“More than you think,” he answered, and ignored the intrigued flare of her eyes. “We’re not here to talk about that.”
“Why did you spring me from the joint? I know it was for more than just good coffee.”
Sitting back, he crossed one leg over the other, hands in his lap, giving her as much space as the room allowed. “You went missing when you were fourteen.”
Her movements were measured as she set the cup down without answering.
“There’s a missing persons report filed with the Boston PD.”
“You act like this is news,” Becca replied. “I had a record. It must have been in my file.”
“It was, but we weren’t focused on it. We need to know more about it now.”
Forearms on the table, she wrapped her hands around her cup. Nic was surprised the cap hadn’t popped off already. “Why?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“Why do you care?”
She clammed up again, hiding behind another sip. She was clearly holding something back, but the coffee hadn’t been enough to secure her cooperation.
“She wants to play,” Lauren said. “Let her.”
He needed to tell her more, but how much more before he risked compromising an active investigation? But it wasn’t really. And it had been a while since she’d worked a job. Her brain used to regularly put pieces together much the same way his and Cam’s did, just on the other side of the law. Lauren was right. He had to offer Becca a chance to solve the puzzle too.
“We’re working a case.” He withdrew a stack of pictures from the folder and spread them out on the table. “Eight missing girls over twenty years in Boston and the surrounding areas. All of them bear a striking resemblance to you.”
She looked at each picture, then back to him. “What’s it matter to you?”
He slid the last picture out of the file, a pen rolling out with it. “This is Agent Byrne’s sister. She’s been missing for twenty years.”
“So Hot Stuff really was from Boston? I didn’t know if that accent was real or his cover.”
“Southie, born and bred,” Nic said. “You’re from a few neighborhoods over but you have no accent.”
“Because I trained myself not to use it.”
Nic startled at the full-blast Boston drawl. Not exactly like Cam’s but close.
“We’re not all lucky enough to be born in accent-free California,” Becca said, cutting through his shock. She reached for the pen and Nic tensed, ready to draw his sidearm if she tried to use the pen as a weapon. She put it in her mouth instead, speaking around it. “Trick for enunciating words and masking an accent.”
“Why’d you need that trick?”
She dropped the pen out of her mouth, pushed the photos aside, and pulled the missing persons report toward her. “I wasn’t taken. I left.”
Not surprising, seeing as she was sitting here before him and there were no follow-ups or charges related to the old missing persons report. Nic, however, continued to push, searching for any connection, no matter how tenuous. “Who were you running from?”
She tapped the “Filers” box with the pen. “Them. My parents.”
Nic drank his coffee, waiting her out. He’d had enough experience with witnesses to recognize Becca was ready to tell this story. She’d started down the road and couldn’t turn back, but she had to go at her own pace. And Nic had to let her.
“I wasn’t the easiest kid,” she said after another minute.
“I would have never guessed.”
She glared at him over the rim of her cup. “I came out to them as bisexual when I was twelve. One of my uncles thought that meant I was a slut—that he had free access—and my parents let it happen.”
Nic raged internally at the abuser and the enablers. All too common a scenario he saw in his work and in his own past.
“After two years,” Becca said. “I was done.”
