“How much does this have to do with Wren Greenwood?” she asked.
A jolt of annoyed embarrassment. “She’s in danger.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s going to come back for her. He wanted something he didn’t get, and men like that don’t give up.”
“Have you developed feelings for her?”
“It’s not like that.”
Not like he’d been watching her for a while, digging through the layers of her life. Not like he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not like he felt a kind of thrill to find her in his motel room. Not like he felt a deep and abiding urge to make sure nothing happened to her. That she didn’t slip into whatever black hole this monster had opened in the world.
“Then what’s it like?”
“She’s a good person. She deserves to have someone looking out for her right now. She—doesn’t have anyone else.”
More silence.
“You know, she lived through a nightmare, right?” he went on. “Then, instead of letting it ruin her life, she took on a role—the whole Dear Birdie thing—trying to help people. She doesn’t deserve this.”
“She’s not our client.”
“What about the lab? Anything on those items I sent in?”
“There was some DNA from the sweater, but it doesn’t match anything on CODIS or NDIS.”
He deflated a bit. He had high hopes for the items Wren had retrieved from the rental property.
An old man walked his little white dog up the street, didn’t glance in Bailey’s direction.
“Just one more day,” he said. “If he comes back for her, and I’m there, maybe we find Mia, too.”
“Did I mention we’ve been fired from the Thorpe case?”
“You did.”
“The job is no longer yours. Come in.”
“Okay.”
“Bailey.”
“I said okay. I’ll come in.”
Obviously, he had no intention of going back in. It just wasn’t going to happen, and Nora would let him get away with it because she didn’t have a better detective in her firm. All of this was unspoken between them. Because Nora was like Bailey. The work wasn’t about cases and fees; the work was about people. And when you took on someone’s case, those people became your people and you cared about what happened to them. Nora’s partner, Diana, was a different story. She was the money woman; she balanced the books. And right now, in the case of Mia Thorpe, the numbers didn’t add up. Honestly, Bailey got that, too.
And then there was Wren Greenwood—wild, delicate, stubborn, kind. A fire to her, a softness. He thought about her. Too much.
“Never fall in love out there,” Nora said, maybe reading his mind as she sometimes seemed to. “I warned you about that early.”
She had warned him, and he’d scoffed. He’d never really been in love then. He didn’t know what it was like to give yourself to someone and then lose them. The loved child of good parents, older brother to a devoted sister, he knew only about the kind of love that lasted, sustained, nourished. He didn’t know about the kind of love that was like wildfire, burning everything to ash.
“That’s not what’s happening here.”
“It’s okay to care, as long as you’re on solid ground, not ready to jump off the cliff after someone.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Nora.”
“Good night, Bailey.”
He checked the clock on the dash. It was late. Probably too late to do this; he wasn’t a cop after all. And that ticking clock—no one but Bailey and Henry Thorpe could still hear it. But he was running out of time. He killed the engine, exited the truck, and approached the house.
A black cat sat on the porch swing, and the red door stood ajar. Inside, Bailey heard the sound of a television. He paused, listening.
This weird little town was one of those places where people still didn’t lock their doors.
Which he always found idiotic. Hubristic. Especially since, statistically speaking, lots of bad things seemed to happen here—arson, child abductions, disappearances, murders. He was looking forward to packing up his stuff and getting out.
He knocked and the door swung open easily, and even though it was pretty rude, borderline illegal, Bailey stepped inside onto a creaky hardwood floor.
He knocked again, this time on the door that had swung wide open.
“Mr. Javits, excuse me. Investigator Bailey Kirk.”
Not a lie. Just because he was a private investigator, not a police officer, didn’t mean he had to clarify that every time. He worked with people’s assumptions. People usually assumed he was a cop, and he just went with that.