I pressed my palm against my chest to rub the slight ache that memory continuously stirred up away. The dreams I’d been having off and on for weeks pushed to the forefront of my mind. Pictures of Creekview residents reaching out their hands to me, begging me to help them, filled my mind’s eye.
“Savannah,” I murmured. I pulled up Savannah’s number on my phone and dialed. I hoped she would get me the information I needed.
“Reese?” she answered.
My heart squeezed when she answered, and I heard her daughter crying in the background.
“Savannah, hey,” I responded. “I’m sorry to bother you. I hear Parker back there.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, someone wants the boob.”
“She’s not the only one,” I heard Ace say.
I managed to swallow down the envy that rose in my throat. “I just wanted to know if you, by chance, had another number for Chael over at LS Investigations?”
“You mean Micah’s PI company?”
“Yeah,” I responded. “Chael’s working on this case with the nursing home, and I haven’t heard from him.”
“Why would Chael be working for Micah?”
I jerked my head at the surprise in her tone. “He works for your brother-in-law.”
“No, he doesn’t. Chael doesn’t even live in—” Parker’s sharp scream ripped through the air so loudly that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Reese, I’m so sorry. I’ve gotta go.”
She hung up before I could say anything. I stared at my phone, blinking. Chael didn’t work for LS Investigations?
Of course, he did. Savannah had to be wrong. Chael had told me from his mouth that he worked for LS Investigation. Right? I tried to recall our previous conversations where I asked him about working as a PI. His answers had come out vague, but I chalked that up to him not wanting to go into too much detail about the other cases he worked.
I assumed that was part of the job. You know, the private in being a private investigator. And what had Savannah been about to say? Chael doesn’t even live… live where? In Texas?
What the hell?
I rubbed my free hand over my face, uncaring that I might be smearing the light makeup I’d put on that morning. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t give up on this. The nursing home residents needed me, but how was I supposed to help now? I obviously couldn’t trust Chael.
I felt so freaking stupid. I’d let that man into my home, and I’d felt safe with him. Safe enough to call him in the middle of the night when I was frightened out of my mind.
“You’re such a fool.” I covered my face and shook my head. He wasn’t the first guy that’d ever lied to me. Maybe one day, I would finally learn that I couldn’t trust my instincts when it came to the opposite sex.
Brushing away thoughts about Chael, I scanned through my phone list until I reached Charlotte Rowe’s number. She called me two weeks prior, and I still hadn’t returned her call. Maybe it was time to make that call. If Chael wasn’t going to be any help to me, perhaps she was my next best bet.
Not surprisingly, my call eventually went to voice mail. Charlotte, like most other human beings, probably had a life and was out with friends or a spouse on a Friday night.
“Charlotte, this is Reese Carson. I have some news on the Creekview Nursing Home. Please call me back as soon as possible.”
I left my number for her to call me back before I tossed my phone in the passenger seat and finally turned my car on to exit the parking lot. My heart grew heavier with each passing mile, not knowing what was happening to the residents at Creekview but also conceding that Chael had lied to me.
I shouldn’t have trusted him. Besides his name and number, I didn’t know jack about him. And I tried to tell myself that I’d only imagined the connection I felt with him over lunch and that night at my place.
Too bad my heart was too much of a fool to listen to reason.
CHAPTER10
Chael
“I need to get back to New Mexico,” I told Raffa as I stood in his office, which sat in the center of our pack’s Nevada Commune.
He stood and nodded. “I know you’ve been here longer than expected, and we still don’t have answers as to what is happening with our jobs.”
