had spoken, perhaps a bit late, but she wasn’t going to be swayed. “He couldn’t make it over there before my phone call and he doesn’t have the right to tell me what I can and can’t speak to my ex-husband about and—”

  “Hey, Jessica.” The soft tone, the warm look in his eyes, stopped her words as much as the interruption had done.

  She stood there, looking up at him when she needed to get back to the office. To get online, open the meeting app, and be waiting the second Clint came on. It upset him if he lost even a minute of his time torturing her and, for the purpose of getting as much out of him as she could, she avoided all needless upsets.

  “Detective Anderson isn’t your enemy,” Brian continued without any argument at all coming at her. “He wants exactly the same thing you do, to find Brooke. And he’s had a lot of training in working with perpetrators, especially those who are incarcerated. He thinks the gun’s going to give him leverage. Maybe Clint gets nervous that the gun was found and Anderson offers up a deal on whatever Clint might have done with the gun, or what Anderson’s going to tell the prosecutor Clint did with the gun, in exchange for Brooke’s whereabouts. You don’t have that power...”

  She didn’t budge. “Right, but if Clint has something to be nervous about, me telling him about the gun just gives him time to stew about whatever it is that he might have done with the gun. To stew over whatever else the police might find out when they run ballistics, and that will just work in Anderson’s favor for any deal Anderson might want to pretend to offer him. As smart as Clint is, he’s like a kid, emotionally, when it comes to his own needs.”

  “Or it gives him time to invent a really good explanation for whatever might turn up on that gun. An excuse that has nothing to do with him, one that at least allows for the possibility that someone else might have handled the gun. It also gives him time to concoct a believable alibi. As smart as he is, I have no doubt he’ll figure something out.”

  The way Brian said that—I have no doubt he’ll figure something out—hit her oddly. Made her feel as though she wasn’t alone in her knowledge of Clint. Of the way he worked.

  Brian was only going by what she and the reports he’d read had told him. Things that everyone else working the case also knew. There was no reason for her to feel less alone because of one statement.

  And yet...she did.

  But the video conference wasn’t about her. It was all about pandering to Clint so he’d talk to her every week and she’d at least have a chance of finding her daughter.

  Because while Clint knew her, she knew him just as well.

  “I can’t take a chance on setting him off,” she said again. “I need whatever clue he’s set to give me.” She glanced at her watch. They’d already wasted five minutes. Another ten and she had to be online, ready to take Clint on.

  If he got an opportunity to show up early, he would.

  Finding her there ahead of time, too, would feed his ego. And make him more amenable.

  “And if I don’t tell him about the gun, if I let him be blindsided by Anderson, when Clint knows full well that I have his truck, so I’d be privy to knowledge of the gun before Anderson is... I’m not going to go there. It’ll complicate things between him and me and he could choose just to cut me off.”

  And there was the rub, of course. She knew exactly what Clint Johnson was, saw how he’d spent years mentally and emotionally abusing her with his manipulation. And knew very well that he was still doing so.

  Because he had the one thing on earth she needed above all else. Knowledge of her baby girl’s whereabouts.

  “I know he’s playing with me, Brian. I’m no longer in love with him in any way. No longer giving up my power to him. Nor am I an unknowing victim. I’m consciously choosing to let him have his way, with my eyes wide open, so that I can get my way. I want these meetings with him as badly as he does. Because, at some point, he’s going to tell me the truth. Whether wittingly or not, he’s going to lead me to Brooke.”

  “I’ll find Brooke.”

  She wanted to believe him.

  Wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t sure she ever would be. Brian was a wish on a star. Clint was the holder of the truth.

  Shaking her head, she turned back to her office, intending to close the door on her own personal private investigator.

  “At least let me observe.” Brian didn’t sound like he was demanding, but rather the words hit her as suggestion. Maybe even question. Whatever, they stopped her. Swinging around, she looked at him, gave him a chance to convince her.

  “I can stay behind you so that you don’t see any reaction from me at any time, but out of view of the camera. I won’t make a sound. It’ll be like I’m not there...”

  She feared there would never be a time when the disturbing man was in her vicinity but off her radar.

  All day, even though they’d been in different parts of the house and her office door had been shut, she’d known he was there...

  Not like when Barb, who cleaned for her, was there. Or Kyle, the handyman. They both had been in every room of her house—Barb countless times—and yet had left fewer impressions than Brian had in just a few minutes...

  “Insight into the kidnapper, into the man who’s giving us the clues, will help me find your daughter.”

  Anderson, the others, they’d all had their time with Clint.

  She was Brian’s only in.

  As long as he wasn’t expecting her to watch him, communicate with him, she had the mental wherewithal to block him and focus fully on Clint. Because having Brian privy to Clint was in Brooke’s best interest.

  With a nod, she motioned him to follow her.

  And felt a little bit less alone when he did so.

  Chapter 6

  Brian purposely chose the vantage point furthest away from his client. She signed on a full fifteen minutes before the scheduled visit, giving him ample time to test her camera range so he could be sure he wouldn’t be in it. To show her how to record the session. And to give her a different headset to use: one with a noise-canceling mic so that unless sound entered directly through the mouthpiece, it couldn’t be heard on the other end.

  “It’s made to cancel out background noise,” he told her as he pulled the headset out of his satchel, along with a wipe, and cleaned it before handing it to her. Her look back at him was a little off, distracted, and he added, “In my line of work, there are times, like when I’m in a bar surveying the person I’m calling, I need...well, privacy.” Just to put her at ease.